New edge routing service for Amazon S3
Amazon have launched Amazon Cloudfront today with an announcment on their blog as a service to layer on top of S3. Cloudfront allows you to serve content through Amazon’s edge cache which is located around the world in key locations. When you request content through the assigned domain name, it automatically routes you to the physically closest location to retrieve content. If the content is not yet there, Cloudfront will fetch it from S3 and cache it.
One of the most important services this provides is Asian based distribution points for content on S3; previously only available in Europe or USA. This should increase uptake of AWS in Asia, and with a larger uptake hopefully Amazon will look to make other services worldwide such as DevPay and mechanical Turk (currently only available in the USA).
For a full description including the list of locations Cloudfront distributes through take a look at the detailed description on the official Cloudfront page.
In at the deep end with Cloud Computing
Scenario: You’re new to the cloud infrastructure market but like the idea of flexible billing, rapid rollout (or termination) zero commitments and the possibility for inifite expansion.
These four blog articles all posted today take you through the basics of understanding what you need to get started in a non-vendor biased way:
First, is it right for you? Of course it probabaly is, but this explains why:
Next, how do you identify what makes a cloud providor a cloud providor?
http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2008/11/12/15-ways-i-am-wrong-about-enterprise-cloud-computing/
Then, how do you choose which provider to us? Some are limited to certain technologies, whereas some are so open you can treat your cloud instance however you like.
http://www.manyniches.com/cloudcomputing/cloud-strategy-a-question-of-motivations/
And finally, how do you pitch to your customer that it’s safe? The traditional idea of “this website is on this server” is a hard idea to shake for some people and this could make them doubt the reliability or stability of something that doesn’t physically exist. This blog post covers SLAs in cloud computing:
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Cloud-Computing-Part-3-SLA-Spirit-in-the-Sky-65137.html
Cloud computing is such a hot topic right now that with the most minimal of effort you can find all the resources, contacts and knowledge you need to get started quickly with cloud computing. A quick search in twitter for example produces a hive of chit chat on the topic with relevant links, experiences and tutorials.
