Amazon cloud-based Red Hat Linux now in beta

Customers who want to try running software on Red Hat Enterprise Linux using Amazon's Elastic Computing Cloud now can get started.

The leading Linux seller announced Monday that its beta program for the online service is now open to the public. The for-fee program includes email-based support.

Initially, the service will use the latest release of RHEL, version 5.1, but new releases will be issued later, Red Hat said.

The service uses variable pricing, Red Hat said when it announced the service earlier this month. It costs $19 per month plus 21, 53, or 94 cents per hour, depending on computing and storage capacity, plus 11 cents per gigabyte of data transferred in and 19 cents per gigabyte transferred out.

(Via Matt Asay's The Open Road).

[jamesinraro]

Red Hat Amazon Cloud Computing

The principal reason any company still runs an MS-based server infrastructure is lack of qualified staff. There are no performance, security, throughput or reliability considerations which militate against switching from NS to Linux. By offering the option of supported pay as you go computing Red Hat will likely encourage a large number of MS laggards to make the move to Linux.