I was disappointed to read that Scalr requires its own machine images. I'd prefer a generic component that I could hook up to my own existing images. (Which aren't even web servers...)

Seems like a good idea, but why isn't Amazon providing this by default? It SHOULD be part of the service they offer.

Also, how well does SCALR actually work?

I actually think this is a task better suited as a layer for the interim. As per their new features last week, Amazon is clearly focused on the really hard stuff. What they should probably be announcing next is a guarantee of S3 and EC2 placement within a specific data center. Then things get really interesting. Maybe Amazon could integrate this project in their services at some point... but for now, it seems best on its own.

Re: "What they should probably be announcing next is a guarantee of S3 and EC2 placement within a specific data center. Then things get really interesting."

This appears to be what their new 'availability zones' feature provides.

The availability zones do guarantee EC2 placement within specific data centers, but from what I've heard, do not guarantee S3 placement. Because so many web services are tightly coupled with EC2 and S3, this presents a dilemma. If I'm wrong though, please correct.

I was wondering how long something like this would take to build. If you can configure something like this to be specific for say... media streaming, you can say "goodbye" to all those content delivery networks.

I thought half the benefit of CDNs was reduced latency, which AWS does not provide.

I keep hearing comments about AWS and latency, but I haven't used it (yet!) so I don't have any first-hand experience. I've seen that S3 can provide direct public links, but are there latency issues that make these too slow for general purpose content serving?

I'll elaborate a little. A CDN is supposed to serve content from a server very close to each user, like in the same city. Thus CDNs must have many servers in many cities. AWS does not have many locations, thus because of the speed of light it cannot have latency as low as a good CDN. This is not a problem with AWS; it wasn't designed as a CDN.

Do you need a CDN for "general purpose content serving"? Probably not.

Thanks for the reply, that makes total sense. I suppose CDN services should be compatible with AWS anyway, so they wouldn't be mutually exclusive. Each for its purpose :)

This could be one of those new layers of abstraction that accelerates the entire field.