Adam Howitt's Blog

Nov 15
2007

Build a scalable architecture with Amazon's EC2

At : 2:51 PM | Link | Ubuntu, BlueDragon, Coldfusion | Comments (6) | Send | 1537 Views |

I've just wrapped up my CF Online Meetup live presentation of using Amazon EC2 to build a scalable architecture to run ColdFusion.  In the presentation you will learn what you need to get started with Amazon EC2 and I demonstrate a machine image I built running ColdFusion 8 and Apache.  I talk about the pricing and some of the challenges you may face.  

Over 30 people turned up to see the talk but if you missed it you can view the recording here. and Charlie has added the presentation to his UGTV site as he does with every CF Online Meetup.

Due to licensing concerns I haven't made the machine image running CF8 publicly available yet.  I'll give Vince at NewAtlanta a nudge and if anyone can put me in contact with the right people to ask at Adobe I may well make it public.  This will mean you that as long as you have the tools I mention in the presentation (all free), you can fire up my ubuntu704 machine instance which is pre-installed with Apache, go to the downloads directly and choose whether you want to install CF8 or BD7 and then follow the prompts to the end!  You can try the 30 day trial and evaluate your applications on dedicated hardware.  One of the tricks with trying this yourself is that Adobe and NewAtlanta require you to login to download the software so you can't just ftp the file into Amazon from their site.  I had to pull it locally after logging in then push it up to Amazon with SCP/FTP.

I think this could be a huge selling point for both Adobe and NewAtlanta - the ability to test the server without committing hardware or having to install anything.  Who knows - maybe one of them will even create their own pre-installed time limited demo image people can use where you just fire it up, copy up your files with WinSCP and point your browser!

As always - any questions let me know below.

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  1. Sorry I missed the presentation, thanks for making it available. I agree that this is an interesting opportunity for CF vendors.

    Posted By Johan : Posted At 11/15/07 2:21 PM
  2. There's no doubt that virtualization is the future and you're right there pushing the boundaries.

    Great post.

    Posted By Jason : Posted At 11/16/07 11:23 PM
  3. Hi Adam,

    have you tried to do the same with Railo as well or is it just BD and CFMX? I read a similar question in the Railo mailing list recently.

    Thx

    Kris

    Posted By Kristoph Keppler : Posted At 1/22/08 4:32 PM
  4. Hi Kristoph, Railo should work too but I haven't tried it. I downloaded it the other day to play around and while it's nice to have a machine that booted from a folder on my machine, it was also disappointing to see that it was the bait and switch - lure you with a free product and then say if you want the normal version it's going to cost you. Why not buy the real thing in that case?

    Posted By Adam Howitt : Posted At 1/22/08 4:50 PM
  5. Hey Adam, Anything new about CF8 licensing running on EC2?

    Cheers, Max

    Posted By Max : Posted At 6/18/08 7:03 AM
  6. Thanks to Adam's presentation for giving me a jump start on Ubuntu and EC2. I have since created a complete Amazon Web Services console freely-available for download at awsconsole.riaforge.com. Furthermore, I decided to post my step-by-step instructions for installing CF8 on Ubuntu on EC2. The instructions tell how how to remote into the Ubuntu desktop, set up Apache, MySQL, etc., basically everything you need to "build" an Amazon server and save it. The instructions are linked at the bottom of this blog entry...click the "download" link: http://awsconsole.riaforge.org/blog/index.cfm/2008/8/12/StepbyStep-Guide-for-Installing-ColdFusion-8-on-Ubuntu-710-using-Amazon-EC2-Windows-only

    And by the way, I do not have faith Adobe will create a utility compute license any time soon. I've emailed with Jason Delmore and others at Adobe about this issue. Therefore, I have bene experimenting with Open BlueDragon and Ralio on EC2. Those are going to be your only options if you want to (legally) run CFML in a cloud.

    Posted By David : Posted At 8/15/08 3:00 PM
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