Cloud computing Comparisons: EC2, Mosso and Gogrid

The idea of using the Internet to provide IT capabilities as a service is relatively new, but recently people have reached a climax in their attention. Infoq has also published several articles, such as "Introduction to Virtualization" and an article on virtualization security, but there is still a lack of comparisons between different cloud providers. This article compares three cloud computing providers, which provide a server-centric solution, starting with a description of how to start three cloud computing services and then comparing the performance, price, and availability of services to three service providers. Overview

Cloud computing Definition

When people come into contact with a new technology, it is easy to overlook the basic level of understanding at first, and then tend to go back and learn these things again. In order to avoid this misunderstanding, it is necessary to first give a simple definition of cloud computing. Wikipedia is defined as:

"Cloud computing is a computing style that delivers it-related capabilities as a service. With the use of Internet technology, the number of external users of cloud computing is generally very large. While users are enjoying the service, they may not have any knowledge or expertise about the technology infrastructure that supports the cloud, and of course they don't need to be able to control it.





the resources visited are generally provided and operated by Third-party providers, and the providers often have several solid data processing centers. Cloud users purchase computing power on demand, and they are generally not particularly concerned about the underlying technology that completes server capacity growth. But for developers who are very concerned about the underlying technology, cloud computing also offers an increasing number of options for platform services.

This is generally the case, although some providers also provide low-level control functions, but most of the idea is to make the cloud as simple as possible.

Why cloud computing is applied

There are many reasons why individuals or business groups need cloud computing, including:

costs-lower connectivity costs, more efficient management of hardware extensions-no need to buy and maintain real hardware, reduce cost, and save space--scaling and compression can be very easy to achieve, providing customers with more reliable services

These are just a few of the reasons the cloud is a viable option, but one thing is for sure, choosing which cloud service is not a hassle.

service profile

Amazon EC2

Amazon's official website describes its services as follows:

Amazon's flexible Computing cloud (Amazon elastic Compute Cloud, EC2) is a Web service that provides variable-size computing capabilities in the cloud. This cloud is designed to make it easier for developers to make web-scoped computations.




The
Amazon EC2 Web Service interface is very simple, and you can get and configure computing power without much effort. You will be able to fully control the computing resources and run them in Amazon's time-tested computing environment. The time it takes to get and start Amazon EC2 new server instances has been reduced to minutes, and you can quickly adjust your computing capacity when computing capacity changes, whether it becomes larger or smaller. Amazon EC2 has changed computational economics so that you can pay for your computing power on demand. Developers can leverage the Amazon EC2 architecture to have disaster-recovery capabilities and remove them from many common disasters.

Amazon recommends using Amazon EC2 first to build a Linux environment, familiarize yourself with Web services, install SSH clients and Java 5 (or later). At the end of this brief introduction, you'll get a link to the Amazon EC2 document that has detailed instructions for this.

First, you must create three related Amazon accounts, which are Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounts, Amazon simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) accounts and Amazon EC2 accounts. But after you set up your AWS account, the other two accounts are built with just a few clicks of the mouse.

After the account is established, the next step is to set up command-line tools. You can use the command-line tools or APIs provided by Amazon EC2 to manage your cloud. The command-line tool is packaged into a zip file (click to download) and can be used directly after decompression, although several environment variables (ec2_home, Ec2_private_key, and Ec2_cert) must be set up before.

When Setup and configuration are complete, the next step is to start the Amazon Machine Image (AMI). You can use the command line to create your own image, or you can see some of the images that Amazon exposes. When you select an image, you need to generate an SSH keypair to log on to this image instance. If you are using putty, you also need to convert your personal key to Putty format, which you can find here.

The command for the boot image is "ec2-run-instances", and then the image will go into the "run" state, and the status check can be made with the "ec2-describe-instances" command. Before you access the image, make sure that the required ports are open. To use SSH and HTTP, you can use the "ec2-authorize" tool to open ports 22 and 80, respectively.

You can verify that the operation is correct by simply accessing the site's URL in the browser (the address is given after the "ec2-run-instances" command is executed, for example, ec2-67-202-51-223.compute-1.amazonaws.com). After the basic setup and Setup is complete, you can deploy the content and use your new cloud smoothly.

See the Amazon EC2 Technical documentation site for a number of more detailed guidance. Next we'll go on the installation and setup method for Gogrid.

Gogrid

Gogrid claims to be the only cloud service provider with real control capabilities. They provide the multi-server Control Panel, which enables deployment and management of a cloud server that needs to be load balanced in a matter of minutes. The start of the service is simpler than Amazon EC2, and the time is naturally saved. Register an account on the Gogrid site, receive a confirmation message after a few minutes, and then start the server Setup.

Login with your account will first enter a simple user homepage, click on the "Add" button will appear several options (see below):

Depending on the type of Web server you want, click on the relevant button and a new window will appear in which to enter the necessary parameters:

First choose a name and description for your server, where the name and description are "simple" and "a simple Web server". Then select an IP address that appears on the left side of the screen and automatically prompts you when you enter the IP input box. The IP address is provided by Gogrid and is bound to the entity machine. Alternatively, you can choose the RAM size (512MB, 1GB, 2GB), the operating system (CentOS, Red Hat, Windows 2003 Server), and the image type (Apache, LAMP, IIS).

