Chris Williams of Mistwire - How to get your free* AWS account & spin up your first VM

Ran into VTUG co-leader Chris Williams, at the recent Spring Ahead 2016 New England event in the lovely seaside town of Portsmouth, NH. After I had the opportunity to hear him participate in a panel discussion Practical Cloud, we got to catching up on SuperServers, careers, and life. I had checked out his blog at mistwire.com and let him know how impressed I was with the quality of posts there. For example, check out his very thorough VSPHERE 6 – ESXi Upgrade article. So I subscribed.

Yesterday, that subscription alerted me to his new post, where again he skips NO steps in the process of describing this technical task:

• How to get your free* AWS account & spin up your first VM
  May 02 2016 by Chris Williams at Mistwire - Virtualization, Technology, and Design

Having poked around a few of the oh-so-many offerings at AWS (Amazon Web Services) myself, this post really caught my attention. The price seems right too. And c'mon, I already have a AWS account, see my related article, Easy install Amazon CloudFront CDN with WordPress Plugin W3 Total Cache, and some AWS CDN speed tests below. Isn't it a good to know how to run a VM, anywhere? I realize not everybody wants (or can afford) a home lab.

So, if you're looking for a bit of tinkering to do in a rather big cloud, give Chris' article a read, and consider dropping him a comment, letting him know how it went. I know I will! Of course, I'll also likely record the process, and put it up on the TinkerTry YouTube Channel.

May 04 2016 Update

Check out this comment by Richard Robbins, proud owner of two SuperServer Bundles, and cloud enthusiast, see also his many detailed AWS articles below.

See also at TinkerTry

• Insecure about using public WiFi? Connect to your home's OpenVPN appliance, for free.
  Jul 05 2014

• The infrastructure behind TinkerTry.com, including the hosting and CDN providers
  Sep 15 2014
  AWS CloudFront is pretty expensive for a blog the size of TinkerTry, but they do have outstanding support, combined with raw download speeds much faster than KeyCDN and CDN77. You get what you pay for. Speed test for youself!

CDN (Content Delivery Network) Download Speed Tests:

Temporary test links, you may have to bypass Chrome security warnings.

• AWS CloudFront https
  Download 100mb.bin to test speed.
  CT (home), I get about 29Mbps, smooth.
  MA, I get 32Mbps.

• KeyCDN https
  Download 100mb.bin to test speed.
  CT (home), I get about 28Mbps, smooth.
  MA, I get 33Mbps.

• CDN77 https
  Download 100mb.bin to test speed.
  CT (home), I get about 17Mbps, smooth.
  MA, I get 31Mbps.

Apr 26 2017 Update

I let AWS go, but I was able to retest KeyCDN and CDN77 from home today:

• KeyCDN https
  Download 100mb.bin to test speed.
  CT (home), I get about 22Mbps, smooth.

• CDN77 https
  Download 100mb.bin to test speed.
  CT (home), I get about 22Mbps, smooth.

See also

• Amazon Web Services Free‎

Here's a selection of iTinker.net's detailed articles that feature AWS:

• Untangle VPN Part 2 -- Amazon Web Services Software VPN Connection to an Untangle Firewall Using OpenVPN
  Feb 21 2016 by Richard Robbins at itinker.net

• My Introduction to Amazon Web Services
  Feb 18 2016 by Richard Robbins at itinker.net

• This Cloud Thing Just Might Catch On :-)
  Feb 05 2016 by Richard Robbins at itinker.net