Rails app on EC2

Rails
1

Hello,

I’m thinking to move my app to ec2, but Im reading that amazon does not
guarantee that my instance doesn’t die?

So my question how can people use it for rails, and what does they do
when the amazon ec2 instance dies? Do we have any automatic job to get
new instance and get the app up and running again with all the gems
etc.?

Thanks for any comment :slight_smile:

2

On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 1:12 PM, Jamal S.
[email protected]wrote:

Hello,

I’m thinking to move my app to ec2, but Im reading that amazon does not
guarantee that my instance doesn’t die?

So my question how can people use it for rails, and what does they do
when the amazon ec2 instance dies?

Do we have any automatic job to get

new instance and get the app up and running again with all the gems
etc.?

Amazon EC2 has excellent uptime and I usually go with a minimum of 2
instances.
Furthermore, you can set it up so that it automatically spins-up a new
instance when one dies or sends a notification so that you can perform a
manually boot. Next, Amazon is very different from your traditional
hosting
companies because they charge by the hour for each active instance.
Thus,
in order for them to make money, the active instance needs to be
running.
Otherwise, they will loose money.

You can find many gems on gemcutter.org for interfacing with Amazon EC2
as
well as their other services. For a current listing of AMIs, I would
recommend directing those questions to Amazon. Lastly, there are
alternatives for using EC2 like Engine Y. and Rightscale to name a
few.
Also, there are other architectures like Google App Engine. Thus, I
would
recommend doing your research as well as test driving these different
systems.

Good luck,

-Conrad

Thanks for any comment :slight_smile:

3

On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 2:39 AM, Jamal S.
[email protected]wrote:

Thanks for your reply :slight_smile:

Well as I understand when instance dies you could lose your static ip
and you can lose all your data on the instance?

Amazon Elastic IP address (i.e. static IP address) is connected to your
Amazon account and not the instance. Next, you can also set it up so
that it takes snap-shots of your database as well as your instances.
This
you’ll have to do whether you’re using Amazon or a traditional hosting
service.

So I also need to find another service to host the database.

But I understand that all those type of issues can be fixed by using
Rightscale or maybe Engine Y…

Yes, Rightscale and Engine makes interfacing to Amazon much easier
instead of using Amazon directly. However, there’s definitely a cost
associated to their services in addition to the Amazon cost.

They handle the notification when instance die and create another one
for you with all the data it needs?

Yes, this is possible with Rightscale and I’m sure that Engine Y.
supports
similar features.

Good luck,

-Conrad

4

Thanks for your reply :slight_smile:

Well as I understand when instance dies you could lose your static ip
and you can lose all your data on the instance?

So I also need to find another service to host the database.

But I understand that all those type of issues can be fixed by using
Rightscale or maybe Engine Y…

They handle the notification when instance die and create another one
for you with all the data it needs?

Conrad T. wrote:

On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 1:12 PM, Jamal S.
[email protected]wrote:

Hello,

I’m thinking to move my app to ec2, but Im reading that amazon does not
guarantee that my instance doesn’t die?

So my question how can people use it for rails, and what does they do
when the amazon ec2 instance dies?

Do we have any automatic job to get

new instance and get the app up and running again with all the gems
etc.?

Amazon EC2 has excellent uptime and I usually go with a minimum of 2
instances.
Furthermore, you can set it up so that it automatically spins-up a new
instance when one dies or sends a notification so that you can perform a
manually boot. Next, Amazon is very different from your traditional
hosting
companies because they charge by the hour for each active instance.
Thus,
in order for them to make money, the active instance needs to be
running.
Otherwise, they will loose money.

You can find many gems on gemcutter.org for interfacing with Amazon EC2
as
well as their other services. For a current listing of AMIs, I would
recommend directing those questions to Amazon. Lastly, there are
alternatives for using EC2 like Engine Y. and Rightscale to name a
few.
Also, there are other architectures like Google App Engine. Thus, I
would
recommend doing your research as well as test driving these different
systems.

Good luck,

-Conrad

Thanks for any comment :slight_smile:

5

Quoting Jamal S. [email protected]:

Hello,

I’m thinking to move my app to ec2, but Im reading that amazon does not
guarantee that my instance doesn’t die?

So my question how can people use it for rails, and what does they do
when the amazon ec2 instance dies? Do we have any automatic job to get
new instance and get the app up and running again with all the gems
etc.?

My instance on Amazon now has an uptime of 143 days. Use Elastic Block
Storage (EBS) for persistent data (e.g. databases, application code, and
configuration data).

Yeah I know I should have down notification and restart/reboot more
automated,
but I haven’t needed it yet.

Jeffrey