Once the configuration is complete, you can access the server immediately. Open the browser, enter the selected IP address, a confirmation message will appear on the screen.

Network-related transactions are done by Gogrid, but it also allows users to add IP addresses and configure DNS information, for example, when you have your own domain name, you can configure this domain name to point to your Gogird server.

Adding load balancing and databases is also very simple, with a few clicks plus some simple configurations that can be built in a minute. Additional servers can be completed via the Web interface (see above) or the Gogrid API. This API is a RESTful Web service that can be invoked by Api,java, PHP, Python, and Ruby, which provides all the functionality that can be done through the Web interface.

What we'll talk about here is Mosso, a cloud service provided by Rackspace.

Mosso

Mosso The idea of cloud computing in conjunction with the exclusive/shared server environment that Web Access centers typically provide. Instead of providing root access to the server, Mosso installs the operating system for the server and pre-installed the software, which is no different from a standard Web Access center. This makes it easy for Mosso to monitor and adjust its services on demand, and end customers no longer have to worry about things like operating systems, equipment, and load balancing.

The first step in starting a service is still to register an account on the Mosso website and receive a confirmation email. After successful login, first comes to the Control Panel page.

One of the goals of Mosso is to be as simple as possible, with just a few clicks, which is similar to Gogrid. To set up an Internet site and point it to an existing or just registered domain name, simply click on the "Websites & Email" button.

The configuration page can do some basic operations, including some database operations and Web server operations.

Mosso's service guide is also very simple and straightforward, and a few clicks will give you a brief introduction of the offer, so you can be clear about what you need. When the initial configuration is complete, FTP can be used to upload the content of the site. In Control Panel it is convenient to add SSL authentication, modify user account and email settings, change the technology used at the bottom (can be changed from Linux/apache to Ruby on Rails), view the site statistics, and so on.

After completing the introduction to Amazon EC2, Gogrid, and Mosso, the next section compares the services provided by the three.

Service Comparison

function

Amazon ec2gogridmossowindows Supportyes (in) Yesyeslinux Supportyesyesyesopen Solaris Supportyesnonographical User Interfacenoyesyescommand Lineyesnonoapiyesyesnoroot Accessyesyesnosshyesyesnoftpyesyesyeshardware Configurableyesyesno

So far only Amazon has allowed the deployment of the customer's own system image in the service. Amazon's official site provides information on how to deploy the open Solaris image, and other sites also scroll how to deploy Windows Server 2003 images. Gogrid also intends to provide the ability to generate a variety of server images in the future, which theoretically means that its services will support multiple operating systems.

All three providers provide FTP access support, where Mosso does not have full root access. Mosso is also the only provider that does not have the ability to provide hardware configuration, although it is designed to do so.

Price

Amazon EC2

Prices are determined by three factors, including instance types (Standard vs high-cpu), data transfer, and resilient IP addresses.

The price of a standard instance varies from $0.10 to $0.80 per hour, and High-cpu is $0.20-$0.80. The price of data transmission varies from $0.00 to $0.17 depending on the source and destination of the data (Internet, available regions (availability Zone) and regional).

Finally is the IP address, its price range is from free to each resilient IP address remapping $0.10, which depends on how the IP address is used throughout the month.

Gogrid

Gogrid pricing Three factors based on the amount of RAM used by the server (Hour, server RAM), incoming data, and outgoing data. Price strategy is very simple, each server RAM 0.19 dollars per hour, outgoing data volume price is 0.50 U.S. dollars per gigabyte, the amount of incoming data is free.

Mosso

Mosso provides a standard fee of USD 100 per month, including:

online software to build sites, servers, and mail accounts-unlimited 50GB of high-performance san storage space 500GB monthly bandwidth 10,000 cycles per month x 7x 365 telephone and online voice service support

For large applications with a monthly visitor count of around 100,000, Mosso has an incremental pricing strategy based on scale. For the additional portion, the hard disk space is $0.50 per gigabyte, bandwidth is 0.20 USD per gigabyte, and each calculation period is 0.01 dollars.

Usability

Only Mosso in three service providers entered the "Product" phase. Amazon EC2 and Gogrid services are still in Beta, though their scope and maturity are growing fast.

Summary

With the advent of cloud computing, many cloud providers have emerged overnight. The choice of service providers is not easy, as each provider offers unique features, pricing strategies, flexibility and control measures. This article first introduces the Amazon EC2, Gogrid, and Mosso services, and then compares the functionality, pricing, and usability of the three service providers. For more detailed information, you can access the following links:

Amazon EC2 Getting started with Amazon EC2 Gogrid Blog gogrid Wiki mosso mosso FAQ

Read the English text: Comparing the CLOUD:EC2, Mosso, and Gogrid.