

How to start an EC2 Ubuntu Server for your developer in 6 minutes - edukatr
http://www.edukatr.com/how-to-start-an-ec2-ubuntu-server-for-your-developer-in-6-minutes/

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lars512
Spinning up servers like this is nice, but if all you want is a vanilla
install, Rackspace is definitely the way to go. Their web site is far more
user friendly, and they've got a nice iPhone app you can use to spin servers
up and down as you like.

Amazon's advantage seems to lie in the far wider variety of machine images
available, and in better tools for making custom images.

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edukatr
From a pricing standpoint I have found Rackspace to be more flexible at the
lower end 256MB slice but once you start going higher toward 1.5GB RAM it gets
more pricier than Amazon. I am guessing you were referring to RackSpace Cloud.
The pure Rackspace solution is very pricy compared to AWS.

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callmeed
Very cool. Are there AMIs that include ubuntu + web framework stacks? (say,
rails+nginx+passenger)

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alonswartz
Take a look at TurnKey Linux. We just announced free access to all AMI's (40),
including Rails, Django, Symfony, LAMP stack, Drupal6, Joomla, Wordpress, File
Server, Domain Controller, Torrent Server, Redmine, MediaWiki, Zimbra and many
others.

Optimizations for EC2 include a custom developed mechanism (EBSmount) that
auto-mounts EBS devices when attached, support for automating EC2 instance
setup via user-data scripts, security updates installed on boot (prevents
window of vulnerability) and an AJAX web shell and a rich web administration
interface (over SSL).

Announcement: <http://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/maintenance-release>

EC2 Details: <http://www.turnkeylinux.org/docs/ec2>

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edukatr
Thanks for this info! This is a lot of software. Is it better to then build
the stack one needs on top of the basic OS and then store it in S3 (cheaper
than EBS) as your custom AMI and fire that up as needed?

