| Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2 for | | | | new window): |
| short, is a network of Amazon’s server | | | | But say that you’re a small business with one |
| hardware that customers may access as a web | | | | employee in charge of managing your servers. In |
| service. EC2 geographically distributes the resources | | | | this case, you should not use EC2 unless your |
| needed to serve your application, and it is capable of | | | | application is extremely large. What overhead will |
| rapidly bringing new server instances online. | | | | you really eliminate? Dedicated server providers like |
| Customers only pay for bandwidth and space that | | | | SoftLayer already make it easy enough to bring a |
| they actually use; this, Amazon says, is more | | | | new server online in an hour or two. Small |
| cost-effective for customers of in-house or hosted | | | | businesses can usually scale up at a slower rate |
| servers. Amazon’s foray into cloud computing | | | | without losing revenue. Most significantly, however, |
| may seem like a blessing for customers and a | | | | bandwidth charges at EC2 actually exceed those of |
| breakthrough in the web hosting industry. The | | | | many dedicated hosting companies, though disk |
| technology is certainly impressive. But for the | | | | space is reasonably priced. |
| average small business or personal website, traditional | | | | See for yourself at Amazon's website: calculate |
| non-cloud web hosting is less time-consuming and | | | | whether you would save money with Amazon’s |
| more economical. | | | | EC2 (opens in a new window). |
| EC2 works by creating multiple instances of an | | | | If you run a moderately-trafficked website, you will |
| Amazon Machine Image - essentially, the files that | | | | likely find that EC2 actually costs more - and that |
| comprise a web application - from a base copy that | | | | signing up will not do much to reduce your |
| resides on Amazon’s Simple Storage Service. | | | | overhead. If you run a simple business about-us site |
| Via API or one of the prebuilt API implementations | | | | or a personal portfolio, you will probably end up with |
| available from Amazon.com, users may create huge | | | | a tiny charge - a dollar or even less - per month. |
| numbers of instances of the original Amazon Machine | | | | But EC2 doesn’t come with the friendly control |
| Image. Each instance runs on a different server. | | | | panels and easy site-management tools that shared |
| These servers are based on multiple locations around | | | | hosts have. You would also have to purchase extra |
| the world so that your application does not go down | | | | software (like cPanel or DirectAdmin if you want a |
| in the event of a natural disaster or other crippling | | | | control panel), download an API implementation, and |
| event at a single location. | | | | go through the hassle of learning to properly |
| These features are ideal for high-demand web | | | | configure network settings and work with the quirks |
| applications with many thousands of users. | | | | of virtual computing. |
| Business-critical applications and high-traffic web sites | | | | In the end, the best value for small and medium-sized |
| may find significant cost savings in EC2 because it | | | | web applications is a virtual private server or a |
| reduces overhead. Instead of physically setting up | | | | physical dedicated server. Unless you are familiar |
| new servers in the company datacenter or | | | | with configuring web servers, the best value for |
| coordinating the physical installation of new servers at | | | | personal pages and portfolios is shared hosting. And |
| a remote datacenter, companies signed up for EC2 | | | | for the big companies, business-critical applications and |
| simply ask an employee to log on and press a few | | | | very large websites, the Amazon Elastic Compute |
| buttons via an API implementation - such as the EC2 | | | | Cloud will likely save money in the long term by |
| extension for Mozilla Firefox. Check out this | | | | reducing overhead and increasing reliability and |
| screencast on YouTube that shows just how easy it | | | | scalability. |
| is to bring a new Linux instance online (opens in a | | | | |