Amazon EC2 Reviews

I'm using this solution for my company. We use multiple versions according to our needs and different types of instances and OS, like Windows, Linux, or auto-based.

The solution is deployed on a private cloud.

We have collaborated with AWS on different new service launches and POC, but we are not partners officially. We are a third party.

The most valuable features are the scalability options, low maintenance, and options to upgrade. AWS support is also pretty good. The generation upgrade is pretty simple and standardized. Earlier when I gave a review, we were struggling with it, but now the process is straightforward and standardized. We would love it to be automated, but the way it is right now is okay.

We buy EC2 instances, we buy OS, and we also pay for OS licenses. Support doesn't share or give insights on OS-based issues. That needs to improve because if someone is buying an EC2 instance with the Windows server and SQL license, the client expects that there will be a minimum level of support. We are not looking for Dell support or troubleshooting, but we definitely look for issues that are complex at the OS level, generally.

We would also like to see a better logging mechanism, which can be helpful for the product or generation. An additional feature should be better OS-level support for loggings, which are visible only to AWS support. There should be a way to at least have admin-level access to those so that we can analyze better, or if they come up with the automated generation upgrade. Once you deploy those solutions, you end up using them for years, and in that generation change for those EC2 instances happen. So, automating those will be key.

I have been working with this solution for almost five months.

Support is pretty good.

I have had a little bit of experience with Microsoft Azure. We evaluated it directly in the cloud.

If we compare different cloud providers, Microsoft has its own advantages, but EC2 is catching up quickly.

The advantage Microsoft has just depends on the typical use case. If you are a Microsoft customer and have been a customer for a few years, then you will probably find it easier to handle Azure than AWS. AWS has its certified AMIs available. But native support of Azure is better in terms of those technologies. Similarly, people generally find that AWS is a bit cheaper, but there are personal preferences or design concepts, which will be handled better depending upon the use case or tech stack in different cloud providers.

Gradually, it has improved. Initially, it was complex but it's pretty standard now. It will depend upon who is installing it, their experience, and their familiarity with that cloud provider. Given that we have two rounds of experience, we found it to be pretty straightforward. If someone is new to AWS, it will probably take more time.

The price is reasonable, but there is definitely an opportunity to lower it in instances which are of a higher configuration, because they have been typically used for the long term. There should be custom plans that cater to certain customers who have their uses. The reserved instances prices for SQL server are not that great. We definitely look for such things. 

We are exploring different managed database services, like RDS and Serverless Aurora. There is a scope of implementation on those services, which are pretty new, and most capabilities which are available in instance-based services are not available in Aurora Serverless.

I would rate this solution 7 out of 10. 

I will say AWS EC2 is a great place to start. Microsoft Azure is also good. The solution will be dependent upon the exact use case, but AWS EC2 is a good place to start.

I primarily use Amazon AWS and EC2 services. The primary use case is to spawn servers quickly with a particular hardware memory, CPU, and storage footprint. It gives me a hardware service quickly, I can get a virtual machine with Linux installed with a particular storage configuration. I can also configure the security and bring it up. 

Practically, it gives me a mini data center in one or two minutes. 

We need to bring a large number of servers to do our jobs. We do a lot of crawling jobs hosted in AWS. We have templates available to us to bring a pool of servers up and running, hardware as a service. 

In our use case, it's not the number of users using the solution, it's more the number of processes that respond. Based on the compressions and the jobs we do or sometimes we crawl, so the scaling is more in terms of the amount of data acquisition we do.

The ability to bring up servers and then do the computation and deposit means we don't have to maintain a data center. Everything is virtual and the security is also taken care of. It helps us to achieve compliance. Being a small startup with the security features that AWS provides helps us with compliance.

The encryption, storage, physical security, and data security features at the protocol and storage level, helps us as an organization to achieve greater compliance and keep our business running in a secure fashion.

The features I find valuable are EC2, the admin control, and the ability to add the elastic IPs and then attach storage; all of those features are valuable. Also, the Admin Control, Cost Explorer, and the billing features are valuable. That gives me the ability to understand the costs. Amazon AWS has some savings plans. 

In cloud computing, people think the cloud is cheap, but you need to know how to use it and configure the right plans. 

AWS Cost Explorer and the billing features are also valuable. 

S3 buckets and fast storage are also very nice features. 

In terms of improvement, they could build some client-side desktop tools that provide easier connectivity to Amazon. 

I have been using Amazon AWS for 3 years.

