Cloud Computing.. me like.

[japanpimp]

Well, "Cloud Computing" ain't anything new. The concept goes back to when computers first came out and people shared or leased time/usage on those huge mainframe dinosaurs. It's just that with present day systems the concept can be used on a much larger scale with great efficiency.

So I switched my company from colocating our servers and other equipment (similar to dedicated servers except we own the servers) to Amazon AWS Cloud Services. So far so good. Plenty of OS varieties to choose from. Plenty of configuration flexibility. We can basically build a virtual server that lives in the "cloud" and configure the "hardware" and software anyway we want. And we can get new servers up and running in just minutes. Only problem I see so far is the data storage. There are 3 options:
1. S3 (like a large HD you can creae in space and use for storage)
2. EBS (virtual volumes you can create and attach to the server as a block device for storage) EBS is like a RAID volume. So data is safe. "Disk faailure" won't mess you up. You can make em as big as you want. Problem is, EBS volumes are accessed via some other place, like network attached storage. So data xfr is slow to and from EBS volumes.
3. Runtime storage. This is the best if you want to run a DB. It is the the size of the raw server images that Amazon provides. So it only comes in 3 sizes... Micro, Macro and large. micro is like 600MB, Macro is like 200GB and LArge is like 1.2 TB. It is like a HD attached to your server locally, not over the network. The runtime storage or HD is like RAM. Problem is, if your virtual server crashes or goes down the storage disappears, just like RAM. The solution is to take snap-shots of your server and volumes then use those snap shots to recover from a server crash. Snapshots can be stored in S3 or EBS as seperate volumes.

So far, loving the Amazon AWS Cloud Services.

[*jdm*]

what happens if the server goes down?

[Revoltion]

What happen if the cloud rains?

[OldFlame19]

How do you start a thread? Please private message me!

[Boleslav]

Japanpimp, you have three weighty questions to answer here. Don't let us down.

[rasterbee]

Well, at least you admitted you are late to the party this time, japanimp.

Before I clicked on this thread I was really expecting something like "OMG guys! I just got gmail and you can store SO MUCH STUFF THERE."

[Voulkos]

Seriously.. I expected sheep to somehow be involved.. I guess all I can do is make a comment of gratitude for sharing? ...

[japanpimp]

what happens if the server goes down?

If the server goes down I can simply make a new server based on the last saved snapshot of my old server. Or I can make 500 servers based on the snapshot of a single server. It takes about 3 minutes to make a new server and get it up and running based on a saved snapshot. Or I can use a load balancing service they provide and have multiple servers working together so if one fails sites still get served and DB's still talk.

What happen if the cloud rains?

If it rains the little computer elves that live in the Amazon Cloud get a much needed shower. Showers are rare. So they usually stink, bad.

How do you start a thread? Please private message me!

*Turns poster around and swiftly kicks poster in the rear*

Japanpimp, you have three weighty questions to answer here. Don't let us down.

...in progress.

Seriously.. I expected sheep to somehow be involved.. I guess all I can do is make a comment of gratitude for sharing? ...

Sheep are indeed invloved. They help the little elves tend for things in the background. The sheep usually smell better than the elves.

[japanpimp]

Just got this email from Amazon. Looks like Amazon is making life easier for customers who need quick DB access.

Dear Amazon Web Services Customer,

We are excited to announce the public beta launch of Amazon ElastiCache, a new web service that makes it easy to deploy, operate, and scale an in-memory cache in the cloud. The service improves the performance of web applications by allowing you to retrieve information from a fast, managed, in-memory caching system, instead of relying entirely on slower disk-based databases. ......

Here is a video:
http://aws.amazon.com/elasticache/

[Newptor]

Can you give some kind of cost comparison between cloud, dedicated server and shared web hosting?