I have been doing a small scale trial of Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk. I have previously trialled Rackspace cloud.

I am impressed Amazon’s with the ease of use and configuratibility.

Amazon’s is very much the techies’ solution. Although Amazon Web Services console is very easy to use and a great way to get started you can also do everything at the command line which is great for my business parter and hardcore developer Chris. All parts of an application are broken up and accessible. For example, IP numbers, digital certificates and ssh private keys are all account resources that can be deployed to different machines as the need arises.

The article below and its predecessor give a simple introduction to the service.

Floating website, hidden ‘get’ bills • The Register.

The author complains that there is no way of capping your expenditure. I note that is also true on EC2’s major competitor Rackspace. Rackspace’s offer is much simpler and much less configuration is required. Unless you know that you need high availablity and scaling you may be better off starting with them.

Comments and questions are welcome and I will reply as soon as I can.