ReadWriteWeb

Organizations using Amazon's Virtual Private Cloud are now able to create network interfaces that exist separate from the EC2 instances. The upshot of this is that customers will be able to have a lot more flexibility in managing network interfaces for EC2 instances.

The new feature, Elastic Network Interface (ENI) is created automatically with an EC2 instance. However, unless you want to use any of the new features it will essentially behave just as before.

We're still waiting on a South Pole region for AWS, but it might be a while before Amazon sets up shop in Antarctica. However, the company announced today that they've got South America covered. Amazon has opened its South America (Sao Paulo) region in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

This will be useful for organizations in South and Central America that want to use AWS services with low latency. Amazon is also working to reach customers in the new region with blogs in Spanish and Portuguese.

The file sharing, synchronization market led by Dropbox is a popular target these days. For many companies, it's a chance to horn in on a growing market and carve out a piece of the pie for themselves. For open source projects, it's a chance to return control of personal data to the user. For the folks behind ownCloud, it's both.

ownCloud is a project started by Frank Karlitschek, who's been very active in the KDE project. This week, Karlitschek took ownCloud to the next level with former SUSE/Novell guy Markus Rex and funding from General Catalyst. Terms weren't disclosed, but sources say that the funding is "well into 7 figures" but below $10 million.

Amazon has added two new EC2 reserved instances, so that users now have the choice of four pricing models for EC2 instances. Seven, if you count choosing between one-year and three-year terms.

A quick refresher might be in order. Amazon started with a single price for its EC2 instances, then added reserved instances in 2009. The reserved instances give you a break on instance pricing in exchange for an up-front fee per-instance.

If you like your Amazon EC2 instances biggie-sized, Amazon has some good news for you. The AWS folks have introduced a CC2 instance type that comes fully loaded with "incredible specifications" for anyone using AWS for High Performance Computing (HPC) applications. Amazon grabbed the 42nd spot on the Top 500 list using 1,064 CC2 instances, and delivered a speed of 240.09 teraFLOPs. Now you too can run your own supercomputer.

Some of our ReadWriteWeb staff in Oregon may have noticed their lights slightly dimmer this morning than yesterday. Okay, we're kidding. Amazon's has thrown the switch on its second set of Western U.S. cloud computing clusters, alleviating some of the burden on its large and growing cache of customers in Silicon Valley.

The new Oregon cluster is Amazon's latest, fully operational example of its incredible cloud-in-a-box - quite literally a set of refurbished shipping containers retrofitted with compact cooling equipment.

Remember when Amazon was just this online bookstore? The company has come a long, long way since then. One of the unexpected turns taken by Amazon is its foray into cloud computing. Though some might have been skeptical at the time, Amazon has not only succeeded with EC, but has scaled up the service by leaps and bounds and become the one to beat for hosted cloud services.

Management, that's where it's at. That's the theory behind Convirture's product lines, continuing with the ConVirt Enterprise Cloud the company announced on August 23rd. ConVirt Enterprise Cloud is designed to let companies manage private clouds and virtualized infrastructure from a single console. If Convirture has its way, silos separating virtualized workloads and private clouds will be a thing of the past.

Amazon continues to roll out new AWS features at breakneck speed. The latest in a slew of announcements is Amazon's bringing its Virtual Private Cloud out of beta. Amazon Direct Connect lets customers establish a dedicated network connection from the customer site to AWS. Amazon has also added a new feature to AWS Identity and Access Management that gives the ability to perform "identity federation" to grant access to AWS to corporate users without having to create new identities. Companies can now wire up directly to AWS without passing data over the public Internet, and avoid saturating their Internet connection with application data.

If you're working with Amazon Web Services (AWS), you should take note of the BitNami Cloud Tools site launched this week by BitNami. The Cloud Tools Installer packages a bundle of AWS support programs in one virtual machine for admins of AWS instances, and the soon-to-be launched Cloud Agent will let admins monitor servers and applications via AWS CloudWatch.