Fwd: SitePoint Migrates to Amazon EC2

[Owen Densmore]

I get the monthly Amazon Web Services (AWS) newsletter and noticed the prices have been decreasing over time.  And they now have a free 1-year offer letting you find out if its a good fit.

This led me to look for a book -- and sitepoint, a good tech publisher, had one:
    http://www.amazon.com/Host-Your-Web-Site-Cloud/dp/0980576830/
And I found that they had recently migrated their entire IT department to AWS!
    http://blogs.sitepoint.com/2010/11/11/sitepoint-migrates-to-amazon-ec2/ 

And remember Dropbox?  Its entirely AWS.

Hmm.. maybe SFX might use AWS for projects that require web programming.  Not the website etc, but projects that need a hosting service.  And it would be free for the first year, apparently!  Node.js runs on AWS: http://goo.gl/fDRr1 .. apparently an ubuntu based instance.

So a question: Are any of us using AWS?  How's it working out?  What's the cheapest equivalent of a "shared hosting service"?

    -- Owen



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[scaganoff]

I have used AWS on and off for a few years. I even built a production web host environment in AWS for a startup last year and I think they're still using it happily.

My experience is very positive. Highly recommended.

What I like about it is you have pretty good control of everything from the OS up. Of course this has a downside in that you also have responsibility for everything from the OS up.

There is no equivalent of a shared hosting service (well actually it's *all* shared - but the minimum unit is pretty chunky). With AWS you rent an entire (virtual) host. Last time I did the calculation (about a year ago) - one instance costs about $140/month full time which is not exactly cheap. So the "1 year free" is a really good deal if you qualify.

Regards,

Saul

On 14 January 2011 05:40, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I get the monthly Amazon Web Services (AWS) newsletter and noticed the prices have been decreasing over time.  And they now have a free 1-year offer letting you find out if its a good fit.

This led me to look for a book -- and sitepoint, a good tech publisher, had one:
   http://www.amazon.com/Host-Your-Web-Site-Cloud/dp/0980576830/
And I found that they had recently migrated their entire IT department to AWS!
   http://blogs.sitepoint.com/2010/11/11/sitepoint-migrates-to-amazon-ec2/

And remember Dropbox?  Its entirely AWS.

Hmm.. maybe SFX might use AWS for projects that require web programming.  Not the website etc, but projects that need a hosting service.  And it would be free for the first year, apparently!  Node.js runs on AWS: http://goo.gl/fDRr1 .. apparently an ubuntu based instance.

So a question: Are any of us using AWS?  How's it working out?  What's the cheapest equivalent of a "shared hosting service"?

   -- Owen



============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

--
Saul Caganoff
Enterprise IT Architect
Mobile: [phone]
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/scaganoff

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[glen ep ropella]

We've been using it for awhile, too.  I can't say I'm happy with it; but
I'm much happier with it than I was with our cluster, which had to be
babied like a ... well, a baby. ;-)

We keep a single "small" instance running all the time.  When we do our
"in silico experiments", I invoke anywhere from 1 to 19 other virtual
hosts to be slaves.  It's painless to do that, but not so painless to
set it up so that it's painless to do. (Does that make sense?)

There are a number of odd things about the EC2 images and how you have
to set them up that you have to get used to.  But you could also use the
resellers like RightScale.  http://www.rightscale.com/  One of our
ex-clients <http://www.foreclosureradar.com/> uses them and is quite happy.

I wouldn't recommend EC2 just for web development for a single machine.
 You can get a fairly powerful VPS for ~$30/mo.  But if you want to
develop for many machines, perhaps a dynamically instantiable testbed
for a node.js server with many separate EC2 instances acting as clients,
querying with all their might.

In essence, if you never need to scale to/from many machines, then it
doesn't make much sense to use EC2.

Saul Caganoff wrote circa 11-01-13 12:43 PM:

> My experience is very positive. Highly recommended.
>
> What I like about it is you have pretty good control of everything from the
> OS up. Of course this has a downside in that you also have responsibility
> for everything from the OS up.
>
> There is no equivalent of a shared hosting service (well actually it's *all*
> shared - but the minimum unit is pretty chunky). With AWS you rent an entire
> (virtual) host. Last time I did the calculation (about a year ago) - one
> instance costs about $140/month full time which is not exactly cheap. So the
> "1 year free" is a really good deal if you qualify.
>
> Regards,
> Saul
>
> On 14 January 2011 05:40, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>> Hmm.. maybe SFX might use AWS for projects that require web programming.
>>  Not the website etc, but projects that need a hosting service.  And it
>> would be free for the first year, apparently!  Node.js runs on AWS:
>> http://goo.gl/fDRr1 .. apparently an ubuntu based instance.
>>
>> So a question: Are any of us using AWS?  How's it working out?  What's the
>> cheapest equivalent of a "shared hosting service"?

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com


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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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