08-02-2013, 03:58 PM
EC2 TECHNOLOGY
ABSTRACT
A new technology that cuts down time and space to recover lost data has been unveiled by HCL Infosystems. The company claims that the embedded continuity and control technology takes 0.07 per cent of hard disk space to create snapshots. EC2 takes a snap shot of the entire system within the same hard disk drive without creating a separate partition.
Amazon announced a limited public beta of EC2 on August 25, 2006. Access to EC2 was granted on a first come first served basis. Amazon added two new instance types (Large and Extra-Large) on October 16, 2007. On May 29, 2008, two more types were added, High-CPU Medium and High-CPU Extra Large. There are currently twelve types of instances available.
Amazon added three new features on March 27, 2008. These features included static IP addresses, Availability Zones, and User Selectable Kernels. Amazon added Elastic Block Store (EBS) on August 20, 2008. This provides persistent storage, a feature that had been lacking since the service was introduced.
Amazon EC2 is in full production since it dropped the beta label on October 23, 2008. On the same day, Amazon announced the following features. a service level agreement for EC2, Microsoft Windows in beta form on EC2, Microsoft SQL Server in beta form on EC2, plans for an AWS management console, and plans for load balancing, autoscaling, and cloud monitoring services. These features were subsequently added on May 18, 2009.
Amazon EC2 was mostly developed by a team in Cape Town, South Africa. The team was led by Chris Pinkham. Pinkham provided the initial architecture guidance for EC2 and then built the team and led the development of the project. Other members of the early team included Chris Brown, Quinton Hoole, Roland Paterson-Jones and Willem Van Biljon.
The Elastic Compute Unit (ECU) was introduced by Amazon EC2 as an abstraction of computer resources. Amazon’s Definition of ECU notes “We use several benchmarks and tests to manage the consistency and predictability of the performance of an EC2 Compute Unit. One EC2 Compute Unit provides the equivalent CPU capacity of a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeonprocessor. This is also the equivalent to an early-2006 1.7 GHz Xeon processor referenced in our original documentation”
Elastic Block Storage (EBS) provides raw block devices, that can be attached to Amazon EC2 instances. These block devices can then be used like any raw block device. In a typical use case, this would include formatting the device with a filesystem and mounting said filesystem. In addition EBS supports a number of advanced storage features, including snapshotting and cloning. Currently EBS volumes can be up to 1TB in size. EBS volumes are built on replicated back end storage, so that the failure of a single component will not cause data loss.The EBS product was introduced to the general public by Amazon in August 2008.
EC2 uses Xen virtualization. Each virtual machine, called an "instance", functions as a virtual private server. Amazon sizes instances based on "Elastic Compute Units". The performance of otherwise identical virtual machines may vary.
As of December 2012, the following instance types are offered
• On-demand: pay by hour without commitment
• Reserved: rent instances with one-time payment receiving discounts on the hourly charge
• Spot: bid-based service (runs the jobs only if the spot price is below the bid specified by bidder, the spot price is claimed to be supply-demand based however research refutes this claim
Other Answers (1)
Its a service, say you Own NASA and you need a super computer to do something very specific only a super computer could do, so the EC2 SERVICE allows you to "Rent" a very powerful computer.
India’s premier I.T company HCL has developed a new technology that can recover the data from a crashed system and that too in less than minute.The technology named HCL’s EC2 (Embedded continuity and control) boasts of consuming only 0.07 percent of space to create snapshots.The new series of HCL laptops sports this latest technology which comes under the name HCL Non Stop ‘Leaptop’ series ,these laptops will be able to recover the lost data completely in case of system crash and data loss problems .
How this technology works?
The technology is software with a component embedded in the hardware that automatically stores and replicates ‘a complete image of its own working state’ of a file including system files at regular intervals.
‘Research has shown that 95 percent of PC problems are software related and include accidental deletion, software corruption, problems of settings changes, virus-related system crashes,’ said George Paul, HCL Infosystems executive vice-president.
What it can do ?
This technology will be able to recover data in case of :
-System crash
-System corruption by viruses, spyware or Trojans
-Accidental formatting of any of the hard disk partitions
-Corruption of registry files & folders
-Blue screen errors
-System unstability after patch updates
The new technology is compatible with Windows Vista and previous versions.
The Price of laptops with this technology starts from Rs.27,990/- and is optional for desktops and laptops so that users have a choice.