I would like to port my Linux A-Shell system to a cloud server like Amazon's EC2. Has anyone already done this?

If so, which cloud service are you using?
Are there any connection or performance issues?
Are costs reasonable?
Were there any conversion or networking problems that I should be aware of?

I am currently running Centos Linux, but Red Hat would be fine.
I connect mostly using AlphaLAN, with ATE on occasion.

I need to map Windows drive letters to directories in the virtual environment.
I need to set up Samba/CIFS connections between Virtual Linux and my local Win PC.
I need to connect to virtual Linux via SSH and SFTP when using AlphaLAN and ATE.

Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated. Thank you.

Hey Steve -

We have been supporting customer to cloud connections for probably over 10 years now. Mostly a Linux back-end hosted by some data warehouse, and ATE client. Performance is very good with the main gotcha of being vulnerable to poor internet connection and dropouts are not elegantly handled. (resulting in job crashes and resets). We don't work with AlphaLan. We do some RDP to our hosted windows servers but those also run ATE on the connected side.

We have a local data warehouse that supports our virtual servers but i do know other vendors have used Amazon, IBM, etc to host their solutions.

So i know not much direct help other than to say its "do-able"... good luck.

Hi Steve,

We currently use Google Compute for a number of A-Shell customers. The reason we chose Google was pricing was cheaper with vms that run 24/7 without up front payment. The cost of a virtual machine is about the same over the expected lifecycle of a physical for us (including the storage costs).

The internet connection to the servers have vastly more bandwidth than we could provide. As long as the Client internet is reasonably good, it feels as though you're on the same LAN.

For security, samba needs to be inside a VPN tunnel.

Some gotchas would be (if you choose google).
- storage volumes (hard disks) are faster the bigger they are. So, a disk defined as 500MB is slower than a 2TB disk.
- there is an option to buy dedicated CPU and RAM (these are separate). If you're going to use Google long term, this is likely to be a pretty good discount; however, the dedicated purchase can only be used by vms under the same project.

It's really easy to spin up vms to test with, and you're not going to pay too much to have it up for a week or month to determine all of the configuration necessary.

As Frank said, good luck.

We use liquidweb.com, centos , ate, mysql (databases are actually local and it is amazing quick), vpn for our samba. enjoy not having to deal with broken equipment, backups, and hippa compliance.

Thank you everyone. Your responses will help me make my decision.