Some days ago Steve Ballmer talked about Microsoft’s commitment to cloud computing. I suppose, many people were quite surprised that Ballmer claims that 70% of Microsoft’s 40,000 employees are already working in one way or another on Microsoft’s cloud. Of course, he didn’t mean that the majority of Microsoft’s workforce is engaged with Azure. Obviously, Ballmer must have a very broad concept of cloud computing.

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Vanessa Alvarez addresses a popular topic in her latest article: “Why Cloud Computing Won’t Kill IT Jobs“. I discussed the same issue more than a year ago. Even though cloud computing has made some significant advances since then, I haven’t heard of IT pros losing their jobs because computers disappeared on-premises. I absolutely agree with Vanessa Alvarez’s title; however, I don’t think, she provides the right arguments in her article.

I think, she is correct when she says that many IT pros are afraid of losing their jobs because of cloud computing. The worldwide economic crisis certainly cost quite a few IT jobs, which made many worry about the future. Thus, I decided to post another article about this issue because I strongly believe that these worries are unjustified.

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Amazon has added an interesting new feature to EC2 that allows you to boot from Elastic Block Storage (EBS) volumes. If you are not familiar with EC2, please read my review of the Amazon AWS Management console first.

I have criticized EC2’s complicated OS image creation process (AMI bundling) before. Thus far, it was only possible to store images on Amazon’s storage service S3. S3 and EC2 don’t really harmonize well, and that is probably the reason why Amazon needed to introduce EBS in the first place. Until now, you could only attach EBS volumes to instances (virtual machines), but could not use an EBS volume as boot device. I suppose, many EC2 customers were asking for this feature, and now it is here. It simplifies many things, but it also has some downsides compared to using S3 as AMI (Amazon Machine Image) storage. Note that the original method is still available. Amazon calls the corresponding images instance-store, or S3 AMIs, as opposed to the new EBS AMIs.

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You might have noticed that I’ve blogged more often about cloud computing lately, especially about Amazon’s AWS. This is not just because I have moved 4sysops to EC2. It is more the other way around. I have moved 4sysops to the cloud because I want to get more experience with cloud computing. I must admit that I got somehow hooked on EC2 since I played with it the AWS Management Console a while back.

On the other hand, it is possible that I have been taken by just another hype. According to Gartner’s Hype Cycle cloud computing is now at the top of the hype curve. It is interesting to note that it shares this position with eBook readers which is the other topic that fascinates me for quite a while. (Just ordered the new Kindle International.) So you see I am prone to fall for all kinds of new technologies which are sometimes just hypes.

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Have you ever run out of storage and desperately needed a place to temporarily store large amounts of data? If so, then you should have a look at the Amazon S3 storage service. Of course, the service is not free, but prices are moderate. If you only need the space to overcome a temporary storage shortage, then the storage costs won’t really hurt your organization. The advantage over those free online storage services is that the amount of data you can store at S3 is more or less unlimited.

There are different ways to use S3; today, I will just discuss the possibility of copying files from your servers or desktop to Amazon’s online storage service. Amazon offers a simple web-based S3 file manager, but this is only something to use if you are on the run and want to access your S3 storage from an Internet cafe or so (if you dare). There are quite a few free Windows tools that allow you to upload and download files to S3. For this article, I tried three free S3 explorers: Amazon S3 Firefox Organizer(S3Fox) 0.4.7, S3 Browser 1.9.7 and Cloudberry S3 Explorer 1.6.3.

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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.

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In my last article in this series, I discussed the storage for my virtual server in Amazon’s cloud. Today I will focus on the bandwidth and instance costs. As we will see, things are getting a bit more expensive now.

Amazon EC2 bandwidth costs

One of the things I really dislike about EC2 are the bandwidth costs. One GB inbound data transfer costs $0.10 and one GB outbound traffic costs $0.17. This doesn’t seem to be much. However, in my case the bandwidth costs are a significant part of the overall monthly fees. In September, I paid about $15 for data transfer, which corresponds to approximately 90GB. I enabled HTML encryption in Apache after I moved to EC2, but this didn’t really help because most of my traffic comes from the screenshots. I also download backups of the database and the screenshots every day, which equals up to 15% of my monthly bandwidth costs. In my view, external backups are absolutely necessary because if someone hacks your Amazon account , then you might lose all your data even if you have backups within cloud.

