About a year ago I looked into AWS (amazon Web Services) and EC2 (Elastic Computing Cloud), at the time I was not overly impressed simply because of the complexity of the setup that the user was expected to endure just to get it running. It wasn't until recently that I needed to re evaluate the service again for a project when I came across this beautiful utility. With this extension I hereby give EC2 to the rest of us.
Ok, so I'm not the creator or even a contributor to this plugin but I would like the opportunity to show you a bit about it and how it simplifies the whole process of setting up and maintaining an EC2 instance and maintaining it.
First I feel as though I should explain about EC2 and AWS to bring those outside the loop back in.
The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a Web-based service that allows business subscribers to run application programs in the Amazon.com computing environment. The EC2 can serve as a practically unlimited set of virtual machines.
To use the EC2, a subscriber creates an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) containing the operating system, application programs and configuration settings. Then the AMI is uploaded to the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and registered with Amazon EC2, creating a so-called AMI identifier (AMI ID). Once this has been done, the subscriber can requisition virtual machines on an as-needed basis. Capacity can be increased or decreased in real time from as few as one to more than 1000 virtual machines simultaneously. Billing takes place according to the computing and network resources consumed.
Now that we are all on the same page we can move forward, The process to create a working machine used to include:
-
Building your own custom AMI
-
Generating a key pair or embedding a root password into your AMI build script
-
Installing a set of EC2 tools onto a linux machine (or VM)
-
Generating a security certificate
-
Utilizing a command line interface
-
pain and suffering
This is no longer the case! With the Firefox plugin the steps and the pain are greatly reduced. With this utility the steps now include:
-
Choosing a pre built AMI (or building one if you choose) (this improvement is not related to Firefox in any way)
-
Using the GUI to generate the key pair
-
Generating a security certificate (I believe this is optional)
-
Pretending it took longer than it did so the boss wont catch you sneaking in a few extra doughnut breaks or trips to the water cooler.
The first and nicest improvement in this reviewers opinion is the rich GUI interface that is provided. Following this is the ease of administration and having all your information at your fingertips. Following at a close third is the ability to call upon your favorite SSH client from within the GUI in a nearly seamless manor. Last on our list of great features is one that really stands out, a unified user experience across many platforms, Linux, Mac or Windows Administration is 98% the same bar your choice of SSH utility, This really helps in offices where developers and admins are sometimes forced to tackle issues from whatever box they may be in front of at that second.
The Interface that is provided with this utility is so user friendly that I put it to the test, I sat my eleven year old brother in front of it and simply explained what end goal I wanted him to achieve, which was just to have a running instance, minus having to explain to him what a key pair was He had it running in less than five minutes.
So for the rest of us out there, you know who you are, the ones that go pale at the mention of the word terminal, the ones who would rather be decapitated than wade through 32 pages of documentations just to find your answer on page 31, this is for you. The Firefox extension does still have a limitation in the respect that when you connect to SSH your still faced with a command line but even that can be fixed with a nice tutorial on how to install x11 and VNC now cant it?
This plugin is released under the Apache License 2.0 and has all the advantages and restrictions thereof. the direct download link is HERE. and requires Firefox 1.5 or later. If your already running Firefox 3.0 HERE is a guide to get it working there untill something more official comes about.
Keep in tune for a complete walk through on this utility and that X11, VNC howto as well!