

Ask HN: Experiences running developer machine on EC2? - filleokus

I&#x27;m a iOS&#x2F;OSX developer using a Mac as my main machine. During this summer I have been doing some work on Windows using Vmware Fusion. I&#x27;m working on the Windows-project about a day per week.<p>The huge disk image takes a good chunk of my quite limited SSD, so I was thinking about migrating the VM to EC2.<p>My question is if anyone has tried this, and if the lag is unbearable or if it actually works?<p>I&#x27;m just coding on the machine, no graphics etc.
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joshstrange
Are you thinking about using this:
[http://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/](http://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/) or just
setting up a windows VM on EC2? Also how powerful of a machine do you need?

For the lowest power windows VM you are looking at ~$13/mo which isn't too bad
I guess
([http://www.ec2instances.info/?cost=monthly](http://www.ec2instances.info/?cost=monthly))

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filleokus
The thing is that I already have a VM running, it would be nice to be able to
move that over. I don't I can do that with the pre-packaged Workspace-stuff? I
need kinda of a powerful machine, but with regards to price, wouldn't I just
be able to spin it up for the day of the week I need it?

~~~
joshstrange
I've not used it but you might want to look into this article
[http://www.niftiestsoftware.com/2011/09/24/converting-a-
virt...](http://www.niftiestsoftware.com/2011/09/24/converting-a-virtualbox-
vm-to-an-ec2-ami/) (I'm assuming you are using virtualbox but if you aren't
then I'm not sure how to do it but I'm sure google does. They don't offer
desktop versions of windows for EC2 (only server), I'm not sure if a desktop
windows VM will even run (and a quick google says no
[http://superuser.com/questions/564768/can-i-run-
windows-7-in...](http://superuser.com/questions/564768/can-i-run-windows-7-in-
amazon-aws)).

I once ran a windows VM because I needed a cloud server that I could run
iTunes on and that worked well enough but I don't think you will have as much
luck for what you are looking to do. Also the workspaces stuff is too
expensive as it is by month not by hour.

Unless you want to use linux as your desktop I don't think there is a cost-
effective way to host your desktop in the cloud.

