Foray into Cloud Computing – The Amazon Services EC2
Last time I did a project using Amazon S3 for a client which was a data backup solution involved storing the data of client machines on Amazon S3 servers and then sync the data with local copies. It was real fun foraying into the world of Cloud Computing and playing around with services over the web.
This time again I got a chance to play with Amazon Services and into more of them. The task was to setup a Live On demand Video Streaming Server using Wowza Media server, Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute, Amazon DevPay and Video Streams from various RSS Feeds.
The fun started with learning to use something called EC2 UI for firefox. Its a cool firefox plugin which gives you access to use EC2 instances from your browser.
For those people who hate putty and the black console this is a life saver. However me being a geek , it was just of matter of getting my hands wet .
To start , you need to create a key file which is a x.509 private key with the extension ” .pem” . Amazon EC2 doesnot use passwords for authentication , but it uses certificates to do the same. So the challenge response mechanism is basically powered by sending a certificate file(.ppk) in putty which is a file signed using your private key (.pem). Amazon has its own copy of the private key which it uses to authenticate the .ppk file.
Check putty’s manuals on how to generate a public key certificate file. i.e (.ppk).
This project gave me unique insights on the wonderfulness of EC2 and the power that Cloud computing possess.
Will surely write more on this in future ! Keep watching..
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