Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)

Okay we all know what Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is. Now there is a new service from Amazon called Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). with S3 you use Amazon to store your data, images,whatever but with EC2 you use Amazon to do your computing for you.

From the site:

Amazon EC2 Functionality
Amazon EC2 presents a true virtual computing environment, allowing you to use web service interfaces to requisition machines for use, load them with your custom application environment, manage your network's access permissions, and run your image using as many or few systems as you desire.

To use Amazon EC2, you simply:
Create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) containing your applications, libraries, data and associated configuration settings. Or use our pre-configured, templated images to get up and running immediately.

Upload the AMI into Amazon S3. Amazon EC2 provides tools that make storing the AMI simple. Amazon S3 provides a safe, reliable and fast repository to store your images.

Use Amazon EC2 web service to configure security and network access.

Use Amazon EC2 web service to start, terminate, and monitor as many instances of your AMI as needed.

Pay for the instance hours and bandwidth that you actually consume.

Service Highlights


Elastic
Amazon EC2 enables you to increase or decrease capacity within minutes, not hours or days. You can commission one, hundreds or even thousands of server instances simultaneously. Of course, because this is all controlled with web service APIs, your application can automatically scale itself up and down depending on its needs.


Completely Controlled
You have complete control of your instances. You have root access to each one, and you can interact with them as you would any machine. Each instance predictably provides the equivalent of a system with a 1.7Ghz x86 processor, 1.75GB of RAM, 160GB of local disk, and 250Mb/s of network bandwidth.


Designed for use with Amazon S3
Amazon EC2 works in conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to provide a combined solution for computing and storage across a wide range of applications.


Reliable
Amazon EC2 offers a highly reliable environment where replacement instances can be rapidly and reliably commissioned. The service runs within Amazon's proven network infrastructure and datacenters.


Secure
Amazon EC2 provides web service interfaces to control network security. You define groups of instances and their desired accessibility.


Inexpensive
Amazon EC2 passes on to you the financial benefits of Amazon's scale. You pay a very low
rate for the compute capacity you actually consume. Compare this with the
significant up-front expenditures traditionally required to purchase and
maintain hardware, either in-house or hosted. This frees you from many of the
complexities of capacity planning, transforms what are commonly large fixed
costs into much smaller variable costs, and removes the need to over-buy "safety
net" capacity to handle periodic traffic spikes.


Get all the details here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=201590011