Explain what Amazon EC2 is, and can I use it as a web hosting service?

Question

Hello! Goodafternoon,

I want to buy an Amazon EC2 instance, is it possible to use it as a web host? Like what other standard web host do. Is it recommended for web hosting? The truth is, I just want to learn this technology. So I'm thinking that I'll just host my website using Amazon EC2 to learn the cloud. And I have projects in the future and I'm planning to use Amazon EC2. But I still don't have any idea on what it is and how to use it.

Is it really cheaper than what other hosters provide?

Perhaps you can give me a starting point. Right now, I'm reading the docs in Amazon. But I think you guys can provide me with smarter answers.

Answer 1

EC2 is a cloud computing service. Essentially, you boot up an image which is activated at a node computer in the Amazon cloud.

I want to buy an Amazon EC2 instance, is it possible to use it as a web host? Like what other standard web host do. Is it recommended for web hosting?

Yes it is possible. It could be recommended for web hosting, but I believe for small sites, it is overkill.

Is it really cheaper than what other hosters provide?

Its on the high end with a minimum cost of $50/month. Though it is supposed to be economical on the high-end.

There are several other offerings similar to EC2. You may want to try Google AppEngine, and some others online.

Answer 2

From what I can tell it is essentially like a host that provides virtual machines except it is enhanced in a few areas...

Instead of being billed per month you are billed per hour the machine is on. This is great if you always have a small server running but turn on a secondary one if you have a traffic spike.

They also have some sort of "elastic ip" tech wherein your server appears on the same ip even though it could be running on different datacenters at different times. I imagine it like them throwing your VMWare images around the net to various datacenters as needed.

From what I can tell setting up each machine is very similar to any standard virtual server, the magic part comes by them abstracting your VM image from running on a specific host.

Also keep in mind they have more than juts EC2, couchDB for example is a document oriented DB you can access that for most peoples purposes has "unlimited scalability" but keep in mind its not the same as a relational DB.

Answer 3

It functions like any other web host except that it is transient. If you shut down the instance (or it crashes), your data is gone. However, this isn't a problem if you persist data off-cloud or use one of Amazons persistence options. Look into EC2+EBS.

You pay for what you use, so the answer to cost is that it is probably cheaper, but it depends entirely on your application. The AWS costs are well documented.

The real advantage of cloud computing is the ability to expand and contract infrastructure based on the real-time demands of your application. A small or very dynamic infrastructure is probably cheaper in the cloud whereas a large stable infrastructure is probably cheaper in a traditional data center.

Answer 4

You may be interested in my answer to this question, where I explain my reasons for hosting my website on EC2. I have also written a detailed tutorial about creating and configuring a Drupal-based website on the service, which I should update one of these days.