I'm a huge booster of AWS and EC2. I have two talks about cloud computing, and one that's pretty specific to AWS, on the No Fluff, Just Stuff traveling symposium.
With today's announcement about EC2 coming out of beta, and about Windows support, I wanted to try out a Windows server on EC2.
Heartbreak!
ec2-describe-images -a | grep windows IMAGE ami-782bcf11 ec2-public-windows-images/Server2003r2-i386-anon-v1.00.manifest.xml amazon available public i386 machine IMAGE ami-792bcf10 ec2-public-windows-images/Server2003r2-i386-EntAuth-v1.00.manifest.xml amazon available public i386 machine IMAGE ami-7b2bcf12 ec2-public-windows-images/Server2003r2-x86_64-anon-v1.00.manifest.xml amazon available public x86_64 machine IMAGE ami-7a2bcf13 ec2-public-windows-images/Server2003r2-x86_64-EntAuth-v1.00.manifest.xml amazon available public x86_64 machine IMAGE ami-3934d050 ec2-public-windows-images/SqlSvrExp2003r2-i386-Anon-v1.00.manifest.xml amazon available public i386 machine IMAGE ami-0f34d066 ec2-public-windows-images/SqlSvrExp2003r2-i386-EntAuth-v1.00.manifest.xml amazon available public i386 machine IMAGE ami-8135d1e8 ec2-public-windows-images/SqlSvrExp2003r2-x86_64-Anon-v1.00.manifest.xml amazon available public x86_64 machine IMAGE ami-9835d1f1 ec2-public-windows-images/SqlSvrExp2003r2-x86_64-EntAuth-v1.00.manifest.xml amazon available public x86_64 machine IMAGE ami-6834d001 ec2-public-windows-images/SqlSvrStd2003r2-x86_64-Anon-v1.00.manifest.xml amazon available public x86_64 machine IMAGE ami-6b34d002 ec2-public-windows-images/SqlSvrStd2003r2-x86_64-EntAuth-v1.00.manifest.xml amazon available public x86_64 machine IMAGE ami-cd8b6ea4 khaz_windows2003srvEE/image.manifest.xml 602961847481 available public i386 machine mtnygard@donk /var/tmp/nms $ ec2-run-instances ami-792bcf10 Server.InsufficientInstanceCapacity: Insufficient capacity. mtnygard@donk /var/tmp/nms $ ec2-run-instances ami-792bcf10 Server.InsufficientInstanceCapacity: Insufficient capacity. mtnygard@donk /var/tmp/nms $ ec2-run-instances ami-792bcf10 -z us-east-1a Server.InsufficientInstanceCapacity: Insufficient capacity. mtnygard@donk /var/tmp/nms $ ec2-run-instances ami-792bcf10 -z us-east-1b Server.InsufficientInstanceCapacity: Insufficient capacity. mtnygard@donk /var/tmp/nms $ ec2-run-instances ami-792bcf10 -z us-east-1c Server.InsufficientInstanceCapacity: Insufficient capacity.
Ack! Insufficient capacity?! That's not supposed to happen. Wait a second... let me try my own image
mtnygard@donk /var/tmp/nms $ ec2-describe-images IMAGE ami-8a0beee3 com.michaelnygard/nms-base-v1.manifest.xml 001356815600 available private i386 machine mtnygard@donk /var/tmp/nms $ ec2-run-instances ami-8a0beee3 RESERVATION r-0c4a9465 001356815600 default INSTANCE i-8e79d0e7 ami-8a0beee3 pending 0 m1.small 2008-10-23T17:25:21+0000 us-east-1c mtnygard@donk /var/tmp/nms $ ec2-run-instances ami-792bcf10 Server.InsufficientInstanceCapacity: Insufficient capacity.
Very interesting. Looks like there's enough capacity to run all the Linux based images, but not enough for Windows?
Seems like there might be some contractual limit on how many Windows licenses Amazon is allowed to rent out. I would also infer some serious pent-up demand to eat them all up this quickly.
Or maybe it's just a glitch. We'll see.
Update [1:15 PM] I was just able to start five instances. Could be fluctuations in demand, or it could be clearing of a glitch. It's always hard to tell what's really happening inside the cloud.
Update [2:50 PM] My plaintive post in the AWS forums got a very quick response. The inscrutable wizard JeffW posted a "we're working on it" and "it's fixed" messages just 3 minutes apart. We'll probably never know quite what was going on.