Introductions?

[Marc Carmen]

Since we have seen a few new posts recently I was wondering if everyone might be willing to submit an introduction.  Specifically who you are, your experience with AWS, what you hope to get out of the group.  I will start.

My name is Marc Carmen.  I have been working with some aspect of AWS for about 4 or 5 years.  Started with storing data in S3 and then moved all of our server hosting needs to EC2 and then recently made the move from EC2 to RDS and Elastic Beanstalk.

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Thanks,
Marc Carmen
marc....@gmail.com

[Jonathan Duncan]

I am Jonathan Duncan. I have been working with AWS for about 2 years or so. Nothing heavy, mostly S3 and EC2. Hosting some applications. Recently setup an automated backup to S3. Considered Glacier but did not need anything as long term as Glacier is meant for. I am hoping that the group can provide support and eduction through sharing and working through AWS projects and challenges.

I am aware of StackExchange and the amazing resources that they provide. They may well be contributing to the downturn in participation among many tech groups.

Marc, I am curious about Elastic Beanstalk. I have looked at it in the past but have not played with it yet. I was recently looking at the offerings from dotCloud (which apparently is built on top of AWS). Have you had any dealing with dotCloud and how it compares (or leverages) Elastic Beanstalk?

[Marc Carmen]

Johnathan,

Thanks for the introduction!  First off, I have to make the disclaimer that I have not used Beanstalk with any technology other than Java so my comments may not be accurate for PHP, Python, etc...

 I am not familiar with dotcloud but from what I can tell there is a lot more flexibility with it which also means a lot more configuration.  ElasticBeanstalk is really great for a vanilla app server.  You can do some customization, much more than I am familiar with, but it cannot be customize as much as some may want.  Simple example is that I know some people prefer a Java app server other than Tomcat and that is not available at this time.  

Pricing is complicated to compare because it looks like dotCloud is a flat fee whereas Amazon charges for data transfer and other things.  

One thing I can say about ElasticBeanstalk from experience is that in my experience it works very well for growing and shrinking as necessary and for removing instances that are having troubles connecting.  dotCloud lists an autoHeal feature but I am not sure what that is exactly.  Best thing to do would be to get started with beanstalk on the free tier, which I think you can do, and do a free trial and see which fits you best.

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[Jonathan Duncan]

On 31 Jan 2013, at 12:21, Marc Carmen wrote:

> One thing I can say about ElasticBeanstalk from experience is that in my
> experience it works very well for growing and shrinking as necessary and
> for removing instances that are having troubles connecting. dotCloud lists
> an autoHeal feature but I am not sure what that is exactly. Best thing to
> do would be to get started with beanstalk on the free tier, which I think
> you can do, and do a free trial and see which fits you best.
>

Experience is usually the best teacher. :)