In terms of availability and stability, they have not been an issue so far. I've used it in all previous organizations for very large-scale deployments and they're working fine. 
We are not seeing any outages because of Amazon, except if we are using spot instances, they can go down at any moment. We will only use these when we can afford server downtime, so not for production. They sometimes can go down for an hour and so on, but other than that the EC2 instances are fairly stable and great, we have not had an issue so far. 

Scaling is not a problem because they themselves give you Amazon auto-scaling features. Very few users know how to use it properly. Our VM and images should be properly packaged and then you have to configure it. The load boxes have to be configured, you need to do some configuration, then you can basically vertically scale by choosing a server with a larger memory footprint, or you can go for horizontal scaling by adding more configuration into it. It's scaling over the box. 

I've never had to use Amazon support services yet. I've not opened any tickets so far, I don't have first-hand experience of going through the support process with Amazon. I have been supported by their enablement teams that work with startups, they are fairly good. 

I've been using AWS for quite a while, there are some use cases where I have not directly used any other cloud product so far, I mostly stick to Amazon. 

The initial setup is more or less straightforward for a developer. For somebody who is not from a pure development background it obviously requires you to understand what a public IP address is. You need to understand what storage is and then how to use it. It's mostly for developers and administrators, not for a non-technical audience; for people who can configure a server and have technical background. 

We mostly implement everything on our own, we don't have to bring in a consultant. The only time we brought in a consultant from AWS itself was to take up the offer of a free review of our infrastructure and they will help us to optimize. They advise on which plan based on our use case. Other than that, most of the technical documentation is available and we can operate on our own. 

If we already have the script and everything available, the deployment takes no more than half an hour. We already have the templates, but the template development, the scripts, all the tools development will take some time, maybe a month or so depending on the use case. But, once you have them set up, it's basically a matter of 15 minutes to half an hour.
There were no annual or monthly licensing costs as it's completely based on usage. Depending on how many hours of use, the instance we run, and the storage we use, you get a very detailed account of usage in your billing document. 

I did not go through an evaluation process beforehand, mostly it was chosen by the organizations. I did evaluate other vendors on cost optimization to see whether switching to another vendor would improve cost.

I wanted to optimize the infrastructure to see whether the problem is with the way we use it or if Amazon itself is expensive. I was able to bring down the cost with some of the cleanups and saving plans they offer. 

We plan to increase usage as our business expands, we will grow with AWS as it expands.
In terms of the EC2 services, it's an amazing product, in terms of the computational power and the flexibility and then the number of features and services they provide, it's awesome actually.

I would rate it a ten out of ten.

I installed the Windows server using EC2, and I set up some product programs. 

The product is easy to use.

It can scale up.

The product is easy to set up. 

There is no need to have physical space to set up a server in. 

If the solution was cheaper, if the price was less, it would be better. 

I've used the solution for three or four years. 

It is quite a stable, reliable product. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution scales very well. People can expand easily.

I'm not sure how many people use the solution. 

I've never contacted technical support. Other colleagues may have; however, I haven't.

We only ever used an on-premises solution. We've never used anything cloud-related. 

The setup is very easy. It's not overly difficult. 

I'm part of the setup and support team. 

We'd like the solution to be cheaper. 

We pay a monthly fee for licensing. I'd rate the pricing five out of ten. 

I'd recommend the solution to other users and companies. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

We're primarily using the solution for deploying our application.

We like that the cloud features are manageable. We don't need to do anything to manage them.

We don't have to worry about scalability issues or maintenance or security. It's all taken care of.

It's a powerful product, and we can do everything in just a few clicks. 

They could try to improve everything incrementally. They're working on improvements all the time. It would be ideal if they could continue to refine the product so there were fewer and fewer things customers would have to worry about. They could improve their own people so that things like security continue to get better and better. 

They could improve their images. They're working on doing that now. 

The solution is pretty expensive.

I've been using the solution in my current project. It's been more than six months. 

It's a stable product. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze it is reliable. 

Most of the cases are using Amazon EC2 in our production deployment, so maybe most of the people are using Amazon EC2 with other features for containers. There are about 90 people on the product right now.

I've never dealt with support. If someone needs to reach out to support, it would be my supervisor, not me. Therefore, I can't speak to how helpful they would be. 

We go right to Amazon and create a machine. It takes ten to 20 minutes, so the process is pretty fast in terms of setting up. 

The cost varies from machine to machine. When we create a machine, they estimate how much it will cost. It is more expensive than other products.

