GOC

Amazon Web Services this week launched its Elastic Block Store, (EBS), a new storage feature for the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

 

Amazon EC2 is an infrastructure service that provides resizable compute capacity “in the cloud.” Now, with Amazon EBS, users of EC2 can programmatically create storage volumes and attach them to EC2 instances. For more durability, these volumes can be backed up with a snapshot to Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).

 

Prior to this new feature being introduced, storage to an Amazon EC2 instance was tied to the instance itself, resulting in the loss of data within the instance whenever the instance was terminated. With Amazon EBS, users can allocate storage volumes that persist reliably and independently from Amazon EC2 instances.

 

Also, as noted earlier, the feature provides more durable backups and an easy way to create new volumes, via the ability to create point-in-time, consistent snapshots of volumes that are then stored to Amazon S3.

 

“For over two years, we've focused on delivering a cost-effective, Web scale infrastructure to developers, giving them complete flexibility in the kinds of solutions they deliver,” said Peter De Santis, general manager of Amazon EC2, in a statement.  “Persistent block storage has been among the top requests of developers using Amazon EC2, and we're excited to deliver Amazon Elastic Block Storage designed specifically for our cloud-based, elastic computing environment.”

 

“First, Amazon EC2 rewrote the rules of cloud computing, offering companies an intuitive and reliable means for accessing unlimited computing power,” said Paul Fisher, manager of technology for Wired.com/CondeNet. “With Amazon EBS, Amazon has turned the industry on its head again, providing unlimited storage potential.”

 

Fisher went on to say that Wired.com uses Amazon EC2 to power its embeddable widets and product reviews. EC2 allows the publication to build and deploy applications quickly and reliably, but the new feature adds something that was missing.

 

“EBS is the missing link — the last piece in the cloud computing puzzle — that enables start-ups and large corporations alike to conjure the resources they need to build any application possible,” Fisher said. “Persistence is key to most applications, and EBS provides more flexibility in this area than anything previously available. We are developing a platform in the semantic web space with requirements for unlimited, fast, reliable persistence. EC2 and EBS not only make this application feasible, they make it cost-effective and scalable.”

 

Amazon also got rave reviews for the new feature from Manu Murkerji, senior software developer for ShareThis, a service providing a one click way to instantly post, tag (News - Alert) and send content via email, instant messaging and text messaging.

 

“ShareThis has received tremendous benefits from working with Amazon Web Services for our leading sharing platform," Murkerji said. “Amazon EBS has enabled us to create large-scale, enterprise-level databases that allow us to run and maintain various, disparate applications. EC2 and EBS together provide a cost-effective, flexible system that allows us to crunch data faster than we had been previously able — giving us a much needed advantage for our business.”

 

Sun Microsystems (News - Alert) vice president of global market development Juan Carlos Soto had this to say: “Sun's MySQL is the one of the most popular databases on Amazon EC2. With the introduction of EBS, MySQL users will be able to increase the durability and portability of their database applications deployed in the cloud. With Sun also recently making the OpenSolaris platform available on EC2, Web companies can now access the unique features of the ZFS file system--such as Rollback and 128-bit checksum capabilities--to enable the highest level of data integrity on EC2.”

 

Scott Crenshaw, vice president of the platform business unit at Red Hat (News - Alert), said that EBS turns the promise of deploying any application, anywhere (including the cloud) into reality.

 

“By providing a persistent and consistent compute environment, both on-premise and in the cloud, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss EAP on Amazon EC2 will help achieve the vision of the virtual datacenter,” Crenshaw said. “Now with the highly anticipated release of Amazon EBS, our enterprise EC2 customers have the ability to persist virtual machine configuration and application data across instantiations and manage their cloud solutions in as consistent a manner as their on-premise deployments.”

 

Nate Smith (News - Alert), vice president of product management at Elastra, also weighed in, saying that EBS adds significant value to the product development efforts at his company.

 

“We're able to provide our customers with seamless, automated database recovery, and an enhanced persistent data solution with faster throughput, all without their needing to manage cumbersome scripting,” Smith said. “These are the types of capabilities our customers, especially the ISVs and enterprises, are looking for. Amazon EBS functionality allows our team to focus on delivering more advanced capabilities for our offering where scaling relational databases is essential. The resulting benefit to our customers is that they save time and can in turn devote their resources to business-differentiating activities, which drive innovation and new revenue streams.”