By Jonathan Carter co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of Glimworm IT BV in Amsterdam. In this white paper Jonathan describes how the Amazon Cloud was utilized effectively to cover extraordinary peaks in web- site traffic during a client’s appearance on a prime time TV show.

1. Cloud Using the Amazon Cloud effectively
Computing Part 1 of a series about Cloud Computing
By Jonathan Carter co-founder and Chief Technical
Officer of Glimworm IT BV in Amsterdam. In this white
paper Jonathan describes how the Amazon Cloud was
utilized effectively to cover extraordinary peaks in web-
site traffic during a client’s appearance on a prime time
TV show.
You might be familiar with Amazon as the famous online retailer but
did you know that they are also one of the major players in the internet
cloud?
Jonathan Carter co- Amazon runs their own retail website using a host of
founded Glimworm IT BV highly advanced techniques which we as technicians
in 2001 with partners Paul can all be envious of. But since 2006 they have allowed us mere mortals
Manwaring, Marten to rent the same highly professional technology by the hour under the
Hoekstra and Colin product name Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Williams. At 15 his
professional career began Simply put, you can run a massive website as powerful as Amazon.com
as a game programmer. with no up front costs, no long term commitment, and pay by the hour
After more than 10 years only for what you use. At Glimworm we build and host websites so when
of innovative experience Willie Smits the founder of Masarang Foundation, appeared on the prime
Jonathan was asked to time TV documentary “Reunion” we decided to try out the Amazon
join CMG’s prestigious Ad- cloud to handle the expected peaks of extra traffic.
vanced Technology Depart-
ment consulting for blue Choosing the service from
chip companies. Eventual- Amazon was not easy, we first
ly, he shifted his attention had to investigate the multitude
to new media and created products available under the AWS
Glimworm, bringing his umbrella which includes services
talents to the world of web as diverse as bulk email sending
development. With nearly and the sort of number crunch-
30 years in the industry his ing capability normally used by
list of accomplishments is national weather centres but in
huge the end we went for the Elas-
including everything from tic Computing Cloud (EC2) by
project management to Amazon.
robot building and he This allowed us to immediately
continues to keep on top create as many web servers as
of new developments by we needed online and securely. We already had an AWS account so we
constantly evaluating could do this straight away after logging in. if you don’t have an account
emerging technologies. you can sign up online at http://aws.amazon.com/.
To my pleasant surprise within 15 minutes we had a web server online
and fully functioning with Linux, PHP, and the all the web server software
I needed. The process was surprisingly simple and straight forward. I
was asked to choose from a simple menu things like - how powerful the
server needed to be, what version of Linux and other software I wanted,
and whether it should be running in the USA, Europe or Asia.

2. One of our designers had already made a new landing page which
contained a movie of the charity at work, some background information
and more importantly a donation form. With the server now online he
“ Masarang
received a record
amount of new
uploaded this via FTP and after a bit of testing we were good to go. The
only thing we needed to implement ourselves was a URL for the landing
sign-ups via the
page which we did via our own DNS server, and to make the page popup website
when a new visitor hit the existing website. during and after
the television
show and
followed it up
with a charity
gala at the Nemo
in Amsterdam
hosted by Willie
Smits and Rob
I can honestly say that it worked like a dream. The TV show was aired at
prime time and then repeated over the next 2 weeks during which time
we were certain that the users would first see the page hosted at
Kamphues.
”
Amazon and then if they were interested in more background
information could click through to the website. The masarang foundation
received a record amount of new sign-ups via the website during and
after the television shows and followed it up with a charity gala at the
Nemo in Amsterdam hosted by Willie Smits and Rob Kamphues.

3. To have this online for 3 weeks it cost us around $15 and if we would
have needed a bigger server we could have had duplicated this setup in
less than 5 minutes. When we shut it down we simple stopped paying
and our commitment ended the second we pressed the link.
“ The event You may think that this situation does not come up very often but let
me describe a more common scenario. We recently introduced a new
yesterday night website for a national parcel carrier and we didn’t know how powerful
has been a good the server needed to be. Traditionally we would have performed capacity
calculations and probably purchased a server at least twice as powerful as
success for was necessary. With Amazon EC2 we are currently running the site and
Willie Smits and monitoring the capacity. After we know how much juice it really needs
the Masarang then we can buy one just the right size and put it in the rack. Low risk,
low cost and high impact, this is my evaluation fo Amazon’s cloud service.
Foundation.
Thanks for being If you would like help or advice to use one of Amazon’s online services
please feel free to contact Glimworm IT BV in Amsterdam and we will see
so cooperative
if we can help you out. During the last year we have not only used AWS
and putting your but compiled a list of helpful resources and time saving tips.
time and heart
Of course I would recommend for you to give generously to the
into this cause. Masarang Foundation which can be found at http://www.masarang.nl.
Without the
contribution of
guys like you it
would have been
impossible to
create such a
”
succes.
Steven Smit,
Masarang International
www.masarang.nl
The Masarang Foundation was founded in 2001 by Willie Smits (Indonesian, born
in The Netherlands). The organization is strongly rooted in the local Indonesian
community and currently has about 40 local employees.
The aim of the Masarang Foundation is to save the environment through
the active participation of local people. Through its projects, the
foundation works on solutions for the most pressing problems the world
currently faces: climate change, extinction of plants and animals,
destruction of ecosystems, poverty and underdevelopment.
Glimworm IT BV Tel: +31 (0)20 - 616 56 40
Eerste Weteringplantsoen 8 Fax: +31 (0)20 - 240 13 57
1017 SK, Amsterdam E-mail: jc@glimworm.com
Nederland
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