[HN Gopher] Accelerating Docker Builds by Halving EC2 Boot Time
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       Accelerating Docker Builds by Halving EC2 Boot Time
        
       Author : Telstrom90
       Score  : 14 points
       Date   : 2025-05-22 15:23 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (depot.dev)
 (TXT) w3m dump (depot.dev)
        
       | JackSlateur wrote:
       | Why would you start an instance every time you build a container
       | ?
       | 
       | I am missing something here ..
        
         | dijksterhuis wrote:
         | probably: saves money vs a fleet of consistently running
         | instances
         | 
         | > From a billing perspective, AWS does not charge for the EC2
         | instance itself when stopped, as there's no physical hardware
         | being reserved; a stopped instance is just the configuration
         | that will be used when the instance is started next. Note that
         | you do pay for the root EBS volume though, as it's still
         | consuming storage.
         | 
         | https://depot.dev/blog/faster-ec2-boot-time
        
         | mdaniel wrote:
         | Their product seems to be offering "buildkit as a service" and
         | I'd guess from their perspective the safest isolation boundary
         | is at the VM level. Unknown why they don't boot up a bigger
         | .metal instance and do their own virtualization but I'm sure
         | there are fine reasons
        
         | nand_gate wrote:
         | (You wouldn't)
         | 
         | Patting themselves on the back for 'fixing' a self-created
         | problem... EC2 is the wrong abstraction for this use case imo
        
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       (page generated 2025-05-22 23:02 UTC)