Can I use the Amazon web service to host a Rails application?
Thanks.
Yes, you should be able to install this in several ways on AWS.
Since you can configure an instance of EC-2 as a dedicated server, you can install any software and configure it to your needs.
There are some good ruby tools here: http://amazon-ec2.rubyforge.org/
Also on AWS 37 Signals - http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/37signals/
I recommend a simple instance of Amazon Linux AMI Micro EBS, supported to run on a free tier. http://aws.amazon.com/free/
This is a more detailed answer.
You can use Elastic BeanStalk to deploy Ruby with Passenger. Checkout AWS Elastic Beanstalk Launches Ruby and Integrates with Amazon VPCs and AWS Elastic Beanstalk - Ruby Support and VPC Integration
As Tom mentioned, a simple EIS AMI should be enough to get started. At BitNami, we created AMI Ruby on Rails and made them available for free. We also offer a hosting service on top of Amazon , which you can combine with the AWS free tier service to basically get a free server for 1 year (618Mb RAM, 30gb), which more than enough for development and easy hosting.