On The rPath With Amazon – EC2 Rails Appliances

For those of you who have never heard of the rPath Appliance Platform, it incorporates a sort of roll-your-own Linux used in conjunction with a tool called rBuilder to create custom builds for your application. Why should any of that interest you Rubyistas out there?

Well, the rPath guys have teamed up with the Bezos Amazon Web Services posse to present you with the opportunity to easily create and run a purpose-built Amazon EC2 image of your choosing. I say ‘easily’, but I haven’t actually tried it (I have tried EC2 though, two words – loved it!), hence others with hands-on experience may beg to differ.

So, let’s say you have a funky new Rails app that the world just can’t do without, but your company is a bootstrapping startup with limited funds. No problem, just create a Rails appliance image via rPath and crank it up on EC2. If you hit the jackpot and things get crazy you can deploy more appliances, if not, it hasn’t cost you an arm and a leg.

There is quite a list of would-be Rails appliances on the rPath site, but not many have actually been put together yet. One to watch methinks.