AWS: Overview

Amazon Web Services can be a bit overwhelming. When last counted, there were 48 tools listed on the front page.

We primarily use these services:

• EC2: This is the Elastic Cloud Computing dashboard. It is used to manage instances of virtual machines. Stacks started by OpsWorks and CloudFormation will both appear here.
• CloudFormation: Used to instantiate stacks based on a template. The template can prompt for user provided parameters, to customize the instance. This facility is employed by users who are spinning up their own CHORDS instance. N.B. We need to find a way to update CHORDS Rails software on a running CHORDS instance, without loosing the existing database.
• OpsWorks: A DevOps application management service. It allows you to package and instantiate systems that are a combination of operating system, services and applications (Linux, MySql, Rails, custom code). Its big advantage seems to be that there is a one-button capability to redeploy the CHORDS application code, without regenerating the system. This means that the existing database will not be lost.
• S3: Simple Storage Service. We may use this to save artifacts that users will need access to, such as the CloudFormation template.