[ec2-beta] Preliminary thoughts

[Eric Hammond]

Jamie Strandboge wrote:
> 3. OpenJDK seems to work fine, so I wonder why we are recommending
> Sun's JRE in the EC2StartersGuide.

When I was testing (months ago) not all of the EC2 AMI command line
tools worked with openjdk.  It's possible that the situation has
improved, but testing should be comprehensive across the tools, not just
running an instance.

> I've attached the script so people can play with it, but like I said
> before, this was very quick and dirty, and not intended for mass
> consumption.

Good luck, You're headed down a long road  :)

I would love to see an improved command line interface (especially if
you can release it under a reasonable license), but there are a lot of
features and options that folks are going to want to use EC2 effectively
just like they do with the existing command line tools.

Then, every time Amazon releases a new feature set like EBS or regions
or load balancing, you'll want to play catchup and add support.  I see
this happening over and over with the other third party software
packages which use the EC2 APIs.

I support your effort, just thought you should be aware that it's a big
job if you take it on (and I'd recommending moving out of shell quickly
as you'll probably end up wanting to access the API directly).

> [*] I can make EC2 ssh easier by adding to my ~/.ssh/config file:
>     Host *.amazonaws.com
>       IdentityFile <path to>/ec2-keypair.pem

Now why didn't I think of that?!

Hrm, possibly because I end up using multiple accounts and keypairs for
different instances.

Somebody I know might also have had:

  Host *.amazonaws.com
    StrictHostKeyChecking false

(but don't tell the security guys)

--
Eric Hammond
ehammond at thinksome.com