Skip to content
  • Products
    • Portfolio overview >

      Flexsave™

      Automatically manage cloud compute for optimized costs and agility

      Cloud Analytics

      Make sense of spend and chargeback to align with your business

      google cloud msp

      BigQuery Lens

      Optimize BigQuery costs with actionable recommendations and usage insights

      Spot Scaling

      Maximize AWS Spot savings and minimize disruptions for optimized scaling

      Anomaly Detection

      Autonomously identify cost spikes early, with zero configuration

      Platform overview >

      Organize your billing data for better business decisions

  • Services
    • Services overview >

      How we work

      Learn how we’re redefining support with our customer reliability engineering

      Stats

      View our live support and customer satisfaction statistics in real-time

      Cloud solutions

      Proven solutions to cloud complexity

      FinOps

      Learn how DoiT enables critical FinOps capabilities

      Areas of expertise

      Cloud Architecture

      Ensure your cloud architecture is future-ready and built for success

      Cloud Cost Optimization

      Identify opportunities to optimize costs and target spend for added value

      Cloud Migration

      Realize greater efficiency and innovation with successful cloud migration

      Cloud Security

      Center security in your cloud strategy to ensure ongoing efficacy and growth

      Data and Analytics

      Harness the potential of big data and analytics to gain a competitive edge

      Data Management

      Build your data practice with expert guidance tailored to your business goals

      DevOps Jump Start

      Accelerate your AWS workloads & release pipelines while also increasing automation, monitoring & reliability

      Infrastructure

      Maximize the full suite capabilities from your cloud infrastructure

      Kubernetes

      Manage the complexity of Kubernetes to enable innovation and scalability

      Location-Based Services

      Transform geolocational data into real-world, real-time intelligence

      Machine Learning

      Level-up key data with ML capabilities that accelerate innovation

      Multicloud

      Create meaningful business value with a robust multicloud strategy

      Training

      Build skills and capability across teams with certified, expert-led training

  • Partners
    • Alliances

      Proud to be an award‒winning multicloud partner to top‒tier cloud providers

      doit-together

      DoiT Together

      Enabling cloud growth and unlocking revenue through expert partnership

      ISV Go-Global

      Accelerate new customer growth and Marketplace integration on AWS and GCP

  • Resources
    • Resources hub >

      Blog

      Read the latest insights, tips and perspectives from our team of cloud experts

      Case Studies

      See how we’ve helped thousands of public cloud customers achieve their goals

      Cloud Masters Podcast

      Listen to our experts and customers share tangible tips for navigating the cloud.

      Ebooks and Guides

      Discover foundational expertise and future-ready recommendations for the cloud

      Events and Webinars

      Tech talks and interactive expert sessions delivered both virtually and in person

      GCPInstances.info

      Google Cloud Compute Engine instance comparison

      Help center

      Read documentation, product updates, and more

      Newsroom

      See what's new from DoiT in our latest news and announcements

      Trust Center

      How we focus on security, compliance, and privacy

      Videos

      Watch product demos, interviews and more from our cloud experts

  • About
    • About DoiT >

      Careers

      Browse our open positions and learn more about what it takes to be a Do’er

      Leadership

      Meet the team leading DoiT and our customers on a journey of hypergrowth

      Newsroom

      See what's new from DoiT in our latest news and announcements

  • Pricing
  • Contact us
  • Sign In
  • Products
    • Flexsave ™
    • Cloud Analytics
    • Spot Scaling
    • BigQuery Lens
    • Anomaly Detection
    • DoiT Platform
  • Services
    • How We Work
    • Stats
    • Cloud Solutions
    • FinOps
    • Areas of expertise
      • Cloud Architecture
      • Cloud Cost Optimization
      • Cloud Migration Consulting Services
      • Cloud Security
      • Data and Analytics
      • Data Management
      • DevOps with AWS & DoiT
      • Infrastructure
      • Kubernetes
      • Location Based Services
      • Machine Learning
      • Multicloud
      • Training
  • Partners
    • ISV Go-Global
    • Award-winning public cloud partner
    • DoiT Together
  • Resources
    • Blog
    • Case Studies
    • Cloud Masters Podcast
    • Ebooks and Guides
    • Events and Webinars
    • GCPInstances.info
    • Help center
    • Newsroom
    • Trust Center
    • Videos
  • Pricing
  • About
    • Careers
    • Leadership
    • Newsroom
  • Contact us
  • Sign In
Contact us
Sign in

Blog

Amazon Lightsail, the EC2 equivalent and network throughput

  • Avi Keinan Avi Keinan
  • Date: August 26, 2023

Amazon Lightsail is an excellent solution for anyone who wants to spin up Virtual Private Servers (VPS). You can spin up Linux or Windows servers and choose prebuilt blueprints such as Linux with WordPress server or LAMP/Drupal/etc.

