Amazon Web Services (AWS) has long been the forerunner of the cloud computing industry. The people who research, follow, and use AWS are usually an enthusiastic group and love to talk about it and how it can be applied to applications and architectures. There are various AWS User Groups out there and I was lucky enough to find out there was one in my area (Rochester, NY).
Earlier this week I attended a Rochester Amazon Web Services User Group (RAWSUG) event hosted at RIT. Although the majority of what was covered was an overview presentation of AWS for those not familiar with it, it was great to see a room full of local AWS enthusiasts.
The presenters were Mitch Garnaat from Cloud Right and David Kavanagh from Direct Thought. They did a great job presenting and I enjoyed asking them questions and meeting them afterwards. Chris Moyer, from Cloud Right, also joined to support questions. Here are some of the items I noted that stood out from the session:
- Ability to mount read only version of an EBS filesystem to more than one machine has been talked about Amazon and will potentially be on the radar for release in the future.
- David has been working on a slick iPhone interface for AWS and gave a demo. I liked it, however wished effort would have been put towards a mobile web version instead so that it can benefit all mobile platforms.
- Confirmation that Amazon will be providing a hardware load balancing solution; availability date was TBD
I enjoyed the event greatly and look forward to the next one and potentially working with David, Mitch, and Chris in the future. If you are looking to master the cloud, finding a group of other cloud enthusiastis that you can meet with and share news/ideas is a great approach. I highly recommend checking out the AWS User Group page and see and attend an event near you.
