Amazon Launches EC2 Web-based Console

Finally Amazon has released a web-based console to manage your EC2 instances. This should make life much easier for those who have not found the other great tools and services for EC2 management such as Scalr and Elasticfox. The information here is a summary of this post on Cnet. Amazon’s interface will allow for the following:

1. AMI management: browse and search (Amazon Machine Images), launch instances from AMIs, deregister and register AMIs
2. Instance management: launch, reboot, terminate, get console output, RDP/SSH (Remote Desktop Protocol/Secure Shell) help, etc.
3. Security group management: create and delete security groups, add and remove permissions, configure firewall settings, open and close ports
4. Elastic IP panagement: create and release (Internet Protocol) addresses, associate IPs to instances
5. Elastic block store: create, delete, attach, and detach volumes. Take snapshots and manage snapshots.
6. Key pair management: create and delete public/private key pairs.

There is a video of the Web GUI here by Mike Culver that show just how easy it is to get started with Amazon’s EC2

It will be interesting to see what the fallout of this move will be in the coming months and what type of market share Amazon will take away from the other services that have been around much longer.