Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (also known as "EC2") is a commercial web service that allows customers to rent computers on which to run their own computer applications. EC2 allows scalable deployment of applications by providing a web services interface through which a customer can create virtual machines, i.e. server instances, on which the customer can load any software of their choice. A customer can create, launch, and terminate server instances as needed, paying by the hour for active servers, hence the term "elastic". A customer can set up server instances in zones insulated from each other for most failure causes so that one may be a backup for the other and minimize down time.[1] Amazon.com provides EC2 as one of several web services marketed under the blanket term Amazon Web Services (AWS).
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[edit] History
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Amazon announced a limited public beta of EC2 on August 25, 2006.[2] Access to EC2 was granted on a first come first served basis. EC2 became generally available on October 23, 2008 along with support for Microsoft Windows Server.[3]
[edit] Virtual machines
EC2 uses Xen virtualization. Each virtual machine, called an "instance", functions as a virtual private server in one of three sizes; small, large or extra large. Amazon.com sizes instances based on "EC2 Compute Units" — the equivalent CPU capacity of physical hardware. One EC2 Compute Unit equals 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor. The system offers the following instance types:
- Small Instance
- The small instance (default) equates to "a system with 1.7 GB of memory, 1 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit), 160 GB of instance storage, 32-bit platform"[4]
- Large Instance
- The large instance represents "a system with 7.5 GB of memory, 4 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 850 GB of instance storage, 64-bit platform".
- Extra Large Instance
- The extra large instance offers the "equivalent of a system with 15 GB of memory, 8 EC2 Compute Units (4 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 1690 GB of instance storage, 64-bit platform."
- High-CPU Instance
- Instances of this family have proportionally more CPU resources than memory (RAM) and address compute-intensive applications.
- High-CPU Medium Instance
- Instances of this family have the following configuration:
- 1.7 GB of memory
- 5 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores with 2.5 EC2 Compute Units each)
- 350 GB of instance storage
- 32-bit platform
- I/O Performance: Moderate
- High-CPU Extra Large Instance
- Instances of this family have the following configuration:
- 7 GB of memory
- 20 EC2 Compute Units (8 virtual cores with 2.5 EC2 Compute Units each)
- 1690 GB of instance storage
- 64-bit platform
- I/O Performance: High
[edit] Pricing
Amazon charges customers in two primary ways:
- Hourly charge per virtual machine
- Data transfer charge
The hourly virtual machine rate is fixed, based on the capacity and features of the virtual machine. Amazon advertising describes the pricing scheme as "you pay for resources you consume," but defines resources such that an idle virtual machine is consuming resources, as opposed to other pricing schemes where one would pay for basic resources such as CPU time.
Customers can easily start and stop virtual machines to control charges, with Amazon measuring with one hour granularity. Some are thus able to keep each virtual machine running near capacity and effectively pay only for CPU time actually used.
As of March 2009, Amazon's time charge is about $73/month for the smallest virtual machine without Windows and twelve times that for the largest one running Windows. The data transfer charge ranges from $.10 to $.17 per gigabyte, depending on the direction and monthly volume.
Amazon does not have monthly minimums or account maintenance charges.
[edit] Operating systems
When it launched in August 2006, the EC2 service offered Linux and later Sun Microsystems' OpenSolaris and Solaris Express Community Edition. In October 2008, EC2 added the Windows Server 2003 operating system to the list of available operating systems.[5][6]
Plans are in place for the Eucalyptus interface for the Amazon API to be packaged into the standard Ubuntu distribution.
[edit] Persistent Storage
Amazon.com provides persistent storage in the form of Elastic Block Storage(EBS). Users can set up and manage volumes of sizes from 1GB to 1TB. The servers can attach these instances of EBS to one server at a time in order to maintain data storage by the servers.
[edit] Abuse
In early July 2008 Outblaze and Spamhaus.org started to block Amazon's EC2 address-pool due to problems with the distribution of spam and malware.[7]
[edit] References
- ^ Martin LaMonica (2008-03-27). "Amazon Web Services adds 'resiliency' to EC2 compute service". CNet News. http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9904091-7.html.
- ^ Jeff Barr (2006-08-25). "Amazon EC2 Beta". http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2006/08/amazon_ec2_beta.html.
- ^ "Amazon EC2 Announces General Availability, SLA, and Windows". 2008-10-23. http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/ann.jspa?annID=356.
- ^ http://www.amazon.com/b/?node=201590011
- ^ Stephen Shankland (2008-10-23). "Amazon's Linux cloud computing out of beta, joined by Windows". CNet News. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10073696-2.html. Retrieved on 2008-10-24.
- ^ Amazon Press Release (2008-10-23). "Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Running Microsoft Windows Server and SQL Server". Amazon.com. http://aws.amazon.com/windows/. Retrieved on 2008-10-25.
- ^ Brian Krebs (2008-07-01). "Amazon: Hey Spammers, Get Off My Cloud!". Washington Post. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/07/amazon_hey_spammers_get_off_my.html.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud main page
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