What are the quintessential tools and resources for hosting Rails applications on Amazon's EC2?

Question

I'm looking for:

• documentation
• blogs
• books
• ready-to-use pre-configured slice images
• services
• wrappers
• libraries
• tutorials

...anything that would make it easier to start using EC2 to host a Rails application.

Answer 1

ElasticFox is a must have utility for overseeing your instances http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=609

Capazon is an awesome utility to bring instance management into Capistrano http://soylentfoo.jnewland.com/articles/2007/03/27/capazon-capistrano-meets-amazon-ec2 (there is a newer version out somewhere)

I like these AMI's (I dig Ubuntu) http://alestic.com/

Answer 2

Have you looked at the amazon getting started tutorial? It is sufficient to put an ec2 instance together.

I did use it to setup an ubuntu server with ruby-enterprise, rails and passenger (this part was not any different from any other ubuntu server I use)

Answer 3

I highly recommend Scott Chacone's Fuzed and EC2 demo. Other's recommend the EC2 docs, I will as well. Be sure to also check out the fuzed code. The performance is amazing but you better be bringing in some money to support it.

Answer 4

There is a Rails image for EC2 at http://ec2onrails.rubyforge.org/

Answer 5

Here's a service you might want to try out to deploy your Rails app using EC2: Morph AppSpace

Answer 6

Don't forget EngineYard.

Answer 7

I have been configuring a rails app to run directly on EC2 using EC2onRails and its corresponding ami. I've documented my progress here, because I found the other documentation out there lacking:

http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~silver/ec2.html

Answer 8

And don't forget SimpleDeployr, one click Ruby on Rails deployment to your EC2 account.