[jadrake]

True - it can be confusing at first, and I did the same as you: I kept referring back to their documentation on what was free and what was not, however I've been using it for a while now (a number of years, actually - just close off the account and re-register with a different CC for another free year) and pretty-much know what you can have for free. Here's a summary:

1) A micro-instance (613MB RAM) OS running all year. Linux or MS.
2) 30GB of additional storage, extra to the 8GB you get with the OS image.
3) One static IP.
4) 5GB data transfer per month to/from S3 storage.

Not sure of the data transfer available for the OS as I've never even come close to getting billed for it. There are many other freebies - databases, monitoring, load-balancing etc., but I've never used them.

For me, it's a remote Linux server running all year, with 36GB of storage available. Like I said, I host static sites with it, running ISPconfig. So far, it's been great.

Adam

[cartwright118]

I then followed the incredibly comprehensive and easy-to-follow instructions

Amazon. Great service, although dont you feel although the system is like comprehensively confusing! You need a degree just read and comprehend the manual.

I did get the free trial, almost a year ago now. It's very almost up. But I never used it, it annoyed me when I had to refer back to google or the manual to use the bloody thing. There were so many different thing that costed different prices, was very hard to work out what was going to cost you - when and whether or not it would be included in the free tier.

[jadrake]

Agreed - and good advice!

Just to add that you can add a 30GB virtual drive to the server as well for free. Admittedly, it doesn't increase the speed of the server, but it does allow you to store more data.

[ctype_alnum]

From personal experience I wanted to share this nugget:

Just make sure if you are running a micro for testing etc that you get an AMI with a swap partition already in or do the work yourself, I believe they have 603MB of ram which is a fair bit but once you have httpd, bind, mysql, mail etc running and a few users using hosted services it gets used up pretty quick. I'm using a micro for dev running centos so it doesn't have to be super quick.

[jadrake]

Nice! I plan to use the Debian+ISPConfig 3 setup here on OVH with my 2G

Funny you should say that - so was I! The only reason I've done the EC2 thing was because the kimis look like they're gonna be a while in coming, so I thought I'd iron out all the creases first.

Having said that, my Amazon EC2 instance is looking good currently, and for free ... well, that's not half bad. I'm gonna stick a few sites on it and see how it handles. Might have learned about ISPc3 by the time the kimis are born!

Adam

[Tz-OVH]

Whilst waiting for my Kimis to arrive (ha ha!) I decided to build a webserver using Amazon's EC2 cloud computing service, taking advantage of their free for a year tier.

This morning I fired up a bare-bones AMI (Ubuntu 13.04) and assigned an elastic IP. I then followed the incredibly comprehensive and easy-to-follow instructions on how to install a webserver (Apache2) and ISPconfig 3 here:

http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect-server-ubuntu-13.04-apache2-bind-dovecot-ispconfig-3

Once configured, I changed the A record in DNS for one of my unused domains, pointed it to my new server and ... voila!

So far, it seems to be working fine. I'm having a play around on ISPconfig, creating new sites and FTPing the data to them. No idea of performance standards yet (I don't expect them to be amazing, bearing in mind I'm using a micro-instance from Amazon, as it's free for a year).

If anyone wants any help, or has done a similar thing and wants to discuss it, reply here. It'll take your mind off the wait ...

Adam

Nice! I plan to use the Debian+ISPConfig 3 setup here on OVH with my 2G

[ctype_alnum]

I use a wide range of Amazon Web Services. The service has been decent and without any issues in around 200 days. Thing is you click and then its up and running but thats virtualisation for you.

[jadrake]

Looks good will have a test.

Please don't forget Microsoft Azure free trial as well though

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/

Lots of custom virtual machines to choose from there Windows and Linux.

Interesting. It's only a month's trial, though, compared to Amazon's 1 year!

[rickyday]

Looks good will have a test.

Please don't forget Microsoft Azure free trial as well though

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/

Lots of custom virtual machines to choose from there Windows and Linux.

[jadrake]

You do need to sign up with a credit card, as the free tier stuff only covers so much data transfer and stuff, however my monthly bill when I've been downloading significant amounts of data has only been a couple of quid.

[jadrake]

I got a email from amazon offering this and looked into it, can you get windows instances in the free tier too?

Yes, you can.

http://aws.amazon.com/free/

[gjm]

I got a email from amazon offering this and looked into it, can you get windows instances in the free tier too?

[jadrake]

Whilst waiting for my Kimis to arrive (ha ha!) I decided to build a webserver using Amazon's EC2 cloud computing service, taking advantage of their free for a year tier.

This morning I fired up a bare-bones AMI (Ubuntu 13.04) and assigned an elastic IP. I then followed the incredibly comprehensive and easy-to-follow instructions on how to install a webserver (Apache2) and ISPconfig 3 here:

http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect-server-ubuntu-13.04-apache2-bind-dovecot-ispconfig-3

Once configured, I changed the A record in DNS for one of my unused domains, pointed it to my new server and ... voila!

So far, it seems to be working fine. I'm having a play around on ISPconfig, creating new sites and FTPing the data to them. No idea of performance standards yet (I don't expect them to be amazing, bearing in mind I'm using a micro-instance from Amazon, as it's free for a year).

If anyone wants any help, or has done a similar thing and wants to discuss it, reply here. It'll take your mind off the wait ...

Adam