Amazon EC2 Reviews

We have a business-to-business platform where we connect micro-enterprises to financial services. The solution is hosted in AWS and also has mobile components on the Google Play Store.

We use authorization on Kubernetes and various AWS services like S3 and databases. The entire suite can host a comprehensive ERP system within AWS.

Some of the good features are, first of all, due to scaling. It ensures we can provision resources on demand, and we can grow and shrink them as per the traffic. 

There are definitely security features around IAM and WAF that ensure the information is secured. There's a lot of encryption across the setups to ensure that database credentials and everything related to security are well managed. Their database product is good, and we are making maximum benefit out of it.

We faced a challenge in regard to billing. There was a time when we were working on changing the mode of payment from card to wire. It took a lot of time because our state is set up in Kenya, so we needed to pay in Kenya currency. We have to go around in circles.  There was a lot of documentation required, but we managed to go through successfully.

I have been using it for one year. 

I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. It's a very stable product. 

It is a scalable product because it's IaaS and PaaS. You use it on demand, so it's computing on demand. That works for us. And there are also opportunities for enhanced cost savings in terms of serverless computing. We've used a couple, and at least it's good. So it's helping us to further reduce AWS costs.

The user base is approximately 120. As more users join the platform, the user base will definitely increase.

I've had the best technical support experience I've ever had. Everything is resolved within the service level agreement. I'm happy.

We did it ground up. We started from zero, created the account, set up the control tower, and started provisioning the resources. It was simplistic. It only requires you to have knowledge of AWS infrastructure, and from there, it's a straight sail.

I can't quantify ROI because it varies. Currently, my AWS bills from services that I use across various accounts.

We pay monthly. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

I would suggest using the free tier first. 

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.

We have a team to manage cloud solutions. My company uses the tool for cloud monitoring. We have a production, staging, deployment, and testing environment in AWS. However, we do not use the managed service of AWS yet. My team uses the required parameters for security like VPC, firewall, gates of security as well as the external layer of the app.

The features depend on the use cases. We have different family types for computing. There is the R series for databases. For general purposes, there are the N series and the C series. RCE is for DL based kinds of things.

The tool’s stability could be better.

I have been using the solution for ten years.

The solution is stable and I would rate it a seven out of ten. My company is practicing to improve the architecture as per the requirements.

The solution is scalable. We have already implemented the requirements of production in frontend ALBs. This will help us move as per the request of the microservice and monolithic parts. There are more than 700-800 users for the tool in our company. Our company’s departments use it for different applications.

We manage and do everything on our own. In case we are stuck at any point, we buy tech support from AWS.

The initial setup is both straightforward and complex. The tool’s Microsoft base and microservices parts are complex while the other monolithic base is really good. The solution’s monolithic base architecture is simple and straightforward.

We use cloud permission for SaaS code and services for which there are templates. My team needs an hour to deploy the entire architecture for any new project. We are able to create insights for new projects.

We have templates on the cloud solution where my team checks the requirements. After pushing the parameters, we can create a new structure for the project in an hour or so. There is no need to manually create or increase anything.

We have in-house strength to do the deployment. My team upgrades themselves with certificate education. Our company doesn’t need third-party support right now. If anything critical arises, then we will buy AWS credit for the support from them.

I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. I like the product’s performance. We have a different methodology where we check the work and evaluate how it is beneficial and how we can reduce the costs. My company is working on this. We use the solution for temporary use cases. My team uses it to build, produce and monitor the cloud versions. If there is a need to scale up or down, we will do that. Amazon EC2 has auto-load elastic LV.

The solution is stable and we have never faced any downtime with it. We also have an alarm system where we get ticket notifications. Our applications have never been down and we are happy with Amazon EC2.

I am using Amazon EC2 for migration of on-premise to the cloud.

Our objective is to assist our customers in transitioning their infrastructure to Amazon AWS or another cloud provider. We aim to alleviate their workload by migrating to Amazon EC2. The initial phase involves utilizing Amazon EC2.

The greatest benefit of Amazon EC2 is its versatility, including the diverse range of servers available and the ability to connect to various resources.

Amazon EC2 could improve the console view. The ability to see the console view directly would be helpful, similar to what VMware has. Additionally, when the system is rebooting we are able to see a screenshot of the UI, but it would be a lot better if we could interact directly with the console level.

I have been using Amazon EC2 for approximately three years.

The solution is stable.

I rate the stability of Amazon EC2 a ten out of ten.

Amazon EC2 scales well.

I rate the scalability of Amazon EC2 a ten out of ten.

I rate the support from Amazon EC2 a nine out of ten.

Positive

I have seen a return on investment using Amazon EC2, but I am not sure about our customers. We see the flexibility of the solution where our customers do not.

The licensing of Amazon EC2 is expensive. Microsoft Windows Servers are expensive to license.

