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Here is the biggest mistake you will make on Amazon EC2…

13 points by edukatr 16y ago

andrewstuart 16y ago
You might consider multiple backup strategies, different types of backups done in completely different ways, none with any level of dependence on each other. Test them to see if you are able to restore from them.
- forensic 16y ago
  Amazon pretty much provides that service for you. You just gotta turn it on.
  - simonw 16y ago
    If your only backups are on AWS, you better hope that your credit card doesn't start bouncing while you're on a week long vacation.
lwat 16y ago
Site is down. Is it hosted on EC2?
- dryicerx 16y ago
  Site's IP points EC2... While the site is down, google cache to the rescue: http://tinyurl.com/4o2psun http://tinyurl.com/4o2psun
  - edukatr 16y ago
    Thanks guys for pointing this
alanpca 16y ago
Be careful who you take advice from. I can't believe somebody who is providing information on setting up EC2 for startups was not using elastic block storage for their critical data. There is really no excuse for this. Don't make the same mistake.
- bmelton 16y ago
  Yeah -- if I'm understanding that article correctly, he really had no business offering up advice on how to configure EC2 instances. On the upside, the title is decidedly not link-bait. That really is the biggest mistake you can make on AWS.
ronnier 16y ago
My cache got it: http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.edukatr.com/here-is-the-biggest-mistake-you-will-make-on-amazon-ec2/ http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.edukatr.com/here-...
bmelton 16y ago
I'm not entirely sure I see what he did wrong -- he says he was using 'block storage', but his remedy was to get an EBS volume? Was he really running the contents of two websites on the EC2 instance? I mean, I've done that. Once. When I was first playing with EC2, and well before I'd actually deployed a live and (apparently) valuable site to it. If I'm understanding the problem correctly, then my sympathies. I don't know if it's a curse or a blessing that it went all this time without having rebooted and destroying everything before now. I suppose that's the sort of thing you'd prefer to learn earlier than later.
- jeffbarr 16y ago
  > Was he really running the contents of two websites on the EC2 instance? Apparently so, despite the fact that all of the EC2 documentation labels the local disk as "ephemeral."
petercooper 16y ago
Is it "picking an instance too small to handle the traffic HN sends"?
- jedsmith 16y ago
  I always picture the submit-and-boom scenario as skeet shooting, which keeps me amused enough until someone pastes a cache link into a comment. Pull! Pow
ehutch79 16y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the point of ec2 style clouds was to create an ami with everything configured just how you need it ahead of time, and boot lots of small machines off that. The data should be fed from s3 or from rds or from an ec2 instance with a database which stores it's data on an ebs. The main idea is that it's an easy platform to scale horizontally from. It never really struck me as intended to be a service which you run something like wordpress from... What this guy probably wanted was something like rackspace and linode offer, which is a vm with a persistant disk, more in line with vmware on the desktop or esx, or xen, than amazons offering.
- kennu 16y ago
  I agree, I think your development process on EC2 needs a strategy on how to regularly build new AMI images. Probably a mix of updating some things in-place while running, and sometimes creating a new baseline AMI image of your whole OS and app, which is then used on the next reboot. Also I would store all dynamic data on RDS (database) and S3 (uploaded files), probably no need for EBS in most web apps.

13 points by edukatr 16y ago

You might consider multiple backup strategies, different types of backups done in completely different ways, none with any level of dependence on each other. Test them to see if you are able to restore from them.

forensic 16y ago
Amazon pretty much provides that service for you. You just gotta turn it on.
- simonw 16y ago
  If your only backups are on AWS, you better hope that your credit card doesn't start bouncing while you're on a week long vacation.

lwat 16y ago

Site is down. Is it hosted on EC2?

dryicerx 16y ago
Site's IP points EC2... While the site is down, google cache to the rescue: http://tinyurl.com/4o2psun http://tinyurl.com/4o2psun
- edukatr 16y ago
  Thanks guys for pointing this

alanpca 16y ago

Be careful who you take advice from. I can't believe somebody who is providing information on setting up EC2 for startups was not using elastic block storage for their critical data. There is really no excuse for this. Don't make the same mistake.

bmelton 16y ago
Yeah -- if I'm understanding that article correctly, he really had no business offering up advice on how to configure EC2 instances. On the upside, the title is decidedly not link-bait. That really is the biggest mistake you can make on AWS.

ronnier 16y ago

My cache got it: http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.edukatr.com/here-is-the-biggest-mistake-you-will-make-on-amazon-ec2/ http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.edukatr.com/here-...

bmelton 16y ago

I'm not entirely sure I see what he did wrong -- he says he was using 'block storage', but his remedy was to get an EBS volume? Was he really running the contents of two websites on the EC2 instance? I mean, I've done that. Once. When I was first playing with EC2, and well before I'd actually deployed a live and (apparently) valuable site to it. If I'm understanding the problem correctly, then my sympathies. I don't know if it's a curse or a blessing that it went all this time without having rebooted and destroying everything before now. I suppose that's the sort of thing you'd prefer to learn earlier than later.

jeffbarr 16y ago
> Was he really running the contents of two websites on the EC2 instance? Apparently so, despite the fact that all of the EC2 documentation labels the local disk as "ephemeral."

petercooper 16y ago

Is it "picking an instance too small to handle the traffic HN sends"?

jedsmith 16y ago
I always picture the submit-and-boom scenario as skeet shooting, which keeps me amused enough until someone pastes a cache link into a comment. Pull! Pow

ehutch79 16y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the point of ec2 style clouds was to create an ami with everything configured just how you need it ahead of time, and boot lots of small machines off that. The data should be fed from s3 or from rds or from an ec2 instance with a database which stores it's data on an ebs. The main idea is that it's an easy platform to scale horizontally from. It never really struck me as intended to be a service which you run something like wordpress from... What this guy probably wanted was something like rackspace and linode offer, which is a vm with a persistant disk, more in line with vmware on the desktop or esx, or xen, than amazons offering.

kennu 16y ago
I agree, I think your development process on EC2 needs a strategy on how to regularly build new AMI images. Probably a mix of updating some things in-place while running, and sometimes creating a new baseline AMI image of your whole OS and app, which is then used on the next reboot. Also I would store all dynamic data on RDS (database) and S3 (uploaded files), probably no need for EBS in most web apps.