Have you been reading the news lately and been wondering what clouds have to do with computing? Have you gotten lost in the fog of buzzwords and marketing speak surrounding “cloud computing”? What does it all mean and what does it have to do with a company which started by selling books?

Cloud computing (and in part EC2) is one of the great shifts in the computing industry and it is happening today. Servers of all sizes can be brought into existence and thrown away at a whim, with just a few simple web API calls and for a few cents per hour. Best of all, Linux is what powers and runs it all.

Sean O’Connor will be providing a quick overview of what cloud computing is/means/can so as well as and introduction to Amazon’s Linux based cloud computing offering, EC2. Concepts will be explained for all to understand and an entire cluster of virtual computers will be created and destroyed before a live audience. Some time will even be given to discuss the future cloud computing, local and hybrid clouds.

Presentation

A video of the presentation can be viewed at vimeo. The slides are available as a PDF.

UPDATE Some people have reported problems playing back the vimeo link, you can now also download the source video.

  • Amazon EC2 - The offical Amazon EC2 site.
  • RightScale - An excellent tool for managing EC2 deployments which will be discussed.
  • ElasticFox - Another EC2 management tool.
  • Eucalyptus - Open source tools for running your own cloud. 

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