Based on Xen, I have read.
Get root access!
Have console output.
Usage time is rounded up to hours PER INSTANCE RUN.  If you do 3 quick restarts,
 that's 3 hours!  I guess avoid reboots.

Options
    Dedicated hardware
    VPC = Amazon Virtual Private Cloud.  IPsec VPN
    EBS = Elastic Block Store.  Boot or 2ndary disks, can be backed by S3?
    Specified physical locations.
    Elastic IP Address.  A static address that redirects to your live instances.
    CloudWatch.  Monitoring.  Incl. Auto Scaling.
    Elastic Load Balancing.
    HPC Clusters
    VM Import.  Import your VM images.  I don't know what types are supported.
    Reserved Instances are just obligated resources at a better price rate.
    Spot Instances are cheapo unused instances.

EC2 instance image configured using AMI = Amazon Machine Image
    pre-configured or custom AMI
    May contain apps, libraries, data, associated config settings.
    Access and security settings.
    Network addressing settings.
YOu start your AMI by calling the RunInstances API.

Low end Instance Types  (there are several more expensive types)
    MICRO  Small but allow for bursts.  Api name:  t1.micro
        613 MB RAM, <= 2 ECUs (for short bursts), EBS storage only, 32 or 64 bit
    SMALL  The default, 32 bit!
        1.7GB RAM, 1 EC2 (1 virtual core w/ 1 EC2 CU)
        160 GB local instance storage

EC2 CU = Metric of CPU performance power.  == 1.1 GHz 2007 Opeteron or Xeon.

FREE TIER only available for 1 year! exc. * starred items are free indefinitely
Are these per calendar month or from day of signup or startup?
    750 hours of EC2 Linux/Unix Micro instance usage
    750 hours Elastic Load Balancing + 15 GB data processing
    10 GB EBS + 1M IOs + 1 GB snapshot storage
    5 GB S3 storage, 20k Get requests + 2k Put requests
    15 GB bandwidth out (total)
    *25 SimpleDB Machine Hours and 1 GB Storage
    *100k requests of Simple Queue Service
    *100k requests, 100k HTTP notifications + 1k email notifications for
      Simple Notification Service
    *10 Cloudwatch metrics, 10 alarams, 1M API requests
    1 GB regional data transfer

AWS Management Console

OSes.  In some places it says "any", elsewhere it lists only some
Linuxes and Windows Server.

No Java databases.

CLI = API tools
May AMIs (?) include the CLIs.  But can download zip from http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=351&categoryID=88
Must set
    JAVA_HOME  (native path delims)
    EC2_HOME
    EC2_PRIVATE_KEY
    EC2_CERT
You'll usually want to add $EC2_HOME/bin to your search path.


MY FIRST INSTANCE
Key file $HOME/blaine-awskp.pem  (and backed up in $HOME/Downloads)
PUBLIC DNS: ec2-107-22-15-100.compute-1.amazonaws.com
Account ec2-user has no password and can sudo anything, including su to root.
Terminating an instance is zapping it.
Instance store-hased AMIs may not be stopped, but only terminated.  They may be
 rebooted.

AWS Account ID (for everything besides S3): 1065-2554-9830
Canonical user ID (for S3):
    b1a8dc677236442743e3b808ab9b33d04e668978ad48a564713fd614bc1c68e9

ASSIGNING (non-default) STORAGE
    Use CLI to add mappings like following I think IN THE LAUNCH COMMAND:
    (or when defining AMI)
        /dev/sdb=ephemeral0
        /dev/sdc=ephemeral1
    Assing mount point of 'none' to not mount.

BLOCK DEVICE REQUIRED USAGE CONVENTIONS
/dev/sda1  /
/dev/sda2  /mnt  (on mediums)
/dev/sda3  /swap  (on mediums)
/dev/sdb   /mnt (on larges)
/dev/sdc   Unmounted and unformatted
/dev/sdd   ? says mounted  (on larges)

STORAGE
    instance store = ephemeral store
        This are totally dedicated to a single instance lifespan.
        They survive "reboots", but not drive failures, stops, or terminations.
        'instance store-backed' AMIs have an instance store VM root partition.
        Both 'instance store-backed' and 'EBS-backed' AMIs may have additional
         volume (non-root) instance stores.