Amazon Lightsail

Amazon Lightsail offering — screenshot from Lightsail console

The term VPS refers to a virtual server, such as Amazon EC2, but in the industry standard, VPS servers have a fixed price, which does not vary according to usage as in Amazon EC2.

Amazon offers Lightsail as:

  • An alternative to other companies that offer VPS like DigitalOcean, Linode and Vultr.
  • A solution with a fixed price that does not change according to usage as in Amazon EC2.

Amazon Lightsail VPS provides a bundle of Compute (CPU and RAM), Disk (SSD) and Data transfer out to the internet at a fixed hourly price:

amazon light sail

Amazon Lightsail Linux VPS pricing

Behind the scenes, Amazon Lightsail servers run on Amazon EC2, but I couldn’t find the instance types or the network throughput of each instance in the documentation.

I decided to spin up multiple Lightsail servers and check the instance type of each VPS using the EC2 instance metadata service:

    ================== =================== 
                     Lightsail Bundle   EC2 Instance Type  
                    ================== =================== 
                           512MB            t3.nano            
                            1GB             t3.micro           
                            2GB             t3.small           
                            4GB             t3.medium          
                            8GB             t3.large           
                           16GB             t3.xlarge          
                           32GB             t3.2xlarge         
                    ================== ===================

I was also curious to find the network throughput of each Lightsail VPS to the internet.

I spun up a Google Cloud Compute Engine server with a network capacity of 25Gbits/sec. And using iperf3 (version 3.1.7–2), I performed a speed test of uploading and downloading data. I also checked the network performance of EC2 c6gn.8xlarge instance as the control group in this comparison.

       =============== ============== ================ =============== 
        Lightsail VPS   EC2 Instance   Download Speed   Upload Speed   
       =============== ============== ================ =============== 
            512mb       t3.nano        3.71Gbits/sec    3.09Gbits/sec  
             1gb        t3.micro       3.60Gbits/sec    3.89Gbits/sec  
             2gb        t3.small       3.62Gbits/sec    3.34Gbits/sec  
             4gb        t3.medium      3.68Gbits/sec    3.40Gbits/sec  
             8gb        t3.large       3.77Gbits/sec    3.22Gbits/sec  
            16gb        t3.xlarge      4.41Gbits/sec    3.20Gbits/sec  
            32gb        t3.2xlarge     4.29Gbits/sec    3.67Gbits/sec  
            None        c6gn.8xlarge   4.77Gbits/sec    4.77Gbits/sec  
       =============== ============== ================ ===============

The results are according to the AWS documentation, the T3 instances have burstable network speed and traffic from AWS Cloud to Google Cloud is considered egress traffic to the internet.

(The test was performed on Thursday, July 25, 2023 at 8 AM UTC. from AWS Frankfurt region (Zone euc1-az2) to a Google Cloud Compute Engine instance in Frankfurt region (Zone europe-west3-b). One test for each server — This is not a scientific test).

In conclusion, Amazon Lightsail offers a competitive solution to competing other VPS solutions and is even significantly cheaper compared to Amazon EC2 servers. Lightsail’s 1Gb bundle server costs $5/Month. The equivalent in Amazon EC2 (in Frankfort) will cost more than double — about $8.76 for the Compute and another $4.76 for a 40Gb Disk.

Subscribe to updates, news and more.

Subscribe

Subscribe to updates, news and more.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related blogs

Using predefined IAM roles for enhanced Google Maps Platform governance

Examining using predefined Google Cloud IAM roles dedicated to Google Maps usage to enhance the governance of these activities.

Keep reading 
Ramp Plans Resource Hub Header1

Monitor your cloud commit attainment with DoiT Ramp Plans

DoiT Ramp Plans help you visualize, manage, and track your commit attainment so you can make sure you spend what you committed to, and act proactively.

Keep reading 
DoiT-Google-Kubernetes-Engine-Troubleshooting-Made-Simple-with-Interactive-Playbooks

Google Kubernetes Engine Troubleshooting Made Simple with Interactive Playbooks

In modern application management, Kubernetes is the foundation of container orchestration. It automates software deployment, scaling, and management, revolutionising delivery. However, growing complexity and scale pose challenges in troubleshooting and maintaining dynamic ecosystems.

Keep reading 
View all blogs
Let’s do it

From cost optimization to cloud migration, machine learning and CloudOps, we’re here to make the public cloud easy — without the costs.

Ready to get started?

Get in touch

Company

  • About us
  • Blog
  • Careers
  • MS-HT statement
  • Newsroom
  • Privacy policy
  • Terms

Offering

  • Compliance
  • Products
  • Services
  • Solutions
  • Resources

Support

  • Sign in
  • Help center
  • Open ticket
  • Contact us

Never miss an update.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Subscribe to updates, news and more.