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Amazon EC2 Might Be for You

Posted by QuoteColo on July 28, 2014 - Updated on July 23, 2014

the information of cloud

Amazon is one of the most popular and recognizable companies in the world, and they are certainly the leader when it comes to online retail. However, they’ve also been spending a considerable amount of time and money working on and trying to perfect their various cloud operations. With Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2, they are bringing cloud web service to developers. The goal is to make scaling computer usage needs for sites easier for developers, and they have a number of options, features, and tools to make that a reality today.

The system is robust and has a wide range of different features that you will want to explore to see if it is the right choice for you. Below are some of the most important features that should help you understand more about what the product offers and to determine whether it is the right choice for your development needs when trying to build scalable and reliable applications.

What Are the Main Benefits and Features of Amazon EC2?

To use the system, you will choose an AMI, Amazon Machine Image template created by Amazon, to get up and going as quickly as possible. While this is the simplest way to start using the system, and the one that many people will use, you do have another option. Those who have a bit more experience might find that creating a custom AMI can work better for their needs. They can create the configuration settings they need, fix their applications, data, libraries and more to make the system work just the way they need, which might not be exactly what the templates offer.

Amazon CloudWatch is a web service that will monitor cloud apps and resources, and they can provide you with a substantial amount of information relating to EC2. It makes it easy to see the performance of the cloud, as you can watch the resource utilization and the patterns of demand on the server. Users are able to choose the instances they want to monitor as well, so they have more control over what they are seeing.

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud is a virtual networking environment in the cloud, where you will have full control over your Amazon Web Services. It allows users to create subnets, route tables, and network gateways.

Reliability is another one of the benefits of the service. Through ELB, or Elastic Load Balancing, the system is able to spread the incoming traffic across several instances of the information, so there is not so great of an influx that it crashes the server. By balancing the load, it provides a better overall experience to everyone who tries to visit the site, even on those high traffic days. Naturally, this is a benefit for the site owners as well, as they will not have to worry about lost business because of a downed server.

One of the best features and one that can make sure the costs are in line with the actual usage, is the auto scaling feature. This ensures that your capacity scales up or down as needed. For example, some days or some times of the year might be a bit more intense when it comes to the number of visitors who come to your site. Your needs might be greater on those days, and the auto scaling ensures that you will have the power you need on those days for the best performance for your visitors. It also ensures that on the slower days you are not wasting your money, since it can scale down just as easily.

This becomes ideal for those applications that may have fluctuations monthly, weekly, daily, or even hourly, since the pricing is based on just how much of the service you actually use, as you will see in the next section.

Through the AWS marketplace, users are able to peruse an online store that offers a variety of software that is capable of running on their systems. They offer a variety of different types of software that include developer tools and business software. While you may not need much, or any of the additional software for your site and system, many developers enjoy having all of those other options available to them.

What Does the Service Cost?

One of the benefits of the service is that you will only pay for what you use. This means there is no minimum fee. Amazon offers a calculator through their EC2 site that lets you get an idea of what the monthly cost will be based on your usage. They also offer a free usage tier, and new customers will not have to pay to get started with the system.

The way they calculate the price is on a per instance-hour basis, and they are billed as full hours. Whether you are using Windows or Linux systems can affect the price per hour of the service, and it is always a good idea to make sure you know the latest prices and offerings before you decide to choose a service. Run the numbers through the calculator, but remember that many things will affect the final monthly price. For example, if you have a post or product on your site that becomes highly popular, or that goes viral, it could mean that you will be using more of the service, and thus the payment for that month will be higher.

Is This For Everyone?

While Amazon mostly prides itself on creating systems and software that are easy to use, EC2 and the other cloud offerings for setting up your own web service tend to require a bit more expertise in the technical realm. While it is possible to use simple templates to get up and running with the service, most will find that they will get more from the service when they really know and understand all of the ins and outs it offers. They can customize their system and the different features to work just the way they need.

Small developers will have a great time with the system, features, and options though. They are able to have a large number of different resources that were simply not available to them before, thus giving them more power to create truly high quality sites for their needs or for their client’s needs. They are also able to do this without overspending and overcharging. EC2 is a stellar option for those who have the technical knowledge to use it to its full advantage. Because of the scalability and durability of the sites, it does provide a good and high quality experience for people on both ends of the site – the developers and owners, as well as the customers and visitors to the site.

EC2 is certainly more complex than other types of cloud offerings out there, and it is not something that most individuals will need. For businesses though, it can be quite helpful. For developers, the tools are easy to use and easy to understand. Getting systems and instances up, running, and in place does not generally take a long time, so it should be quite easy to create the system that truly works the best for your company’s needs.

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