Amazon EC2/Windows update

Saturday, November 08, 2008 by Dave Winer.

A few observations after a full week of using for real deployed applications. 

1. It works. No problems, absolutely reliable. 

2. The docs could be vastly improved. They should take a "Hello World" approach, and tell you the minimum you need to know to get a Notepad window up. Since it runs Windows and so many people use Windows, this could be a mass-market product. The idea of having a virtual computer running "up there" is really powerful and it shouldn't just be for programmers. 

3. In the end, the cost isn't prohibitive. I'm paying $300 a month for two colocated servers. I expect to pay about $200 a month for the same service at Amazon. I probably wouldn't switch just for the cost savings, but for the extra reliability, I'll take it. 

4. They make a big deal about how the servers can disappear, but in the week it's been running, it hasn't gone down once.  

5. One bother is that you only get one IP address per machine. I really could use three or four. On my colo service I get five. Yes, I know I can set things up so that addresses are delegated, but it's a PITA.