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Amazon adds redundancy and geographical resiliency to EC2

Amazon is introducing what is definitely the "must-have" utility for it's EC2 cloud computing offering to become a reality. Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service now has an application programming interface (API) that lets developers choose where its application physically runs.

As Martin LaMonica writes on News.blog:

This Availability Zones feature is important because people can now add redundancy to their application. Choosing multiple zones, people can have server instances with separate power, cooling, network access, and physical servers

This is an important move by Amazon and I would expect it to be echoed by … Read more

Another cheap, tiny laptop shows for fight with Eee PC

In the glorious race to the bottom, another contender has emerged to take on the Asus hit that is the Eee PC mininotebook. Taiwanese manufactuerer Elitegroup Computer Systems unveiled its G10IL mininotebook, which will feature Intel's new Atom processors and either an 8.9- or 10.2-inch screen. Like the MSI Wind prototype Crave spied earlier this month, the ECS G10IL features an unfortunate name and a fetching design: clean, glossy, and white. At first glance, it looks like some sort of mini-MacBook crossed with a Sony VAIO.

The ECS G10IL has three USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet and … Read more

Mux does quick, simple Web video ripping

I'm always on the lookout for simple ways to manage video on the Web. One of them, called Mux has been getting some buzz lately for taking advantage of both Amazon's EC2 and S3 Web services to store data and do the crunching at the same time. Mux uses the two services together to serves as a video ripper and converter, letting you grab videos off a small handful of popular sites and save them locally or send them to your mobile phone. It'll also take any file on your computer and convert it without the need … Read more

Apple forced to lower price at U.K. iTunes store

According to an Apple statement sent out yesterday, Apple will equalize the price of music on its iTunes Stores across Europe within the next six months.

It seems the peeps at Which? weren't satisfied that us Brits were being charged more for music in iTunes than the rest of Europe, so they filed a formal complaint with the U.K.'s Office of Fair Trading, which then contacted the European Commission, which started antitrust proceedings. Apple's decision has satisfied the EC, which will take no further action.

At the moment you have to pay 79 pence (about $1.… Read more

Amazon opens testing for in-cloud database

Update 2:20 p.m. PST: I added some more details and a reaction.

Amazon.com has begun publicly testing a third element to its online computing services: a database capability called SimpleDB.

The new Web service joins two others the online retailer launched in 2006 that anyone can pay to use: computing horsepower called the Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) and data storage called Simple Storage Service (S3). SimpleDB works in conjunction with those services, letting customers store, modify, and query data, the company said Friday.

"Amazon SimpleDB provides quick, efficient storage and retrieval of your data to support … Read more

Public beta now open for Red Hat in the Cloud

Want to take Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a test drive without having to install anything? Today the public beta for RHEL on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud went live. It's not perfect, says Red Hat, but that's part of the plan:

We have certified and tested the released AMIs [Amazon Machine Images] within the Amazon EC2 environment and will be providing email-based support for the public beta. While the software is well-proven, we anticipate modifications to the deployment models and use-cases during the beta period and will refine the delivery of our services throughout the beta period. … Read more

Amazon to host Red Hat Linux online

Update: I added a lot more detail about Red Hat's ambitions and other moves.

Red Hat on Wednesday announced a significant departure from its current business plan, saying its flagship Linux product will be available on Amazon.com's Elastic Computing Cloud online service.

Previously, the Raleigh, N.C.-based company only sold its Red Hat Enterprise Linux product in the form of a support contract costing between $349 and $2,499 per year. But in a beta program beginning in the fourth quarter, the software will be available on Amazon's EC2 infrastructure, Red Hat said.

The move … Read more

Amazon's newer business model

A couple of weeks back, Amazon.com announced an expansion of its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. The still-in-beta EC2 is a twist on the much-discussed, if rarely seen in the wild, compute utility whereby customers rent computing by virtual machine (VM)-hour; Amazon's EC2 infrastructure is based on a Xen hypervisor structure rather than running directly on physical hardware.

One implication of Amazon using VMs is that they can easily offer a variety of different VM sizes up to the size of the physical hardware. That was the most recent change announced. In addition to the default "Small Instance," users can now get "Large Instances" or "Extra Large Instances." These might be useful if, for example, you need to pair a heavyweight database instance with some lightweight Web services.

Another implication is that VM images, called Amazon Machine Images (AMI) in this case, can be archived and transported. This is analogous to VMware's virtual appliances. Amazon itself hasn't done much to jump-start an image marketplace at this point as VMware has. However, it does provide a mechanism for customers to post and publicly share AMIs and sees the opportunity for people to offer paid AMIs over time.

I bring this up because Emre Sokullo over at Read/Write Web has a post and table that does a great job of crystallizing why getting into Web services is such a big deal for Amazon. In short, Amazon's revenue is comparable to Google's. The difference is that, while Google is operating at a 29 percent profit margin, Amazon is under 2 percent. Which is probably about the best one can hope for with a big "mail order" retail operation. … Read more

Meebo gets (tiny) file sharing

The divide between Web IM apps and the software versions is getting smaller, albeit with the help of improved bandwidth and technology like Adobe's Flash. In the same vein, Meebo, the popular Web-based multiclient chat platform is getting a handy update tonight. Users are now able to trade files with each other right in the chat window. It's not just Meebo users, either, it's anyone on your friends list. If your buddy has a file-transfer-enabled client, you'll be able to pass files back and forth freely.

However, unlike software IM clients, the caps for file transfer … Read more