We're an Amazon partner. 

I'm not sure which version of the solution I'm on. 

If a new user wants to use Amazon EC2 for their professional work or their deployments, then they need to think about the cost. The cost of the cloud is a bit higher compared to other things. They need to also consider the settings and functionality in Amazon EC2. They really need to look at their use case and scenario. However, it is something worth trying for testing purposes.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It's made out life easier. We don't have to worry about scalability or maintenance any longer. It also offers good load balancing and other kinds of features. 

We don't use all the many features of EC2, we use it mainly for standalone application deployments, and we have auto-scaled and configured it for data storage. It's a domain use case, so we are deploying some specific applications in EC2, and maintaining them.

I like that we can change the configuration whenever we need. We can scale up our requirement so that if we want to add more CPU, we can do it. If we want to add more memory or backup features, we can do that. We're also able to configure some elastic file system so that we can extend the memory or the space in which we want to store the data. That elasticity is quite a dynamic configuration of the machine and a feature we use often. Amazon provides good tutorials and free access to them for a year. 

Amazon has a very dynamic IP. Whenever we restart the machine, the IP gets changed. If you're using a cheaper machine IP, the configuration has to be changed. There are workarounds but it's an issue that could easily be solved. It would be great if Amazon could add additional services into the free tier so that people can explore and add to their knowledge base. 

We've been using this solution for two years. 

The stability is very good. We haven't faced any downtime or glitches.

This solution is very scalable. 

We have not had to connect with the support team because they provide us with a platform for self-service.

The initial setup is very easy and takes about half a day. We're also able to configure some scripts for auto setup. We used one DevOps person from our team to implement the solution. We have automated most things so there's no requirement for maintenance. The solution doesn't require constant monitoring. 

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

We typically use the solution for the web server.

The solution can scale. It's very easy.

It offers excellent value.

The product is easy and quick to set up.

We have found it to be stable and reliable.

The support could be more responsive.

I’ve used the solution for four years. It's been a while. 

It’s a stable product. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn’t crash or freeze. It is reliable.

The solution is scalable.

We have at least 20 people on the solution currently.

Technical support is better if the customer signs up for the support package. If they do not have a support package, getting help takes longer.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

The deployment typically takes about two days. It does not take long. It can be handled by one department. We run it 24/7 and have it at about five financial institutions.

We handled the initial setup in-house. We did not need any outside assistance.

The cost of the product is reasonable. It’s not overly expensive.

We are encouraging our customers to go to the cloud. It’s aligned with our business.

I would recommend the solution. I’d rate it eight out of ten.

We use EC2 for test and dev environments.

EC2 has the typical advantages of using the cloud. It's easy to provision and set up.

I would like to see more variety in the operating system images used to create test environments in EC2. There should be more versions and releases. Sometimes, you want to test an update from an old release to a higher version, but you can’t do that with the new images available. You have to use your own.

I have used EC2 for three or four years.

Amazon EC2 is stable.

EC2 is scalable. There is an auto-scale setting in the configuration.

I've never had to use tech support. I think most of the documentation is adequate.

Setting up EC2 is straightforward. It takes a few minutes, and you can do it by yourself.

Pricing is based on consumption, so when we don't want to use it, we just turn it off. The expense is negligible.

We pay for a monthly license. The price is fair.

I would rate Amazon EC2 nine out of 10.

EC2 and VPC are two services that are quite interconnected. EC2 is the Amazon console that uses the host resources in the data centers to launch servers,  instances and services with VPC as the networking part. 

This is a great solution that's stable, scalable and simple to implement. 

We sometimes need to change the resource service levels, whether it's to expand or contract. Amazon doesn't offer that option so the way things work now, changes can't be made without scheduling downtime or preventing users from using the service for a period while changes are made. I would like to see servers upgrading or downgrading on the fly without the end user even noticing the change. It would be life-changing for us. 

I've been using this solution for about four years. 

The solution is very stable. There are instances storage servers distributed on multiple hosts in the data centers and even if there's a failure we're unaware of the disruptions. The solution is stable 24/7, 365 days a year, and we know we can rely on it.

The solution is scalable, we have over 1,000 users. 

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

Licensing costs are paid monthly for the whole package. That includes the resources that the server is utilizing, plus the operating system along with any database license, such as Microsoft SQL, that you are using. It's quite expensive.

This is an amazing solution although it's not suitable for every company.
They lose one point because the price is quite high so I rate this product nine out of 10.