Hi all,

I've just been reassigned (partially) to make sense of using a MySQL database server in the cloud, namely in Amazon Web Services. I'll be blogging about my experiences. Today is part 1.

After creating the account, I got to work. I signed up for EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud 2), Simple Storage, and EBS (storage that allows for persistence). I played around with starting an instance, terminating it, etc. Then I got started with the command line tools. This is what I did.

• I made sure that my JAVA_HOME was set correctly in my mac: I typed

  export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home/

  in the terminal. Then I typed

  $JAVA_HOME/bin/java -version

  to confirm that the JAVA_HOME was indeed set correctly.
• Then I made created a .ec2 directory in my home directory. I then added my private key and X.509 certificate to this directory. I also made sure to point to these locations

   …

Hi all,

I've just been reassigned (partially) to make sense of using a MySQL database server in the cloud, namely in Amazon Web Services. I'll be blogging about my experiences. Today is part 1.

After creating the account, I got to work. I signed up for EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud 2), Simple Storage, and EBS (storage that allows for persistence). I played around with starting an instance, terminating it, etc. Then I got started with the command line tools. This is what I did.

• I made sure that my JAVA_HOME was set correctly in my mac: I typed

  export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home/

  in the terminal. Then I typed

  $JAVA_HOME/bin/java -version

  to confirm that the JAVA_HOME was indeed set correctly.
• Then I made created a .ec2 directory in my home directory. I then added my private key and X.509 certificate to this directory. I also made sure to point to these locations

   …

Did you know that by banging your head against the wall you burn about 150 calories per hour? However, there are more effective and less painful ways to exercise (no surprise there). Personally, I like an early morning walk and playing some Wii games around lunch time.

Most companies aim towards high(er) value offerings, sold at a higher price, so that their margin increases. Right?
But what they're actually doing is desperately trying to outrun their own high (and escalating) cost structure. I ask you this: why should a client have to pay for inefficiencies in a provider's organisation? Also, why says that a higher value offering needs to a) be priced higher and b) have a higher profit margin?

This is not the unavoidable way of things, but the reason it's the usual is that you can't just decide to change one aspect (such as a higher value offering), yet keep the way the company is run the same, and then still …