A few tips for Amazon
Just got asked about getting started with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and thought may as well put as a blog post as well. So here they are: Make sure you take support of some kind from Amazon. You need it as sometimes your machine might get a glitch or you just want to ask a few questions Get to know the account team at Amazon. They will give you free technical training and help you out. Once you grow enough they'll also help you change from credit card billing to on account billing. I personally wouldn't worry about trying to alter contract/legal terms and conditions - you'll tie yourself in knots for ages and gain virtual nothing Architect for failure. With Amazon you still need to have redundancy and backups. See my blog post at http://blog.next-genit.co.uk/2012/04/building-for-amazon.html Use their products where possible to reduce work for you. e.g. Amazon Linux (their version of RedHat), RDS (MySQL, Oracle), DynamoDB (a NoSQL database) Start with small ins