[ec2-beta] some feedback on the i386 image

[Eric Hammond]

Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> Surely the command to "setup an ec2 instance" would be run from the
> users Ubuntu workstation, and that could ssh in to the instance and
> set the password

It's not quite that simple with EC2.  A good percentage of the people
running Ubuntu on EC2 are using Windows, Macs, and other non-Ubuntu
operating systems on their desktops.

Also, since AWS is implemented entirely as a set of web APIs, there are
many different ways to run instances on EC2.  Requiring users of the
Ubuntu AMIs to use a particular toolset would not be the best way to get
widespread usage.

I currently use 5 distinct ways to run EC2 instances and none of them
provide hooks to customize the external startup method even though I'm
personally running Ubuntu:

1. ec2-run-instances command, written in Java and provided by Amazon

2. My own custom programs, written in Perl directly using the EC2 API

3. The EC2 Firefox plugin, written in JavaScript and run in the browser

4. The Amazon AWS console, which is a web site

5. RightScale, another web service with advanced configuration and
   management capabilities.

and I regularly test other methods.

--
Eric Hammond
ehammond at thinksome.com