up vote 0 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

I was watching a video, and reading some blog posts of people's experiences with ec2. They were all simple examples of signing up, getting your SSH setup and how to create an instance based on an existing image.

I believe there are issues with static IPs? If you kill an instance, you lose the IP? What about storage?

Say I want to host my subversion repos, and a product website that uses SQL Server db. Are there some workarounds I have to do or is it straight forward?

link|improve this question
26% accept rate
feedback

2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Your instance is built off an image. The image is read-only. You can start multiple instances off an image. When the instances shut down they are gone forever. If they need to persist data then you need to create an EBS (think of it as a virtual drive) that you can attach to an instance. The instance can write whatever data it wants to it and when the instance goes away the data will remain on the EBS.

As for Static IPs... Each instance has an IP. If you need a static IP you need to allocate one and attach it to an instance. The static IP is basically free while it is attached to an instance, but if you leave it unattached they will charge you a small fee for holding it. Once you release a static IP you won't be able to get that specific IP back. You can however get another static IP.

link|improve this answer
ok that doesn't seem to bad, why do I get the impressed it was confusing? Maybe b/c other businesses are formed around ec2 cloud to make things easier, so I figured it was hard? – user2659 Dec 4 '09 at 14:08
For those who are used to making ad hoc configuration changes to their systems, it can seem complicated. If you alter your system configuration from the base-line you must create a new image to save the system state. If you have any services that depend on data you have stored on an EBS then you must create a custom startup script that validates the EBS volume has been attached before the service starts. Little things like that. – ongle Dec 4 '09 at 14:35
feedback
up vote 0 down vote

Referring to your static IP concerns.. lots of folks just use DynDNS or similar service within their EC2 instances thus don't have to pay for Reserved IPs. It works, at least during prototyping phase. Just think if it fits you.

link|improve this answer
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown
discard

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.