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In my last post I complained about Amazon EC2’s complicated pricing structure. Today, I will chat a little about my pricing experience with my own server. Before I continue I should say that my somewhat negative remarks about EC2 in recent articles don’t mean that I dislike Amazon’s cloud. On the contrary; I like Amazon almost as much as I am a MS fan boy. Cloud computing is still in its infancy, so it is only natural that things have to mature.

Okay, let’s start with Amazon’s Simple Monthly Calculator. When you open the page, you will recognize that Amazon S3 (storage) is the only service that is already checked. The reason why this service is often essential for other services is because you always need a place to store your data. Hence, you have to include it in your price calculation.

S3 is needed for EC2 if you want to bundle AMIs (store OS images). Thus, S3 is not really necessary to run an EC2 instance (virtual server), but I think most EC2 customers are using this feature. There are five different factors that determine your monthly S3 costs: storage (GB-months), data transfer-in, data transfer-out, PUT/LIST Requests, and other requests.

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The first thing I did after a closer look at Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), was to check-out its pricing. I have read everywhere that cloud computing is such a cost saver, so I was curious to know how much it would actually cost to run a virtual server at EC2.

At first, prices appeared to be quite low to me. I mean, $0.10 per hour for a server appears to be pretty cheap. My coffee consumption seemed more expensive, or so I thought. But when I calculated its yearly price, it became clear that even I can’t drink that much coffee! The story could end here, if I didn’t stumble upon Amazon’s Simple Monthly Calculator.

I realized that I must have somehow missed the fact that there are other available options other than an hourly rate (virtual server). However, quite a few other cost factors come into play here that you should be aware of. In fact, the “simple calculator” looked extremely complicated to me. I was unfamiliar with many of the terms used, even though, I have read quite a bit about EC2 on Amazon’s web site.

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In the last post in this series, I outlined why costs savings were not the reason for moving 4sysops to the cloud. On the contrary, I could have saved money if I had chosen a dedicated server. So what were the reasons? Another argument you hear often is that cloud computing scales better than other environments.

Cloud scalability

In the first post of this series, I described how I figured out that the Amazon’s small EC2 instance was not powerful enough to host 4sysops. The good thing about EC2 is that I could easily launch a more powerful virtual machine. If I had ordered a new server at a conventional provider, for example, and realized that the machine was too small, then things would have been a lot more complicated. With EC2, I simply launched a second, more powerful, instance of my private AMI (OS image) and moved the IP address to the new instance. Thus, it didn’t cost me extra work time to upgrade to a bigger machine. Furthermore, moving the IP to the new instance was only a matter of seconds, so there was no downtime.

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In my last post I described my experience of moving 4sysops to Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) as being not really positive. EC2’s smallest instance type was way too small to handle 4sysops. The number one argument for cloud computing that analysts put forward are costs savings. Let’s see if cost savings were the key factor on my decision.

A while back, I outlined in detail why pay-as-you-go pricing makes cloud computing expensive. This also applies to EC2. Amazon has realized, meanwhile, that they can’t really compete with on-premise computing with such high prices and introduced so-called reserved instances. With this option, you pay a one-time fee in order to get a discount on the hourly usage for the duration of the term. There are yearly terms and three-year terms. Of course, this is not a typical pay-as-you-go pricing, since you can only “go” at the end of the term. However, the advantage is that it significantly reduces costs

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Don’t you think the lines you’re currently reading look somewhat geekier than before? They should, because they’ve been generated in the cloud. The last three years or so, 4sysops ran on a dedicated server in a datacenter in Berlin. A few days ago, I moved everything to Amazon EC2 (Elastic Cloud Compute) in the U.S. In this series, I describe the reasons behind this decision.

I was quite content with my German provider Strato; everything worked flawlessly, and I never had hardware problems with my server. Some days ago, 4sysops was down for an hour or so, but that was the fault of my domain provider, Domaindiscount24. I always separate domain and server provider, so I can change the provider easily without having to move the domain.

Linux for a Windows blog

4sysops has run on an openSUSE Linux box for the last few years. You might ask why a blog for Windows admins runs on Linux. The reason is that I am a big fan of Wordpress, which is probably the best weblog software out there. Wordpress can be installed on Windows, but it harmonizes better with a LAMP system. Besides, I think every Windows admin should speak a little Linux too.

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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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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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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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