> Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 00:27:59 -0700 > From: Lisa Kachold > To: Main PLUG discussion list > Subject: Re: Looking for Virtual Hosting > Message-ID: > g@mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Hi Mark! > > > You can get 2 Virtual Private Servers on AWS EC2 for *free* for the first > year. After that their pricing is STILL alot cheaper than what you were > paying! But you will have to investigate that by setting up mockup > billing as you build your systems and evaluate your needs. You have a > whole year. > > Their free tier includes a good lot of startup resources: > > http://aws.amazon.com/free/ > > I personally LOVE EC2 and have had a lot of fun deploying their images (and > mine) in the "cloud". > > While you really need nothing but Amazon's own management tools to do most > anything you might want, the real power of the EC2 and S3 Amazon services > is the capacity to build up duplicate images and deploy, manage, and secure > the servers using automation tools. Gone are the days when an army of > server monkeys typed for days managing all the little things on servers. > > Of course, AWS has already integrated OPWorks into their product, and it's > very powerful: > > http://docs.aws.amazon.com/opsworks/latest/userguide/gettingstarted-simple-app.html > > However, there's a development API that has allowed others to seamlessly > integrate their application to EC2/S3 AWS. CHEF, Puppet, Cobbler and many > other customized deployment scripts and tools have been developed in in > ruby, python, and perl (github) and J2EE. > > Ansible: http://docs.ansible.com/intro_dynamic_inventory.html > Cobbler: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=14590 > Puppet: http://puppetlabs.com/solutions/ec2 > Chef: http://learn.getchef.com/legacy/starter-use-cases/multi-node-ec2/ > > Of course everyone has to get into the game, so we see competing deployment > tools newly available like *Juju* , the open > source service orchestration management tool developed by Canonical, the > company already famous for its Linux-based operating system Ubuntu. What?s > great in Juju is that it automates the daily tasks that your infrastructure > requires, and it allows you to focus on what really matters to you. All > this is made possible by what are called ?Charms? in the Juju jargon. A > *Charm* is a collection of YAML configuration files and a selection of > ?hooks?, which are naming conventions that perform several operations like > install software, start/stop a service, manage relationships with other > Charms, and more. Since Charms can be shared among different systems, a > Charm store is available to share and download them. > > > So, while I love linode, libvirt and KVMs, I would opt for a better > solution managing your own server set on AWS. > > Feel free to email me offline for more info or questions. SaltStack, another configuration/orchestration/automation tool, also integrates into ec2. I just finished some training for SaltStack which was all based in the aws cloud. http://salt-cloud.readthedocs.org/en/latest/topics/aws.html -- Benjamin Francom Information Technology Mix Master http://www.benfrancom.com