Expanding the Cloud: Microsoft Windows Server on Amazon EC2
The backend servers that power the world of Internet Services have become increasingly diverse. With today's announcement that Microsoft Windows Server is available on Amazon EC2 we can now run the majority of popular software systems in the cloud. Windows Server ranked very high on the list of requests by customers so we are happy that we will be able to provide this.
One particular area that customers have been asking for Amazon EC2 with Windows Server was for Windows Media transcoding and streaming. There is a range of excellent codecs available for Windows Media and there is a large amount of legacy content in those formats. In past weeks I met with a number of folks from the entertainment industry and often their first question was: when can we run on windows?
There are many different reasons why customers have requested Windows Server; for example many customers want to run ASP.NET websites using Internet Information Server and use Microsoft SQL Server as their database. Amazon EC2 running Windows Server enables this scenario for building scalable websites. In addition, several customers would like to maintain a global single Windows-based desktop environment using Microsoft Remote Desktop, and Amazon EC2 is a scalable and dependable platform on which to do so.
Amazon EC2 with Windows Server is still currently in private beta testing, but will be available for general use before the end of the year. Keep an eye on the AWS Weblog for information about Amazon Web Services at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference.
10 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Expanding the Cloud: Microsoft Windows Server on Amazon EC2.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://mt.vogels.net/mt-tb.cgi/126
Amazon.com's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which allows customers to run virtual computers on Amazon's utility-computing system for an hourly fee, is about to get considerably more elastic. Amazon's Werner Vogels announced last night that later this fal... Read More
The Amazon Elastic Computer Cloud is no longer just about Linux–you can run Windows too. This is classic strategy because they’re making it tremendously easier for customers to pick one cloud computing and not have to choose. As Stacey Hi... Read More
Mais perguntas e notícias estão saindo sobre Microsoft e serviços na nuvem: Notícia: Read More
Things are heating up a bit. Have you heard the latest buzz on the blogosphere re: PDC2008? " By the Read More
Yesterday, Microsoft CEO Steve “Developers” Ballmer revealed that Windows is working on a Read More
The people over at Amazon Web Services have been busy at work the last couple weeks. The Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) team has rolled out two significant computing options over that will really help pave the way for more enterprise adoption of their se... Read More
Vor gut einer Woche sorgte Amazon CTO Werner Vogel für einen Paukenschlag in der IT-Welt, indem er verkündete, Read More
Blogs I Follow - October 2008 Read More
This article continues the Networking for Beginners series by talking about Read More
Subscribe to this weblog's
Not that I would need a windows server, but I'm looking forward to see what kind of fees Microsoft will get for each server. Or were you able to convince Microsoft, that it is in their own interest, not to charge more than for any other machines you offer?
Thats really a nice addition the the EC2 product line. Although i wonder how it will go License-wise. Would it be included in the fee ? So you can realy just add instances on the fly without having to count the number of licenses you ownd. And what about MS SQL Server licenses. Looking forward to see how this is delt with.
I had hoped EC2 coming to Europe (and thus having free data transfers between EC2-EU and S3-EU) would have been announced first. Really looking forward to that !
Nice! You guys are on fire...
John
johnmwillis.com
This a an excellent news and very helpful for many of our customers. As Bruno said, on-demand licensing and Microsoft support should be clarified (will it be like the official Oracle DB support on EC2 ?), but I expect PDC will bring more informations on theses subjects.
wow i am blown away by this and did not see it coming.
Werner-
This is indeed an interesting development!
I think one of the key issues will be the new infrastructure requirements, as I posted yesterday at Always On: http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/29349
"That raises the question of whether or not a network can scale to such heights in order to support such powerful applications, while maintaining acceptable availability and managing higher rates of change. If large enterprises are already experiencing rising costs per IP address, then it might take more than cheap electricity and real estate to make cloud computing commercially viable."
Sincerely,
Greg
This is a game changer. Entire IT departments could be run on Amazon's cloud.
Licensing should be interesting, but I have confidence Amazon and Microsoft will do what's in the customer's best interest - anything less and this will be relegated a novelty.
-jonte
wow i am blown away by this and did not see it coming.
Though I can't say we have enough traffic to need this yet, I am very happy MS is heading into the cloud with ASP.NET + SQL Server. Also looking forward to seeing some of the details..
Information Week reported earlier today that a little know start up, 3tera, http://www.3tera.com, announced the production version of their Windows Server Cloud solution is now available.
It is amazing to watch two companies beating Microsoft to the punch in the same day by delivery Cloud Computing for Windows Server.
3tera and Amazon take very different approaches to deliver Cloud Computing. Amazon is focusing on using their existing hardware with a web services model which allows users to create multiple instances of an application to run in parallel when they need more computing power. 3tera's AppLogic solution allows customers to provision and manage grids from a couple of machines to several thousand to enable scaling. 3tera's approach aims to offer options that appeal to both the start-up and the Enterprise such as multiple datacenters in 4 continents and the ability to choose between a hosted solution or a private cloud.
It is amazing to watch the competition building within the cloud even as the cloud tries to change tradition datacenter models. Will Amazon have to react to the 3tera announcement by offering Service Level Agreements for customers or extend beyond the single datacenter in order to provide disaster recovery solutions?
Any thoughts on offering basic Windows infrastructure (like ActiveDirectory, or basic file server functionality) in the EC2 cloud? Or having partners step up to provide this service?
Most Linux customers I imagine are 'do it yourself-ers' and would setup the needed services (e.g. DNS) on their own but I could see SMB/SME Windows-only shops perhaps being interested in outsourcing some of those core 'internal' IT services.
Would love to hear what you think...