AWS experiences at EBS.gr. EBS uses AWS for immediate deployment of short-term multiple server instances, scalability tests, demos of large deployments, and big data processing. EBS also implements SaaS offerings on AWS like a cloud file storage platform and Android backup app. The file storage platform is distributed, scalable, and supports multiple interfaces. It was designed from scratch as a scalable cloud application using services like EC2, S3, CloudWatch, and EBS volumes. Administration effort is minimal on AWS while achieving real elasticity. Availability and stability is excellent but monitoring, alerts, and backups are still needed.

1. AWS experiences @ EBS.gr
AWSUG GR meetup #1
16 Feb 2012
Fotis Stamatelopoulos (@fstama)

2. Why and when we use AWS
● Immediate deployment of short-term multiple
server instances (pay as you go)
– Scalability tests & multi-server experiments
– Demos of (large) deployments to customers
– Big data processing (e.g. log analysis)
● SaaS implementations (minimized
administration + unique services like S3, etc.)
– MyNetworkFolders (cloud file storage)
– CloudUp (Android cloud backup app)

3. ● SaaS offering implemented by EBS.gr
● A distributed, scalable file storage platform:
– supporting access via multiple interfaces
(web browser, mobile devices, desktop,
WebDAV)
– provides a RESTful API
– based on our FOSS project gss-project.org
● It was designed from scratch as a scalable
cloud application

6. Design Decisions
● Clustering without session replication
● Stateless, RESTful design
– No HTTP session / no sticky session
● Multiple levels of caching (client, front-end,
second-level, etc)
● Use polyglot storage

7. Architecture
(Key Components)
small ec2
instances
larger
DB instances
EBS volumes
backed-up to S3

8. AWS services involved
● Currently using in production:
– EC2 for server instances (multiple small)
– S3 - reliable, replicated file storage
(the main reason we deployed MNF on AWS)
– CloudWatch
– Elastic Block Storage (EBS) volumes
● Plan to use:
– Elastic Load Balancing
– CloudFront
– DynamoDB (have to port our mongo implementation)

9. Findings
● Administration effort is minimal
● S3 rules! as a reliable file storage back-end
● With AWS you can achieve real elasticity
● Availability and stability of services &
resources is excellent, but you still need:
– Monitoring & alerts
– Backup
● Fine tuning and good design will save you $$

10. Thank you! Questions?
@fstama
http://linkedin.com/in/fstamatelopoulos