$50 AWS Credit for Microsoft Windows Server Instances on EC2

[kmfrk]

http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/global-solution-providers/microsoft/aprilcredit/

[powertower]

Does anyone have the details on how Amazon is licensing Windows Server / on what terms?

Is the OS licensed to Amazon, to the customer, is this a custom licensing term deal from Microsoft, am I supposed to provide the serial key, how is activation handled, etc?

Is Amazon "renting" the OS? How is this possible?

The only thing I've been able to locate is this...

> Q. When I import a VM of Windows Server 2003 or 2008, who is responsible for supplying the operating system license?

> When you launch an imported VM using Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or 2008, you will be charged standard instance hour rates for Amazon EC2 running the appropriate Windows Server version, which includes the license to utilize that operating system within Amazon EC2. You are responsible for ensuring that all other installed software is properly licensed.

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#When_I_import_a_VM_of_Window...

[wmf → powertower]

They do say "standard rates ... include the license". Amazon presumably gets Windows licenses through SPLA. http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/licensing-options/spla-pr...

[benologist]

This is awesome. It doesn't appear to require Windows though:

Amazon CloudFront, Elastic MapReduce, ElastiCache, Route 53, S3, EC2, SQS, Simple EDI, VPC, AWS Data Transfer, SNS, DynamoDB, RDS, SES, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, SimpleDB, and Simple Notification Service $50.00

[yardie → benologist]

The $50 AWS Service Credit offer is limited to Amazon EC2 instances with Microsoft Windows.

Looks like it is limited to Windows to me.

[benologist → yardie]

It says that but when it hit our account it listed all those other services beside the credit...

[PaulHoule]

That ain't bad, even used as directed.

If you've got some reason to run a desktop app in the cloud, setting up Windows in EC2 and connecting to it with RDP is as easy as falling off a log -- for Windows, MacOS and Linux clients.

You certainly can connect to a Linux X desktop in EC2 from any of those platforms but it's much more trouble to set up, even on Linux.

[tillk]

If Windows is not your game, you can use this credit to run FreeBSD on EC2: http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-on-ec2/

[jamesu]

Anyone know how far $50 worth of credit will go on a typical Windows Server instance?

[option_greek → jamesu]

On demand small instance will cost you approx $83 per month on 100% usage. A micro instance is free for new users. You can calculate most of the costs using their calculator:

http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html

[cyanbane → jamesu]

I have a micro running with < 2gig traffic a month and this would cover about 2.5 months.

[option_greek]

the url says aprilcredit.. do they give out these credits every month :)

[webwanderings → option_greek]

I haven't looked at the source details, but few months ago there was a promotion for the whole year worth of free EC2 (Windows, Linux).

[crankyadmin]

heh... you can't even pay me to use Windows. Nice.

[Karunamon → crankyadmin]

I think you meant to go to slashdot instead of news.yc