Amazon Beefs Up Its Cloud Ahead of MS Announcement 89
Amazon has announced several major improvements to its EC2 service for cloud computing. The service is now in production (no longer beta); it offers a service-level agreement; and Windows and SQL Server are available in beta form. ZDNet points out that all this news is intended to take some wind out of Microsoft's sails as MS is expected to introduce its own cloud services next week at its Professional Developers Conference.
The good news... (Score:4, Informative)
As seen here [amazon.com]:
For normal instances, Windows is 25% more expensive then Linux/UNIX, and for high CPU instances 50% it is 50% more expensive.
Desktop-computer sellers should learn something from that...
Re:What is it? (Score:4, Informative)
The use of internet services for tasks that are typically handled locally. There are a number of good and bad reasons to utilize these services. The big benefits are accessibility, zero maintenance and the security of a large infrastructure you couldn't provide yourself.
In the case of Amazon, they offer processing time, storage, and a few other things.
In the case of Google, you've got Apps... including your collaborative email/calendaring/document sharing services.
In the case of Salesforce, NetSuite, QuickBooks Online, et al, you've got CRM, Accounting, Inventory, etc.
Re:What is it? (Score:5, Informative)
"But I already have my business software hosted on an application server, and it utilizes a seperate SQL server... how is this any different?"
Is it stored somewhere offsite, say, by a hosting company?
"Why, yes.."
Then welcome to the cloud computing club!
But I've been doing this since the late 90s, I'm confused, what's changed?
Nothing at all. It's just like podcasts and web 2.0, another useless name for downloading audio files and websites that are more clever than before.
So basically, the only difference between remote hosting and cloud computing is whether or not you understand what's underneath the hood. If you're not sure how it works, but it just does, it's called "the cloud" otherwise, the rest of us call it "Shared hosting," "VPS," "Colocated," or "Dedicated" offsite hosting.
It's kinda like using the word magic instead of the word science. Makes people feel better.
Re:What is it? Scaling (Score:2, Informative)
While most of what you say is true, that particular statement is not. EC2 provides a virtual machine, running the operating system of your choice - anything you could do on your single co-located server, you can do on an EC2 machine.
There are heaps of limitations compared to dedicated machines. Check out the Amazon forums, and you'll be surprised how far you'll be from getting the full sensation of the real thing.
You can for example only have 1 static public IP per instance [amazonwebservices.com]. Bad for hosting multiple Web apps with SSL on each domain [amazonwebservices.com].
Load balancing multiple instances is also a bitch.
We considered it seriously for a high-volume high-availability Web site project, but kept running into dealbreaking limitations, and some we just happened to stumble upon during testing. Minor things that suddenly turn incredibly difficult to solve.
Add to that the cost.. In our cost comparisons we found EC2 costing the same or more than managed dedicated servers with tier 1 providers.
There's no question EC2, VMWare and other "cloud" platforms will be highly attractive, but not yet.