Spent quite some time today using Amazon EC2, trying to get a feel of the cloud buzz going around in the industry.
The test I did was to command and manage a linux instance to perform as a remote proxy. Got the tutorial from another website called Sprayfly.
The instructions were for on demand instances which cost a little less than $0.1/hr. I tried to modify it to launch spot instances that carry variable costs, at the moment less than $0.04. The modified script can be downloaded here.
Am thinking of what other use of such cloud besides computing, storage (already using Amazon S3 for offside backup) and remote access?
I hope to incorporate the following criteria of the next experiment: flexible costing triggered by thresholds (best price), on-demand lifecycle, enhance traditional services and increase assurance of security.
One of an interesting use is to provide a monitoring e.g. cati or nagios service monitoring or performing assessments on existing servers, launched on demand based on SLA and automating remote commands e.g. trigger backup, failovers etc.
Ending this post with a beautiful picture taken of clouds. Could mean impending storm to some or something wonderful and life giving about it to others.