Is it possible to use AWS as a web host?

Question

Is it possible to load / host an entire website using AWS? Or is it only a service that can load specific pieces of a website - such as images, etc. Obviously, I'd want to use my own domain. If you can use it, are there any limitations?

Here's the AWS link, for context:

http://aws.amazon.com/s3/

Answer 1

AWS = Amazon Web Services = a suite of different web services.

S3 (which you linked to) is an object store. You can't host a web service on S3.

EC2, also under the AWS umbrella, is virtualized compute space. You CAN host a web service on EC2. It is just like having a server in a rack somewhere, except that when you shut down an instance, it is gone forever. But using EBS, which is like a virtualized hard drive, will prevent you from losing your data when the EC2 instance shuts down.

See http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ and http://aws.amazon.com/ebs/