Using the Amazon cloud is a challenge, partly due to the overwhelming number of terms that must be understood to just get your servers up and running. Below is a taxonomy break-down that you can use as a reference for getting started with the Amazon cloud.: Cloud Computing: A self-service environment for the creation of highly-scalable applications, with the immediate availability of compute power and granular levels of billing. Amazon Web Services (AWS): A set of services delivered by Amazon that can be used to meet your needs for a cloud-based application. Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2): A service, accessible through either a console or
Simon Ellis
Reducing Your Amazon EC2 Cloud Charges The Biggest difference between standard web hosting and cloud-based hosting can be seen when you get the monthly bill. A standard web host, like GoDaddy, will charge you a flat monthly fee and give you access to a single, fixed server. Whereas a cloud-based host, like Amazon EC2 will charge you at a granular level for each compute asset you use, whether it’s bandwidth, CPU or storage. This can lead to a confusing monthly bill (ever tried to use Amazon’s “simple” cost calculator?), but also offers the opportunities to save money by being more astute with your resource
Does Gartner understand cloud computing? By Simon Ellis of Labslice – CloudTweaks Contributor I like the Gartner Magic Quadrant. It provides for a quick overview of a specific domain, lists the key players and assigns them a high-level effectiveness rank. It’s a great tool, and also a very dangerous one. For those who understand a domain it provides reinforcement and a third-party perspective. And for those who don’t, it affords a quick way to select a vendor or choose a technology — the modern equivalent of “no-one gets fired for selecting IBM”. Having placed many IaaS bets as a cloud
Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection Security is still cited as a main reason by your large, stodgy corporations for staying clear of cloud computing. And while the cloud does have its security challenges, there is one key security benefit that cloud computing offers — Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) protection. After all, you can try to block, engineer and reroute traffic (difficult) or you can just throw more infrastructure at your attackers (easy) until they get tired of pumping traffic at your web servers. Amazon themselves exemplified this benefit by scaling up infrastructure to disrupt a recent DDOS attack
Platform as a Service: Read the fine print I’m surprised at the number of startups that are now going directly to the cloud, bypassing traditional web hosting solutions and avoiding the need to own a server in-house. That’s great news, and at a minimum it shows that the big players — Google, Amazon and Microsoft — are marketing well to the startup crowd. But I am even more surprised at the number of startups that make critical cloud platform selections without reading the fine print. The little details with Platform as a Service (PaaS) are the ones that cause the most
When is cloud suitable for a basic website? I recently argued that cloud is not a suitable solution for the online shops, blogs, forums and content driven sites that constitute the vast majority of the web. After all, these are websites that need nothing more than a CPU and a database, which can be provided at lower annual cost by the numerous VPS and Shared Hosting providers. But even if a shared host is more sensible for your business, you may still benefit from some short-term access to the cloud: The cloud is a great resource for testing the minimum
Choosing your cloud By Simon Ellis /Contributor of CloudTweaks The pointy haired boss at your company will inevitably want you to look at cloud. But what most bosses don’t realize is that it’s not a simple “forklift operation” of moving existing code to a new platform. Choosing the right cloud can be a challenge with factors such as cost, platform selection, language availability, scalability and automation coming into play. Below is a quick primer to help you choose between the leading cloud providers: Google AppEngine Google is a great choice for startups and in many ways they are building a
