Some months ago, I shared my first impressions about Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). On the one hand I was fascinated by the new technical possibilities of cloud computing, on the other hand I was quite disappointed by Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) simplistic command line interface. As if they heard my complaints, Amazon released the beta version of its AWS Management Console a few weeks later. Ever since, I have been very anxious to have a look at this new cloud management tool.

Cloud computing for Windows admins

I think, the new user interface will make Amazon’s cloud more attractive for Windows shops. Even if cloud computing is not an option for your organization at the moment, it can’t be wrong for an IT pro to stay in the touch with the latest developments in the cloud computing field. The AWS Management Console now makes it easy for every admin who has experience with virtualization solutions to get started with cloud computing.

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In the last post in my review of Amazon’s AWS Management Console, I introduced Amazon’s new cloud management tool, the AWS Management Console. Today, I will discuss how Instances (virtual machines) can be configured and launched.

EC2 Key Pairs

Before you can launch an Instance, you have to set up a few things. First of all, you have to create an EC2 key pair, which can be done with just a mouse click with the AWS Management Console. The key pair is required to connect to the Instance because EC2 will encrypt the default Administrator password of Windows Instances with it. For Linux Instances, the key pair is used to establish an SSH connection.

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In the last article in my review of Amazon’s AWS Management Console, I described how an Instance (virtual machine) has to be configured before it can be launched. Today, I will discuss EC2 volumes (virtual disks) and volume snapshots.

EC2 volumes

One of the features I like most about virtualization is that new virtual disks can be added so easily. If you are working in the cloud this is even more fun. The difference between cloud computing and common virtualization is that you don’t have to worry about the available physical disk capacity with the former. You need another 100 Terabyte? Just create a new Elastic Block Storage (EBS) volume with a mouse click. Of course, you have to pay for the provisioned storage. 1TB costs $100 per month. This is not really cheap. Flexibility and scalability have their price. Volumes can be easily attached to an Instance. This works similar to other virtualization solutions. Volumes can be attached only to running Instances, though. Once the volume is attached, you have to add the drive with the Windows Disk Management applet and format the volume. You can detach a volume while the Instance is running. If you re-attach a formatted volume, you only have to reactivate it with Windows Disk Management.

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This is the fourth part of my review of the AWS Management Console, Amazon’s cloud management tool. Last time, I gave an overview of the configuration of Instances (virtual machines). Today, I will show you how to create your own AMIs (Amazon Machine Images) with the AWS Management Console.

Amazon calls the creation of AMIs “bundling”. In the Windows world, we would just say “cloning” or “imaging”. To bundle a new AMI, you have to first launch the Instance. Before you create an image, you will probably want to configure the operating system and install your software. If the Instance runs Windows, then bundling is quite easy but a bit longwinded.

Initiating the bundling process

First you have to right-click on the Instance and navigate to “bundling”. You will then have to specify an Amazon S3 Bucket Name and the Key Name. The Key Name is just the name of the image. S3 stands for Simple Storage Service. Don’t confuse S3 with EBS (Elastic Block Storage), which I mentioned in my last article. There are significant differences between these two storage services. Since S3 is a service that is independent of EC2, you have to sign up first and then create a so-called “bucket”. A bucket is basically just a folder that can be accessed via a URL. Unfortunately, S3 can’t be managed with the AWS Management Console. However, you can use the free Firefox add-on S3Fox to create a S3 bucket.

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