Newsletters
April 2008
Newsletter #36
Greetings AWS Developers,
Last week brought some exciting, highly requested new Amazon EC2 features to the community – Elastic IP Addresses, Availability Zones, and User Selectable Kernels. Read the news item below to see how you can use these features to run reliable web sites and applications in the cloud. Also, if you’re an Amazon S3 customer who’s been eager for us to launch a “copy” feature, we’ve posted an initial design to the forums and are looking for feedback. Here’s a great chance for you to comment and provide your pre-release input.Kathrin Jackson
Amazon Web Services
Amazon EC2: Elastic IP Addresses, Availability Zones, & User Selectable Kernels
Last week, we announced two new features – Elastic IP addresses, Availability Zones – which help you to run reliable web sites and other applications within Amazon EC2. With these new features, it is now easier than ever for you to isolate your application from common failure scenarios and host high availability web sites in Amazon EC2.
Elastic IP Addresses are static IP addresses designed for dynamic cloud computing, and make it easy to host web sites, web services and other online applications in Amazon EC2. They allow you to quickly recover from instance and other failures while presenting your users with a static IP address.
Availability Zones give you the ability to easily and inexpensively operate a highly available application. Each Amazon EC2 Availability Zone is a distinct location that is engineered to be insulated from failures in other Availability Zones. Previously, only very large companies had the scale to be able to distribute an application across multiple locations, but now it is as simple as changing a parameter in an API call.
As a part of this release, we also introduced User Selectable Kernels, which allow anyone to use alternative kernels or RAM disks with their AMIs.
Amazon S3: Provide Your Input on a “Copy” Feature
We’ve received a lot of customer feedback asking that we add support to Amazon S3 for copying an object. We have an initial design for this feature which we’ve posted to the forums. We’ve gotten lots of valuable input from the community, and want to make sure that everyone who’s interested in this feature has the opportunity to weigh in. To read through the spec and add any feedback you have, please see the related forum post.
Amazon ECS 3.0: Sunset Complete
Following up on our newsletter announcements and e-mail notifications to developers over the past 15 months, the Amazon ECS 3.0 sunset is now complete, and effective April 1st, 2008, developers will no longer be able to access the service. If you are still making ECS 3.0 requests, please migrate your code immediately to call the Amazon Associates Web Service (previously “Amazon ECS 4.0”) in order to continue running your application. Please see the migration guide below to migrate your application, and post any questions you may have to the Amazon Associates Web Service Developer Forum.
Amazon SQS Survey for AWS Customers
AWS is conducting a survey focusing on the Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS). We’re very interested in feedback from both existing Amazon SQS customers as well as AWS customers not currently using this service. The survey should only take 1-2 minutes of your time. We’d appreciate any input you can share.
Developer Resources
Whether you’re considering Amazon SimpleDB or already using it, check out this month’s Amazon SimpleDB-themed resources.
Relating to Amazon SimpleDB
Do you have data in a relational database you’d like to migrate to Amazon SimpleDB? AWS developer David Kavanagh describes the considerations to make and shows you how to use his DBLoader tool to help with the migration.
Query 201: Tips & Tricks for Amazon SimpleDB Query
After passing Query 101, you’re ready to graduate on to learning about building efficient queries. The syllabus for this tutorial includes querying for dates, using negation, and tuning your query performance.
Using SimpleDB and Rails in No Time with ActiveResource
Martin Rehfeld shows you how to seamlessly leverage Amazon SimpleDB for your Ruby on Rails application using the Rails ActiveResource framework.
Solutions Catalog Highlights: What Your Peers Are Building
Bing 11: Meet Up with Friends
An exciting new mobile social networking service for planning events and hooking up with friends. Built using Amazon EC2.
Low cost, simple, affordable CRM for your business – an easy way to track your sales, deals and customer contact. Built using Amazon S3.
HungryFlix.com
Provides digital downloads of premium independent films, videos and music. Built using Amazon S3.
Not listed in the Solutions Catalog yet? Start with our community co-marketing. Check out the AWS blog for more news about AWS developers and their applications.
Upcoming Events
Don’t forget to see more events and let the AWS evangelists know where you’d like them to visit!
it@cork – Cork, Ireland
April 1, 2008
Mike Culver
London .NET Meetup Group – London, UK
April 3, 2008
Mike Culver
Amazon Web Services u Zagrebu – Zagreb, Croatia
April 7, 2008
Mike Culver
Webtuesday Zurich – Zurich, Switzerland
April 8, 2008
Mike Culver
Web 2.0 Expo – San Francisco, CA
April 22-25, 2008
AWS will be exhibiting at this conference, and Amazon SimpleDB General Manager Matt Domo will participate in a “Future of Databases” panel discussion.
Interop Las Vegas – Las Vegas, NV
April 27 – May 2, 2008
Jinesh Varia (SaaS and Cloud Computing)
Ruby Users of Minnesota – Minneapolis, MN
April 28, 2008
Mike Culver
Twin Cities ColdFusion User Group – Minneapolis, MN
April 29, 2008
Mike Culver
ITKC – Kansas City, MO
April 30, 2008
Mike Culver
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