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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.

RedHat recently announced that premium enterprise subscription customers are now able to move their Red Hat Linux licenses to the Amazon cloud in the form of EC2 instance. Amazon EC2 is the first cloud provider that Red Hat is supporting for this service.

If you have a block of Red Hat Linux licenses, you can now enroll with the company to enable these to be authorized on an EC2 instance with your Amazon account. We took a few moments to sit down with the team from Red Hat to learn more about the details of the partnership.

Early this morning, we received an announcement from Amazon the company is launching a pilot for EC2 customers to allow your enterprise organizations to move existing Microsoft Windows Server licenses to Amazon and receive a proper discount for the new EC2 instance.

The offer is open until September and is being called a pilot by the companies to test the waters and pattern for hosting Windows within Amazon.

Alfresco, the open source enterprise content management company, has unveiled a developer program for those looking to host both the community and enterprise versions of its software on the Amazon EC2 cloud computing platform. Alfresco is a leading open source alternative for document and Web content management, competing strongly with ECM giants like Open Text, Documentum, and SharePoint. Enterprises might still have reservations about cloud computing. But Alfresco is attempting to capitalize on companies ready for the cloud with this new software stack and development kit.

Amazon has launched a new endeavor that integrates traditional IT infrastructure with its EC2 cloud service. Amazon Virtual Private Cloud allows IT to connect to an isolated set of AWS resources to a data center using a VPN connection. Minus all the acronyms, that means that Amazon has created a hybrid cloud that can work securely for the enterprise, balancing the need for encryption with the low cost and scaling power that the cloud provides.

Amazon VPC provides an avenue for enterprises to more comfortably link up their infrastructure with the cloud. For Amazon, it's an endorsement of the hybrid approach, but it's also meant to combat the growing interest in private clouds. VPC is currently in limited beta (you can apply here) and doesn't work with the S3 cloud storage service or any other parts of AWS.