We find that the ability to spin-up a new instance of a server in minutes and then take it down whenever it is no longer needed makes EC2 a perfect environment for establishing test servers and also for adding additional application servers to handle the demands of increased site traffic related to a new feature launch or other big event. Because you only pay for computing cycles used, EC2 is far more cost-effective than maintaining a physical server farm, where you are paying for computing horsepower and bandwidth whether you use it or not.

EC2 installations are perfect for multi-tiered web applications as well. In the fall of 2008, we hosted a brand new Search Engine, ubExact.com, on a seven-instance server cluster in our cloud. Whenever we needed to add another web server for load balancing or another application server, we were able to bring it online in minutes. During ubExact’s unfortunately short lifespan (victims of the initial economic downturn), we never experienced an outage related to server load or performance.

Do you have an application that is getting ready to go big-time, but are not sure if your current infrastructure can handle the pressure? Or are you simply paying too much in hardware and personnel costs to maintain your existing server farm? Contact us today to find out how looking to the clouds can take your website to new heights!