Mar 02 2009
EC2 Is Best Suited for Overflow Traffic
Recently, played with Amazon.com’s EC2 (Elastic Computing Cloud). Here is what I have learned:
1. EC2 is NOT Grid Computing. Many people are confused by the term “Cloud”, so was I. Bezos said it probably should be called “infrastructure cloud”.
2. Cost wise, EC2 is comparable to dedicated web hosting (EC2 cost calculator vs. my ISP’s dedicated server page). But has much stronger value prop. It is particularly useful in a situation where temporary overflow traffic is concerned. In other words, If you are to add a new country or a new product line to your website, you may need to add a whole new server permanently. However, if you are running a promotion, you almost want to rent a readily configured server for a day or two. That is where you need EC2 (where every machine is a software copy essentially).
3. MSFT has a competing product Azusa. It is very tightly integrated with their Visual Studio IDE. As someone said it so well, Azusa empowers developer whereas EC2 empowers operations. But how many companies who are in need of cloud computing would entrust operations to developers?
4. EC2, despite its strong value prop, is not the best for starters (e.g. small startup, ma-pa shop, or small community sites) cost-wise. If a dedicated server is “elastic” enough for your site’s peak traffic, you may not need EC2. Only if you need more than a dedicated server, you definitely want to consider EC2.
5. EC2 is pretty easy to use. Still, the virtual machines do not persist, so you have to use another Amazon product EBS (block storage) for everything that changes. This is the small overhead for the easy scability.
Overall, EC2 has a very targetted audience. I imagine those who use it would love it wholeheartedly.
\’Overall, EC2 has a very targetted audience. I imagine those who use it would love it wholeheartedly.\’
Just past 1/2 million customers milestone. The audience appears to be huge and growing. Disclaimer: I\’ve been working with them over the last six months and drinking their kool-aide.