The first thing I did was start with an already existing EBS AMI. Right now there aren’t too many available but they are growing.  I chose an Ubuntu 9.04 image since I’m going to install a stack on it, and I’ve already done *most* of it before on Ubuntu.

A quick note: it is possible to create an EBS AMI from an S3 AMI, but I wasn’t able to figure that out (quickly).  Although I did find a script that will do this for you: http://gist.github.com/249915.

Next, I wanted to get the Ubuntu server prepared.  I needed to:

• install mysql — http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/install-mysql-server-5-on-ubuntu/
• install ruby on rails — http://www.hackido.com/2009/04/install-ruby-rails-on-ubuntu-904-jaunty.html (up to and including step 6)
• install zlib — http://www.techsww.com/tutorials/libraries/zlib/installation/installing_zlib_on_ubuntu_linux.php
• install blacklight — http://projectblacklight.org (includes solr and a number of gem dependencies)

I did all of this.  One thing I noticed, Blacklight requires me to use non-standard ports (ie not 22 and 80).  While the server was running, I went into the AWS console and opened ports for its associated security group.  The changes took effect immediately.  I definitely liked that.

Finally, I went in to the AWS Management Console and chose “Create Image (EBS AMI)”.

Then I filled in the information including a description of my image:

and voila! EBS backed AMI.  the one caveat is:

DON’T TERMINATE THE INSTANCE UNTIL THE NEW AMI HAS FINISHED BEING CREATED

because then you’ll loose all the work that you have just done.  doh!

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Why am I rethinking it?  Well today Amazon EC2 realeased three new features; Amazon CloudWatch, Auto Scaling, and Elastic Load Balancing.

Amazon CloudWatch keeps a number of different metrics on how your AMIs are being utilized (CPU utilization, Network I/O, etc.).  And you can access the data either through the API or commandline tools (it would be nice though if this were built into the Management Console though).

Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing work in conjunction with Amazon CloudWatch to help you get the most out of your EC2 instances.  Auto Scaling allows you to define certain conditions that, when present, allow you to perform certain actions (like scale up your instances or scale them down).  Elastic Load Balancing automatically spreads the load of traffic amongst your EC2 instances based on the metrics provided by CloudWatch.

All in all pretty cool, however I would love to see it all built into the management console rather than just available through the API and commandline tools (I am lazy afterall Amazon).  If you want to read more check out Amazon Web Services’ Blog or follow the links above.

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They have broken up their grants into 3 sections: researchers, educators, students.  They also mentioned that they are working with IT companies to provide services for IT Professionals on campus (including a company that uses AWS for email archiving).

Of course Amazon mentioned some big institutions using AWS in their classrooms (including UMD and Harvard), but here at Wheaton College Professor Tom Armstrong is using AWS for a distributed computing assignment.

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Today, we are introducing the AWS Toolkit for Eclipse. This free, open source plugin for the Eclipse IDE makes it easier and more efficient for you to develop, deploy, and debug Java applications on top of AWS.

By bringing the popular IDE (Integrated Development Environment) to AWS, they are making it easier for developers to create server clusters for their applications.

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Also its hard to convince people that I really am saving money by using Amazon Web Services.  The problem is that the electricity, cooling, server, support, all come out of different budgets.  So if you add it all up its a lot more expensive to have a real live server than a virtual one.  But the people that pay the electricity bill aren’t going to send me the money that I’m saving them.

So what can I do?  Well here at Wheaton we’ve set up NComputing.  Essentially there is a server that the computers connect to.  You install whatever productivity software you want (and your licenses allow).  And then users sit down, log in to the teeny tiny square box you see off to the left, and bam! instant computer.

This allows an IT department to set up computers for a fraction of the cost of setting up a “real” one.  Our Director of Technical Support sent out an email letting us now we’re saving roughly $18,000 dollars by implementing these 10 boxes rather than 10 traditional computers.  That’ll pay for my Amazon Reserved Instance for at least 5 (if not more) years (don’t forget Amazon charges you for get and put requests as well as file uploading).

So if you’re looking for a way to get a bit cloudy without diving head long into utility computing, try virtualizing your desktop computers.  It provides you with the ability to save actual real live money out of your own budget, and has the added benefit of reducing electricity on campus (and maybe you can convince the guy that pays the electric bill that you should get more money from his budget).

