Getting Started With Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Posted in Hosting by DB

Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud web service sure did take the web hosting industry by storm when it was launched nearly 18 months ago. While many other companies have already entered or are entering the Cloud computing space, Google being one of the more notable names, Amazon continues to be the preferred choice and holds sway. However with Google also entering this market I wonder if we are going to see a shift? 

How can I get started with Amazon EC2? Is it the right choice for me? What is the learning curve with EC2? I’ve noticed that I’m being asked these questions more and more frequently. I figured this will probably make a good topic as I’m sure many of you folks out there have the same question.

Getting started and ramping up your applications with Amazon EC2 is slightly more difficult when compared to Amazon S3. With Amazon S3 many of the finer details are further abstracted if you use an application such as Cockpit, a graphical java application to manage your data in your S3 account.

Signing up for an EC2 account is easy enough. Simply go to the web services section on Amazon and signup. One of the reasons why Amazon EC2 is sought after is because you are only charged for what you use unlike a traditional hosting account or dedicated server and of course the fact that you are on the same infrastructure that Amazon uses. The billing for your EC2 is done monthly and is based on the resource usage, the instance type, uptime and the data transfer.

Amazon Ec2 gives you three options for instance types

  1. Small Instance
  2. Large Instance
  3. Extra Large Instance

Amazon EC2 Small Instance

This is the default instance type. Each small instance has about 1.7 GB of memory and 160 GB of storage on a 32 bit platform with 1 EC2 Compute unit. Each EC2 compute unit is equivalent to 1.2 Ghz Opteron or the 2007 Xeon Processor.

Amazon EC2 Large Instance

With the large instance you get more processing power, memory and storage. Each large EC2 instance has about 7.5 GB of memory and 850 GB of storage on a 64 bit platform with 4 EC2 Compute units. Now this is some serious processing power.

Amazon EC2 Extra Large Instance

Now if for some reason a large instance does not meet your requirements (can’t imagine why) then you have the extra large instance to fall back on. Amazon’s Ec2 extra large instance has pretty much double of everything that a large instance has to offer. With an extra large EC2 instance you get 15 GB memory, 1690 GB storage space and 8 EC2 Compute units. (whew!!)

For those that are interested click here to calculate the monthly estimated cost for running an EC2 instance depending on your preferred instance type and bandwidth.

In most cases it is best to start with a small instance and evaluate if your data and processing needs are being met. Remember all that it takes to start a bigger instance is a few words of syntax. I currently use a small instance and I’ve found it to be extremely fast. Needless to say I’m completely satisfied. In the coming weeks I’m going to talk more about EC2 and working with an EC2 instance. Continue to keep reading and do subscribe to Website Hosting tips tricks and optimization.

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Related posts:

  1. Multiple Amazon Elastic IP’s, Single Instance
  2. Elastic IP’s and Availability Zones – Amazon’s Two New Offerings For EC2
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