Thursday, March 27, 2008

Amazon Web Services Adds Static IP Addresses

Seattle-based Amazon Web Services, the web services arm of Amazon.com, said today that it has launched the ability to have static IP addresses with its Amazon EC2 cloud computing services. The firm's EC2 services previously did not allow static IP addresses, making it more difficult for developers to create computing instances and applications. According to Amazon, the new support allows users to create "Elastic IP" addresses which can be dynamically remapped to any compute instance in EC2. The ability makes it easier for users to host web sites on the service, and other applications which require a fixed (non-changing) IP address. The firm said static IP addresses were among the top requests of its developers. EC2 is Amazon's web-based service for renting computing capacity "on demand." The service is used for scaling out web and other applications.