Amazon EC2 Cloud Computing and Application Design

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Abstract
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The specifics of a cloud's computing architecture may have an impact on application design. This is particularly important in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud environments.This presentation analyzes aspects of the Amazon EC2 IaaS cloud environment that differ from a traditional datacenter and introduces general best practices for ensuring data privacy, storage persistence, and reliable DBMS backup. Best practices for application robustness and scalability on demand are reviewed and are especially significant in leveraging the full potential of an IaaS cloud. The need for a cloud application management and configuration system is briefly reviewed and two alternate approaches to cloud application management are described (RightScale and Kaavo).

* Introduction to Cloud Computing Architecture
* Overview of Amazon EC2
* EC2 Cloud Application Design and Best Practices
o Ensuring robustness and scalability on demand
o Ensuring data privacy, storage persistence, and reliable DBMS backup
* Managing EC2 cloud application infrastructures
* Creating a cloud application system development life cycle



Presenter
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Jorge Noa
CTO of HyperStratus.

Jorge has held engineering management and system architect positions at many Silicon Valley-based companies. He has extensive experience designing and managing large mission critical web-based computing environments. In the last year he has focused on issues in cloud application design and best practices. Prior to HyperStratus, he was most recently CIO of TraxRx, a software company in the emerging field of RFID based marketing and sales analysis of pharmaceutical drugs. Previously he designed networking and database software for Oracle, Ingres, and Informix Software were he was Communications Architect designing distributed databases and client/server product offerings. He also served as Chief Architect for PayDirect, a Yahoo! equivalent of PayPal, and Timogen Systems, a workflow software company offering supply chain optimization products. Earlier in his career, he served as a software engineer for NASA and Bell Labs, focusing on Unix kernel development and inter-system connectivity.