[Seaside] Re: Amazon EC2

[Todd Blanchard]

On Sep 7, 2006, at 7:23 PM, Chris Muller wrote:

> S3, Turk and now EC2.  What a fascinating set of distributed computing
> services!  Do we have a new species of computer here (low-cost virtual
> computer)?  What a hopeful enablement for small players!

That is the idea.

> Wouldn't it be neat if, like Turk, anyone could contribute their own
> computer to sell their CPU cycles for a few pennies.  Does annyone  
> know
> how it works?

Yes, but if I told you, I'd have to kill you. :-)

> How else can Amazon quickly procure enough hardware to
> meet demand fluctuations, while still keeping prices fixed and so
> reasonable, I dunno?

By relentlessly yelling at their developers to improve the efficiency  
of their code.  :-)

Seriously, what they are doing is renting out spare capacity in their  
data centers and providing a public interface into their provisioning  
infrastructure.  Its the same stuff they use to run their own website  
and manage their own fleet, but demand fluctuates seasonally (you  
know - Christmas) and they end up with spare capacity.  So they've  
decided to rent it.