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Elasticfox – Manage Amazon EC2 with a Firefox plugin
By Michael Pietroforte | 2 Comments | Permalink | Trackback | Previous | Next
I hope some of you followed my recommendation and played a little with Amazon’s cloud management tool, AWS Management Console. It is really fun! Another option to manage EC2 is the free Firefox plugin Elasticfox. I wouldn’t recommend starting with the tool if you haven’t previously used EC2. The AWS Management Console is the better tool for beginners. However, Elasticfox is not really difficult to use. It just lacks the AWS Management Console’s Launch Wizard which makes it easier for EC2 newbies to find an AMI (OS image) to play with.
However, Elasticfox is an interesting alternative once you understood how EC2 works. Its biggest advantage over Amazon’s tool is that it is snappier. Working with Elasticfox feels like using a desktop tool, whereas the AWS Management Console is a typical web app and often a bit sluggish although it is based on Ajax. Elasticfox is probably also the better tool if you have to manage many instances because it uses the screen space more efficiently. The spreadsheet-like interface allows you view all relevant information quickly.
The functionality is similar to the AWS Management Console, but there are a few differences. Elasticfox doesn’t support the new monitoring feature, Amazon CloudWatch (it wasn’t able to do so when I reviewed the tool), but it has a tab for the brand new Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) which can’t be managed yet with the AWS Management Console.
I found one more Elasticfox feature that the AWS Management Console lacks. I already used it a couple of times. Elasticfox allows you to force detaching EBS volumes (virtual disks). It happens sometimes that an EBS volume hangs if you try to attach or detach it to an instance (virtual machine) at the wrong moment. Then you have no other than choice than to detach it by force. You can do that with Amazon’s command line interface, but it is more convenient with Elasticfox.
Even though I really like Elasticfox, I usually use the AWS Management Console to manage EC2 instances. I can’t really tell you why. I suppose, it is because its interface looks somewhat more appealing to me. But that is a matter of taste.
Well, after you’ve gone through all the effort of writing this series, i finally signed up for an EC2 account and decided to blow some cash on playing with EC2.
And all i can say it that it just doesn’t feel “right” to me. And a lot of work just to get something rather simple up and running.
I’m very afraid of the volatility an instance has – plus all the stuff that’s available directly from Amazon seems to be horribly outdated.
And maybe i’ve got some things wrong on this, but it seems that everytime i change any configuration or update any component, i’d need to bundle a new AMI – just to make sure i’ll still have my VM in case an instance crashes.
Don’t get me wrong, i can see that there’s use for this technology, it’s just that it doesn’t fit any of my problems.
Am glad you tried it. I think once you singed up, launching an instance is quite simple. I had the same feeling in the beginning but I think the instances are very stable. Reliability is probably higher than with physical servers.
I agree that the available operating systems are outdated. It appears that it is difficult for Amazon to add new operating systems. Perhaps this inflexibility is a downside of the cloud. But it is possible to install your own OS. I will write about this soon.
As to the bundling, I think this is not different to conventional servers. You always have to backup your systems. Bundling an instance is just one option. As long as you don’t terminate the instance your configuration won’t disappear. You can also reboot servers etc. It is just like in any other virtual environment.
Imagine a customer desperately needs new server hardware. How long does it take until the ordered server arrives, is installed etc. In the cloud the new server is available after a few minutes and it costs you only a few clicks. I think this solves at least one problem.