Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
16.1.1 Amazon
In the mid-2000, Amazon introduced Amazon Web Services (AWS), based on
the IaaS delivery model. In this model, the cloud service provider offers an
infrastructure consisting of compute and storage servers interconnected by
high-speed networks that support a set of services to access these resources.
An application developer is responsible for installing applications on a plat-
form of his or her choice and managing the resources provided by Amazon.
Launched in July 2002, AWS provides online services for websites or client-
side applications. Amazon S3 was launched in March 2006, and Amazon
EC2 was built in August 2006 with the Amazon infrastructure and develop-
ers base available worldwide. Since then, AWS became the market leader in
cloud computing, by virtue of its early entry, rapid innovation, and flexible
cloud services. In June 2007, Amazon claimed that more than 330,000 devel-
opers had signed up to use AWS. As a core part of AWS, EC2 provides the
computing facility for organizations and is capable of supporting a variety
of applications. In November 2010, Amazon made the switch of its flagship
retail website itself to EC2 and AWS.
16.1.1.1 Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
EC2 is a Web Service with a simple interface for launching instances of an
application under several operating systems, such as several Linux distribu-
tions, Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008, OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, and
NetBSD.
An instance is created either from a predefined Amazon Machine Image
(AMI) digitally signed and stored in S3 or from a user-defined image. The
image includes the operating system, the runtime environment, the librar-
ies, and the application desired by the user. AMIs create an exact copy of the
original image but without configuration-dependent information such as the
hostname or the MAC address.
A user can
1. Launch an instance from an existing AMI and terminate an instance
2. Start and stop an instance
3. Create a new image
4. Add tags to identify an image
5. Reboot an instance
EC2 is based on the Xen virtualization strategy discussed in detail in
Section 15.1.3.2. In EC2, each virtual machine or instance functions as a
virtual private server. An instance specifies the maximum amount of
resources available to an application, the interface for that instance, and
the cost per hour.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search