News

AWS Rents Virtual Desktops by the Hour

• By David Ramel
• 08/24/2016

The Amazon WorkSpaces service, which provides virtual desktops, can now be rented by the hour on the Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) cloud.

The service, according to its Web site, "allows you to easily provision cloud-based virtual desktops and provide your users access to the documents, applications, and resources they need from any supported device, including Windows and Mac computers, Chromebooks, iPads, Fire tablets, and Android tablets."

Previously, WorkSpaces catered to full-time users with a monthly billing plan. The new option was introduced for more sporadic users.

"If you only need part-time access to your WorkSpace, you (or your organization, to be more precise) will benefit from this feature," said AWS spokesperson Jeff Bar in a recent blog post. "In addition to the existing monthly billing, you can now use and pay for a WorkSpace on an hourly basis, allowing you to save money on your AWS bill. If you are a part-time employee, a road warrior, share your job with another part-timer or work on multiple short-term projects, this feature is for you. It is also a great fit for corporate training, education, and remote administration."

The hourly rent plan can be mixed and switched with the monthly billing scheme as needed, with different hardware and licensing options that range from 17 cents per hour to 57 cents per hour.

Barr also announced an expanded root volume.

"By popular demand we have expanded the size of the root volume for newly launched WorkSpaces to 80 GB, allowing you to run more applications and store more data at no additional cost," he said. "Your WorkSpaces Administrator can rebuild existing WorkSpaces in order to upgrade them to the larger root volumes (read Rebuild a WorkSpace to learn more). Rebuilding a WorkSpace will restore the root volume (C:) to the most recent image of the bundle that was used to create the WorkSpace. It will also restore the data volume (D:) from the last automatic snapshot."