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When Amazon first came out, it wasn’t cost effective for me to host my website there (in truth it still isn’t cause I have a friend that gives me a deal).  But now it is; Reuven Cohen over at Cloud Interoperability Magazine writes:

In doing the math, @ $0.03 a hour, a small reserved EC2 instance will cost you about $262 a year for the uptime, and $325 for the reservation or about $48 dollars a month. Compared to about $876 a year or $73 a month using an on demand instance (not including storage and bandwidth).

Like I said, its still not cheaper for me, but the thought of being able to do whatever crazy scheme I want on a server sure is enticing.

So if you hate your hosting provider (I hear lots of people whining about Dreamhost), perhaps you should consider switching.

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The datasets are available via Elastic Block Storage:

Amazon EC2 customers can access this data by creating their own personal Amazon EBS volumes, using the public data set snapshots as a starting point. They can then access, modify and perform computation on these volumes directly using their Amazon EC2 instances and just pay for the compute and storage resources that they use.

All of this can be done through the AWS Web Console > Elastic Block Store > Volumes.  When you click “Create Volume” a new window will up and there is a dropdown box that allows you to choose from available datasets or you can use the snapshot id numbers that are shown on the public datasets page (because not all datasets are listed in the dropdown box).

What’s even better is that you too can share your data with the world by filling out a form (also found on the public datasets page) and talking to Amazon.

a view of EBS from the AWS Web Console

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Essentially I launch an AMI, associate it to an IP address and then connect to it using terminal.  Pretty simple really but super powerful if you have no money and need a server quickly.

The screencast below is a bit small so here’s a link to it in case you need to see it bigger http://www.screencast.com/t/kIBVibIsL5T

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I was trolling the interwebs yesterday and I found this EC2 Ubuntu Starters Guide. Notice that when you use the Ubuntu AMI (Amazon Machine Image) you have to update the instance every time. Who has time for that (not that I know how long it takes, but still)?

In good news though, I got an email from Amazon saying:

We’re excited to announce the initial beta release of our AWS Management Console, a web-based, point-and-click, graphical user interface that makes it even easier to access and manage AWS Infrastructure Web Services. The initial release provides an online interface for Amazon EC2, with additional AWS services scheduled to be added in the coming months. The console presents an intuitive, global picture of your cloud computing environment so that you can control your AWS resources without programming directly to an API.

There is a tutorial on how to use the Amazon Web Services Console. I watched it and I am excited to use it since it looks pretty simple. And the screencast gives nice step by step instructions which is super helpful for any newbies. Also I love that the guy who is doing the screencast is a Web Services Evangelist. I hope one day that’s in my job title.

So now even a layman can have access to a server without knowing anything at all about servers. This is a scary thought to some. I actually read an interesting article on this idea of lay people (in higher education) having access to things like servers and the like; below is the citation:

Yanosky, Ronald. “From Users to Choosers: The Cloud and the Changing Shape of Enterprise Authority.” The Tower and The Cloud. Ed. Richard N. Katz. Educause. 126-37.

Its an interesting idea, giving all control over to departments that want it. Amazon Web Services (and VMWare) can help do this for IT departments. This article goes over what that means for the IT department. Where do they now sit in the grand scheme of the IT world.

Anyway…check out the screencast and if you have nothing else to do with your life, read the article. All very interesting.

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Load Balancing — Enables you to automatically balance incoming requests and distribute traffic across multiple Amazon EC2 instances. You will be able to intelligently distribute load within or across Availability Zones, without worrying about load balancing hardware or software solutions.

Auto-scaling — Grows and shrinks usage of Amazon EC2 compute capacity based on application requirements, automatically managing usage of the AWS cloud on your behalf. The auto-scaling capability will monitor your pre-set capacity thresholds and automatically add or remove compute capacity based on your application usage, helping you optimize your use of resources.

Monitoring — Provides real-time monitoring of operational metrics within Amazon EC2, providing even better visibility into your usage of the AWS cloud. These metrics can be aggregated across multiple dimensions including Amazon EC2 instances, Availability Zones, and time slots. With this Monitoring service, you will be able to view your usage of the AWS cloud in much the same way that you can see operational metrics of your own hosted data center.

Management Console — Provides a simple, point-and-click web interface that lets you configure, manage and access your AWS cloud resources.

And that’s pretty much all they have on the page.  Also some exciting news…you can now run a Windows server on EC2.  So for all of you that want to figure out how the hell to do things on Windows without breaking your server, now you can.

But I think the best news is that now they have a Getting Started with ElasticFox Guide.  Man I wish they had this like 2 months ago.

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