I'm sorry if this isn't the right forum for this question but I read the rules and it didn't seem to imply I can't ask this...
Anyways I'm looking to get some EC2 dedicated instances because I will be hosting a HIPAA compliant site and as I understand, you are required by Amazon to get dedicated instances for this.
I read that there is a dedicated per region fee of $2 per hour, regardless of how many instances you run in that region (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/purchasing-options/dedicated-instances/).
Does this mean that it costs a base of ~$17,520 per year to have one dedicated instance? $2 per hour x 8760 hours per year = $17,520
t2.micro
instance at $7/month, the entire underlying host is yours.