Project 31-A

How to start a Windows ESB instance on Amazon EC2 using the Amazon Management Console is tricky.  Every time I do it  I find myself struggling to find just the right steps, so I made a screen capture of the process. {6230289B-5BEE-409e-932A-2F01FA407A92}

The size of Elastic Block Storage (EBS) on Amazon EC2 is charge by the size of the formatted drive, not the size of data on the drive.  In the case of the Windows-Server2008-i386-Base-v101 this is a 30 Gigabytes (the primary hard drive).  Which you pay for regardless if you are using all of it or not.    This is different the the dynamically expanding .vhds that are used in Windows Virtual Server.    EBS storage is allocated all at once to avoid disk fragmentation and poor storage.   {6230289B-5BEE-409e-932A-2F01FA407A92}

What is Elastic Block Storage (EBS)? When the Amazon web site describes EBS there is a lot of references about mounting and raw block storage -- Linux terms. However, with the new boot from EBS for Windows this is a confusing. So from a Windows perspective I am going to try to explain EBS and touch on why boot from EBS is the only way to go for Windows. Windows doesn't really have a concept of mounting hard drives, and the operating system likes all physical drives to be in place before it boots. Which means that when Amazon EC2 boots your Windows instance it needs to know what storage (drives) are attached.  Keep this in mind as you read on. In Microsoft Virtual server we think about this as a .vhd drive. All the virtual hard drives are attached when the Virtual instance is started. Back to Amazon EC2, there are two types of storage (drives) available. ESB drives and Amazon Machine Images (AMI). Amazon Machine Images are stored on the Amazon S3 cloud, and mo...

My definition of a build server is a standalone box that has been configured so that it can build a release of your software with one command.  The server typically has compilers, install packing software, and is dedicated to the task of building a release.  Questions from the Joel Test that a build server needs to answer in the affirmative: Build in one step? Daily builds?    My build scripts, that run on the build server, perform these tasks: Clean the Build Directories Checkout all the source files from source control. Compile all the source. Package the binaries and assemblies into installations (setup.exe) Deploy the installations to the download location on the web sever. Update a database (web content server) with version information, download location etc… Over the years, I built different types of build servers, and written many build scripts.  Ten years ago, I had dedicated build servers.  Lately, I use v...

There is a lot of documentation about running Amazon EC2 and if you are having trouble Amazon will quickly direct you to the forums for questions, however there isn’t really a resource from a Windows centric developer to other Windows gurus.  As I 20 year Window veteran, I am going to try to fill that gap with a few blog posts entitled “Amazon EC2 for Windows The Basics”   The second thing I do when install a new windows server is to run Windows Update.    “The second thing that you need to do on your EC2 instance is install the Windows updates.”   The Windows 2003 R2 instances from ESB are recent to the R2 of Windows 2003, however there are a lot of security hot fixes released since R2.  I like to have them all applied.  It is fairly painless since Amazon amazing download times.   Remember this is Windows 2003, so you need to go back to Windows Update every time it makes you reboot until there are no more updates to install. ...

There is a lot of documentation about running Amazon EC2 and if you are having trouble Amazon will quickly direct you to the forums for questions, however there isn’t really a resource from a Windows centric developer to other Windows gurus.  As I 20 year Window veteran, I am going to try to fill that gap with a few blog posts entitled “Amazon EC2 for Windows The Basics”   Once you have your instance boot, you have retrieved the administrator login from the AWS management console, successfully connected to the server via RDC.   “The first thing to do when you get logged in is change the administrator password”   Amazon provides a good secure password for the administrator account – it is obvious there is a lot of thought put into security.  However, it is a pain in the butt to get the password the first time and to log in.  So changing the password saves you a lot of time on the next boot of the instance.   If you are using Windows ...

There is a lot of documentation about running Amazon EC2 and if you are having trouble Amazon will quickly direct you to the forums for questions, however there isn’t really a resource from a Windows centric developer to other Windows gurus.  As I 20 year Window veteran, I am going to try to fill that gap with a few blog posts entitled “Amazon EC2 for Windows The Basics”   I know it is suppose to work, and I know this will get fixed.  However, as of December 2009:   “Sometimes windows instances do not start.”   I don’t want to be negative or point out a bug, however it is really frustrating when you don’t know this might be the case and it happens to you.  It is less frustrating it you know this might happen and what do about it.   The first thing is to figure out if the instance started or not.  The way to do this is look at the system log from the AWS management console.  It should look like something like this:  ...

There is a lot of documentation about running Amazon EC2 and if you are having trouble Amazon will quickly direct you to the forums for questions, however there isn’t really a resource from a Windows centric developer to other Windows gurus.  As I 20 year Window veteran, I am going to try to fill that gap with a few blog posts entitled “Amazon EC2 for Windows The Basics”   For me EC2 is all about replacing servers with cloud computing and when I get rid of my old servers it is my Linux friends that take them.  As Windows IT we always buy the latest and greatest servers and they seem super fast when we buy them.  I get good mileage out of my servers, usually 5 to 10 years.  However, when I go to sell them it seems that they only fetch $50.  However, there is always some Linux geek ready to snatch it up and replace a Pentium 3 server he has in his basement.  Doing so he brags: “I can run 500 web sites on this server” and off he goes into his cave....

It is tempting to think that you could have a configured Windows desktop computer on Amazon EC2 that you turned on whenever you like paying 12.5 cents an hour, then turned off and have it cost you nothing but storage of the hard drive. This computer you could use as a configured desktop with all your favorite applications installed to check email, do work and that you could access anywhere. However, Amazon EC2 isn’t set up that way; in fact it would be very hard to work day to day on an EC2 machine unless you left it turned on constantly. Here are the reasons that Amazon EC2 doesn’t make a good desktop environment: Amazon EC2 only runs Windows 2003 (As of 10/24/2009). Most people are used to a better desktop experience provided by Windows 7, Vista, or Windows 2008 and the Windows 2003 Windows 2003 desktop will feel old to them. When you terminate your Amazon EC2 instance (which stops the meter) EC2 deletes the underlying hard drive and everything that you have saved to that drive ...

Restarting Windows in Amazon EC2 doesn't terminate the EC2 instance. This is good to know if you are installing software and wonder will the required restart terminate the instance before you are able to Bundle it into an AMI. The answer is no, restarts don't cause termination. {6230289B-5BEE-409e-932A-2F01FA407A92}