This is one of the keys reasons I recently started my new project, Uptano (shameless plug: https://uptano.com), and all servers use dedicated RAID 1 (two drives) with 10K RPM or SSD storage.
The same issue applies to network performance. I've seen very expensive EC2 instances that couldn't even push 50 Mbit/s to the net, while instances of the same type could at least do a few hundred Mbit/s. AWS' answer was always to simply buy even more expensive instances, so less people are sharing, but that's a terribly costly answer.
I'm doing bonded (802.3ad) 2x1 Gbit/s connections on all servers, because that's what I wish EC2 had.
Multiple customers, with highly varied workloads, sharing the same physical server hardware is simply a fundamentally flawed idea. IMHO, it only makes sense to use a VPS for very small personal projects, where you don't want to justify ~$140/mo in server costs.
EC2 was a really novel thing and it brought lots of great technology to the scene, but they made a few fundamentally wrong choices.
We've had similar issues in the past like when we've used RDS for some of our projects (In particular issues with disk IO). AWS a great place to start, but chances are the "one size fits all" solution is going to get difficult once you're doing more advanced tasks.
The same issue applies to network performance. I've seen very expensive EC2 instances that couldn't even push 50 Mbit/s to the net, while instances of the same type could at least do a few hundred Mbit/s. AWS' answer was always to simply buy even more expensive instances, so less people are sharing, but that's a terribly costly answer.
I'm doing bonded (802.3ad) 2x1 Gbit/s connections on all servers, because that's what I wish EC2 had.
Multiple customers, with highly varied workloads, sharing the same physical server hardware is simply a fundamentally flawed idea. IMHO, it only makes sense to use a VPS for very small personal projects, where you don't want to justify ~$140/mo in server costs.
EC2 was a really novel thing and it brought lots of great technology to the scene, but they made a few fundamentally wrong choices.