Amazon EC2 Capacity and Workflow Questions

Question

I hope that some of you with experience using Amazon EC2 can offer some advice ... Of course, this will be subjective, and that’s good, I’m sure your guest will be better than mine.

I plan to move all of my clients' websites from shared hosting environments to Amazon EC2. Theyre all fairly low traffic places (the busiest site receives about 50 unique visitors per day). Theres about 8 sites, but I can expand this, because I take on more projects and host more sites ... Planning the current capacity is, for example, 12 sites.

Each site runs on ASP.Net (Umbraco CMS) and requires a SQL Server database.

My thoughts are one of the following:

• Install a small instance (1.7gb RAM, 1 EC2 Compute Unit) and run IIS and SQL Server Express on this server.
• Setup 2 Micro Instances (613MB Ram each, up to 2 ECM Compute Units) - one for IIS, the other for SQL Server.

Which device do you think will work best for my requirements. Ive started setting up a Micro instance with Server 2008, SQL Server Express, etc. And he discovered that he could not cope with the memory requirements, therefore, he was considering the possibility of expansion. I could always set up the Small instance and then export the AMI and run it on the Micro instance after that, and do the same every time a major change to the server is required. I think I could do all the updates, etc. On a backup instance of Small Spot, and then switch the AMI download to Micro and transfer the IP address, so I don’t need to work too much on production servers. I believe that if I store all the data files of my site in EBS volumes, then it is quite easy to move hosting between servers with minimal downtime without working on a production server.

I am interested to know what you all think and what strategies you use for events such as updates, window updates, software installations, etc.

And how much, in your opinion, do Id need for my requirements.

Greetings Greg

Answer 1

Well, firstly, Server 2008 does not work very well in the 613 MB RAM that the Micro instance provides. It works, but it is a dog, and it barks louder, the more services (IIS, SSE, etc.), you have a layer on top. We use nothing more than Small for Server 2008, and in fact we usually configure the environment in the environment and scale it down to Small after the hard work is done, and the OS is ready to use. Server 2003, however, seems to breathe easier on the Micro, but we are still configuring on a larger instance and downscaling.

We use low-traffic sites on Server 2003 / IIS6 on Micro, with Server 2008 / SS installed in a common, separate instance of Small. We also have one 2008 / IIS7 Micro build running server, but only to remind ourselves why we are not using it more widely .;)

Larger websites run Server 2008 / IIS7 in a small or medium instance, but almost always use this common separate instance of SS for database services. We try not to deploy multiple SS installations, as this simplifies maintenance and backups.

Saving content and configuration on EBS volumes is, of course, a good practice if you do not want to rebuild the entire system whenever an instance disappears. Taking photos of your instances periodically is also good practice, as you can deploy a new instance from the original AMI and exchange the snapshot as a boot volume for quick recovery in the event of a disaster.