Now a days, it is quite common to use Amazon Cloud EC2 Linux instances for performing multiple developmental and critical tasks in an organization but often it comes as very costly as it is a managed services provided by Amazon cloud which charges for every EC2 instances up and running on hourly basis.
This may be very well affordable by IT Organizations but when it comes to learning for the students or for general users who does not really have any budget then probably using EC2 Linux instances is really not affordable for longer term. It is however important to mention here that one can use limited service of Amazon Cloud for an year at free of cost but after that you have to pay as you use.
Why On-premise Linux is more ideal than EC2 Linux Instance for Students?
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Most of the Linux professionals, student and other learning users who does not have any budget to buy Amazon cloud services has to rely on on-premise linux systems for their work related tasks. For them, applications like VirtualBox is much more useful to create number of linux instances to setup different service and servers, limited by memory and cpu resources.
While there are many advantages of using on-premise linux instances but one of the main advantage is to use the linux servers for as long as you want free of cost. While on the other hand amazon charges for the time period linux ec2 instances are up and running. If you don’t want to use it, you can shut it down to avoid any unnecessary costs. But at the end, you will exhaust your limitation and then you have to either pay extra or stop using the cloud service.
This problem is not there with large Organizations who are ready to pay hefty amount of money, just to run their critical applications on cloud services. So there is no concern of shutting the linux instances down as most of the time applications are serving business purposes for 24×7 every year. But students who mostly uses linux instances for practice and studying purposes can’t afford to run instances for longer period of time.
Most of the time, they have to rely on their on-premise low end configurations linux instances to avoid higher costs, only have to pay initially for buying the minimum necessary hardware setup. Then for learning purposes students has to rely on free online materials available on websites like CyberITHub, LinuxNasa, ItsFossLinux, Socialyzehub etc. to learn and earn. So overall it is not entirely incorrect to say that cloud services are currently not affordable by students who does not earn and has limited financial resources to pay any sum of money for the cloud services.
It would be much better if cloud service providers can come up with a plan to provide free limited services to students almost forever so that they can not just learn about linux but about other critical cloud topics which are very much required now a days for securing any jobs and placements in large multi national organizations to secure their future.