Cloudware Vendor Solutions - Guide to Cloud Computing for Business and Technology Managers - page 331

Some of the management functions provided by the service are
1. Deployment of a new application version (or rollback to a previous
version)
2. Access to the results reported by CloudWatch monitoring service
3. E-mail notifications when application status changes or application
servers are added or removed
4. Access to server login files without needing to log in to the applica-
tion servers
The Elastic Beanstalk service is available to developers using a Java plat-
form, the PHP server-side description language, or .NET Framework. For
example, a Java developer can create the application using any Integrated
Development Environment (IDE) such as Eclipse and package the code into
a Java Web application archive (a file of type .war) file. The .war file should
then be uploaded to the Elastic Beanstalk using the management console
and then deployed, and in a short time, the application will be accessible
via a URL.
16.1.1.9 Regions and Availability Zones
Today, Amazon offers cloud services through a network of data centers
on several continents. In each region, there are several availability zones
interconnected by high-speed networks; regions communicate through the
Internet and do not share resources. An availability zone is a data center
consisting of a large number of servers. A server may run multiple virtual
machines or instances, started by one or more users; an instance may use
storage services, S3, EBS, and SimpleDB, as well as other services provided
by AWS. A cloud interconnect allows all systems in an availability zone to
communicate with one another and with systems in other availability zones
of the same region.
Storage is automatically replicated within a region; S3 buckets are repli-
cated within an availability zone and between the availability zones of a
region, whereas EBS volumes are replicated only within the same availabil-
ity zone. Critical applications are advised to replicate important information
in multiple regions to be able to function when the servers in one region are
unavailable due to catastrophic events. A user can request virtual servers and
storage located in one of the regions. The user can also request virtual serv-
ers in one of the availability zones of that region. The Elastic Compute Cloud
(EC2) service allows a user to interact and to manage the virtual servers.
The billing rates in each region are determined by the components of the
operating costs, including energy, communication, and maintenance costs.
Thus, the choice of the region is motivated by the desire to minimize costs,
reduce communication latency, and increase reliability and security.