If you're planning to use Amazon EC2, I recommend thoroughly testing your servers beforehand. This is especially important if you're migrating from an existing server to Amazon EC2, as there can be issues with transferring the entire image. To avoid any problems, make sure to test the image you're importing before the migration process.

I rate Amazon EC2 an eight out of ten.

I gave my rating of eight because they are lacking in console access.

Our primary use case is for migrating Linux boxes to Windows boxes. We deal mainly with small and medium-sized businesses that are looking to move away from on-prem hardware to the cloud. We are customers and I'm an MSP architect.

The most valuable feature of this product is its reliability. Its ethernet configuration is stable and they provide good technical support. 

I'd like to see more tools to help our clients minimize their costs. The company could provide tips on savings. A couple of our clients have taken a pay-as-you-go model when they configure and they're paying a lot more money than they need to. 

The solution is stable as is the backend infrastructure.

The scalability is good whether you scale horizontally or vertically. A couple of clients scale out horizontally and the load balances help with that. 

Customer support is actually quite good. They've been able to fix or guide me on the solution.

I have experience with this product so the initial setup is easy for me. Some small businesses have their IT people, but others don't have the knowledge so I carry out an assessment for them. My medium sized clients have a couple of IT people who maintain the network side of things and the instances or the server aspect. If they have applications, then they have their own application people that take care of the application. Maintenance requires around three to five people. 

The cost varies depending on how many instances you have and how long you run it. Our most recent customers were running around four instances, and their bill was between $1,500 to $2,000.

It's important to have somebody familiar with the solution on board, especially if it's an organization that wants to move quickly. 

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

We are using this solution for relational DB servers, application servers, and IaaS. We are also using it for SMTP and HTTP services, for compute services.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the ability to have standard operating systems along with the Windows, Linux operating systems, and their maintenance-free structure, which we prefer.

One of the challenges is the AMI upgrades. For example, EC2 is running on a different AMI, and when we are trying to upgrade, it has mandatory manual processes involved. This is a problem for us. This is an area that we are looking forward to being taken care of or augmented.

Also, when we start doing upgrades, we start losing network connectivity.

We have some issues with the cost, as it's expensive.

They don't have much in the way of optimized support or OS-level support. Also, there is not much visibility in terms of the upgrade. This is an issue that we are facing at the moment.

We would like to see it have something quicker. When we reboot the EC2 instance, the time it takes to come up is a little on the higher side. We are not sure if it is better on the reserved instance, but with the on-demand instances, it's not great. There is no easy way that a preliminary support guy can quickly check why the system is down, or whether there is a network issue or not. These are things that are still convoluted and could be simplified.

I have been using this solution for more than eight years.

The stability is fine, we don't have any issues.

This solution is easy to scale, but it is not easy to change the generation or the instance title. If you are in the same generation it's fine, but upgrading older generations to new generations is painful.

We have more than 80 users in our company. Most of the users are using it daily. The Dev tech team uses it daily.

We have a premium support license and they are efficient, but we have a few instances where the technical support was not very good. A few cases for support were not good but for the most part, they are efficient.

The initial setup is simple with a few moderate complexities, but it's ok.

We did not use an integrator or reseller, we managed ourselves.

The costs are quite high. For our usage, the cost is approximately $20,000 to $23,000 per month.

Know your use cases. You have to analyze your load and use case before you select a particular EC2 machine. You also need to look into the availability and the stability of that particular version of EC2 that you are going for.

Mainly Windows is secure, but Linus and others are difficult to secure.

I would rate this solution a seven out ten.

I use this solution to allow me to use work via a cloud computing platform.  This means I can access search information and features, such as Google Talk, that I would not normally be able to use.

My favorite feature of this solution is the flexibility of instance types, which allows for the cost to be tailored to the usage amount and type.

I would like to see improvement in the information available up-front for users around tailoring the package to their actual requirements. At present it can take time to work with the on demand instance until you are used to what features are right for the user.

I have been working with this solution for five years.

I have found this to be a stable solution during my time using it.

This is a scalable platform that can grow with the users requirements.

The initial setup of this solution is very quick and easy, and is all carried out online with guidance.

The pricing of this solution is variable.  There is an open-source variant that is accessible via the public cloud, and then tiers that range in price depending on the level and amount of usage that is required.

I would recommend that new users be very clear on what they require from this solution, and advise that they start with the 'user on demand' package until they know exactly what level of usage they need.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use EC2 for some web-based applications. We have around 10 users. 

EC2 is good.

I have been using EC2 for about half a year.

EC2 is stable. 

EC2 is scalable.

We previously used on-premise hardware. 

The setup is straightforward and it takes around an hour. 

EC2 is a little expensive. 

I rate Amazon EC2 seven out of 10.