Working with the cloud, aws, ets.

[Mike Grigsby]

Has anyone tried using cloud computing with NTWS... not hosting there, but possibly writing from the NTWS on a Windows platform to a database that sits on the cloud?

I have a client with a large number of users who wants to send all the data for storage on something like amazon's cloud, and be able to read and write to it. Anyone have experience at this to point me in a direction? Thank you!

[ccordes]

Mike
I do this with USPS and FedEx labels using soap.
I have also used Clarion desktop app to update a WordPress site using an odbc connection to the web server. So I'd say yes it is doable. (and if I can do it, theres hope for pretty much anybody)

Chris

[Devan]

We've got several NTWS deployed on Amazon EC2 instances.

At one stage whilst doing development testing, we had a NT app within our own network which wrote data to a MySQL database that was on an EC2 instance, so I'd say yes, it is possible to have a 'split system' where the app is on the local network, and the data is in the cloud - but overall we have found it much quicker and easier to have app and data on the same instance on Amazon.

With micro instances costing something like $10 a month to sun, it is really a cost effective solution.

[ccordes]

I didn't know you could do that on Amazon. I didn't think they would allow you to run your own applications.
Do you have any details?

[Bruce]

you might like to define what you mean by "the cloud". It doesn't seem to be a term that has a rigorous definition, so it means some very different things to different people.

cheers
Bruce

[Devan]

I didn't know you could do that on Amazon. I didn't think they would allow you to run your own applications.
Do you have any details?

Amazon EC2 essentially lets you build and run a Windows 2008 virtual server within their 'cloud' environment.  More information at:

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/

It is a proper, Windows 2008 image, so you can RDP to it and install any Windows application you like onto that image, and run them as if it was on your own server on your network.  This includes any Clarion application, MySQL database or MS-SQL etc.

Images come in different sizes, and you can create many of them - just pay by the hour for however long you need them to run.

We have several production images for client hosted NetTalk sites, plus a few test images that we run up and take down depending on our development needs.

You can allocate fixed IP addresses to those images (via Elastic-IP) so that they can be accessed by anyone, and you can give them a proper DNS name such as myapp.mysite.com.  No one can tell it is not a 'real' server.

Amazon now also give you a nice management console to manage all your instances and ensure they are still working.  For advanced use, you can also integrate your instance with Amazon's S3 Storage services for nearly unlimited disk space...just pay by the Gb used per month.

[ccordes]

Cool. Thanks.
I think I know what we're going to do today.