Scale With Amazon EC2

RightScale: Web site that manages Amazon EC2

Common Use of EC2

1. Upload data to S3
2. Put request in SQS work queue
3. Fork new servers when needed
4. Put changed data back to S3
5. Put message in SQS when done (or POST to web)

RightScale Info

• RightScale monitors work  queue and adds or subtracts servers, puts log files in S3 (which is important because when the EC2 instance goes away, all logs are lost) and produces audit records
• RightGrid and RightWorker manages the EC2 processes
• RightScale runs 100% on EC2 itself.
• Have to have a slave DB from day one, since the master can go away. RightScale also backs up DB every 10 minutes to S3.
• Slowest part is parsing XML with reXML

EC2 Experience

• Dynamic IP, need Dynamic DNS service
• Very stable: 3 instances with greater than 170 days uptime, dozen instances with greater than 90 days uptime
• Have seen spontaneous reboots
• Amazon is very response
• It's addictive, watch your credit card