Signed up but never really had chance to play with Amazon's EC2. This looks interesting though - non-persistent storage was one of the major downside's of EC2 -
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Many Amazon EC2 customers have been requesting that we let them know ahead of time about features that are currently under development so that they can better plan for how that functionality might integrate with their applications. To that end, we would like to share some details about a major upcoming feature that many of you have requested - persistent storage for EC2.
This new feature provides reliable, persistent storage volumes, for use with Amazon EC2 instances. These volumes exist independently from any Amazon EC2 instances, and will behave like raw, unformatted hard drives or block devices, which may then be formatted and configured based on the needs of your application. The volumes will be significantly more durable than the local disks within an Amazon EC2 instance. Additionally, our persistent storage feature will enable you to automatically create snapshots of your volumes and back them up to Amazon S3 for even greater reliability.
You will be able to create volumes ranging in size from 1 GB to 1 TB, and will be able to attach multiple volumes to a single instance. Volumes are designed for high throughput, low latency access from Amazon EC2, and can be attached to any running EC2 instance where they will show up as a device inside of the instance. This feature will make it even easier to run everything from relational databases to distributed file systems to Hadoop processing clusters using Amazon EC2.
When persistent storage is launched, Amazon EC2 will be adding several new APIs to support the persistent storage feature. Included will be calls to manage your volume (CreateVolume, DeleteVolume), mount your volume to your instance (AttachVolume, DetachVolume) and save snapshots to Amazon S3 (CreateSnapshot, DeleteSnapshot).
Anyone ever use this service? I had an issue with tons of spam being sent to my mail servers from amazon, so I placed an IP ban on the entire Amazon network until the issue was fixed. They replied and said that it was coming from an Amazon EC2 client and that it was handled...made me kind of curious about it.
My services/sites approached the state when DS becomes a must. Currently I have a DS with Server Logix (and am quite satisfied with it, to add), but I suppose I'll need another DS in the foreseeable future, to transfer most active sites there.
Amazon EC2 service offers several types of 'elastic' servers. The smallest one, citing the product page::
1.7 GB of memory, 1 EC2 Compute Unit (equals 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor), 160 GB of instance storage, 32-bit platform
If run for a month, this instance would cost me 72$. Traffic (bandwidth) is paid for separately; I estimate I'd pay approx $20 monthly for traffic consumed.
The question: are there DS plans matching the EC2 Small instance (i.e., 100$ monthly for the server of similar configuration, with 120Gb of traffic included)?
I have tried the EC2 hosting, to test its efficiency and availability. I should decide, whether to switch entirely to cloud providers, or there are traditional DS hosting that could beat EC2 prices and offer good reliability?
All the comments on EC2 experience and DS providers would be very welcome.
I am interested in USA or Europe-based DS hosting providers, if any. I'd need a server in approx 3-4 months.
Are the amazon's EC2/S3 solutions a viable alternative to dedicated hosting? The thought of capacity/bandwidth/computing power on demand sounds great in theory. Could it host a basic LAMP setup?
If you've done any research in this area i'd love to hear your thoughts. Are they apples and oranges?
At the moment, I am been hosted on an unmanaged server (dedicated).
My server provider is offering $25/hour for managed support.
My Kernal and Centos have not been updated for a while and I am looking to upgrade both of them. I am wondering how long would these 2 jobs normally take?
I have a new comparison shopping site. The challenge I currently have is that I have a dedicated server on Hostgator ($374 per month). But, I am in the middle of changing programmers after initial problems. While we are working through issues, I would like to bring down costs (there is very little traffic on the site right now).
Does a service such as Amazon EC2 make sense? It is not that I am unhappy with Hostgator. I just want to reduce cost while we fix the site (could take several months), and, position the site for easy growth (which is why I am considering Cloud Computing).
Comparison shopping is a large database intensive effort, so I do not think that a simple "shared" service makes sense.
I've visited their web site (aws.amazon.com), but it seems kind of vague to me. Is AWS the same as S3? (which one does web hosting?) You can host web sites on Amazon's service, right? Do you get the usual stuff? (mySQL, PHP, etc) Do they offer SFTP? Shell access?
Man, I feel like they need a FAQ or a list of features. How come none of these things are mentioned on their site?
Has anyone looked into hosting on Amazon Web Services EC2? It seems to me that a Elastic Compute Cloud node would be a far better solution than a VPS or a dedicated server.
we recently launched a site that has a you-tubeish clone to it, none the less the media progressive download bottlenecks the the rest of the sites functions beyond video...
I've been looking into solutions with moving the files elsewhere.
I was looking at Lime Light Networks but they were $1/gig, granted i'm sure their service is great but we're currently moving 3tb and have been going up around 500gb every month. So we really can't afford that.
I just stumbled on Amazon S3 and that looks real attractive, has anybody used their services or know of a site that does that I could test it out.
And the last stupid question, I'm trying to figure out how it works, they make it sound like all you have to do is put a CNAME in your zone, but I need the video clips to be put there as they're uploaded...
I have been reading about Amazon S3's service at [url] and I was wondering if it would be wise to use their service for a file host (like rapidshare..) I may be starting?
How good is their bandwidth and what is their policy on copyrighted material?
Or should I buy my own servers from an unmetered provider, such as alphared?
I am launching my site with Amazon EC2, which is a social network (webcams, videos, albums, etc)in PhP, Linux; and I am going to need someone who can do the virtual hands for me, site administration.
What's the best way to set up an automatic file backup to Amazon's S3 service? I have a Linux cpanel VPS. I have minimal VPS administration knowledge but at least the VPS is managed by a good team
Is there any way to do incremental backups to save on the bandwidth charges?
(a full backup for me would be about 15 gigs each time)
I'm building a kind of a file sharing site also with video conversions ( convert a full DVD to flash and stream) and if i can find more ideas, even more features. It won't be free (i'm not sure which way to go though, subscription-based or pay per bandwidth + storage) and it will support download managers. I'm not sure which way to go : Joyent or dedicated servers with RAIDs. If i distribute files over servers, and a users wants the files to be converted to flv etc., it will increase the server load, ( and if i put a lot of users in 1 server it will increase the load even more) so it won't be very good.
So i thought SAN for this, but couldn't find any hosts serving it ( especially for a reasonable price ). Joyent is close enough (Amazon S3 is very very expensive), but although bandwidth and storage prices seem good, server power is low ( and very expensive if higher ) Which way should i go?
What does integration with Amazon Route 53 mean? We can use the Plesk DNS panel and it will update Amazon Route 53? Is it an all or nothing, meaning can we choose Amz R 53 for some domains and local DNS (bind) on others?
I'm currently running on a VPS. My site allows for large file uploads and downloads, with files over 600mb in size.
The server has issues when the site gets three or more requests for large file downloads. I'm trying to grow this site to thousands of users and it is hard to do when the site can't handle even three.
I've been told by my host that I need to upgrade to dedicated. My VPS only has 512mb RAM and one large file download is eating up that RAM. This is causing the issue.
I'm a newbie and while I knew I was risking a bit by going with VPS I do find it a bit annoying that these guys advertise 1TB of bandwidth per month but I can't even support downloading 1GB at the same time....maybe it's just me...
Anyway, I am now looking into moving the large files and the upload/download over to Amazon S3. If I do this I am expecting my RAM usage on the VPS to greatly decrease. Is this correct? If my PHP code is running on the VPS, but the actual file download via HTTP is coming from S3, that should not be a heavy load on my box, correct?
