Amazon EC2 Spot Instances for Acceptance Testing

Using Spot Instances can reduce costs by at least two times as compared with On-Demand instances. Example: On-Demand (Large): $0.48 per hour Spot Instances (Large): $0.20 per hour Set your maximum price near to the current Spot Price. If the Spot Price goes above your maximum price and your instance is terminated by Amazon EC2,

Windows Server 2008 Core DCPROMO

dcpromo.exe /unattend /replicaOrNewDomain:domain /newDomain:forest /newDomainDnsName:velaskec.com /domainNetbiosName:velaskec /safeModeAdminPassword:pa$$word

Removing Password Complexity Requirements from Windows Server 2008 Core

Use this PowerShell script if you need to remove Password Complexity Requirements from Windows Server 2008 Core: secedit /export /cfg c:\new.cfg ${c:new.cfg}=${c:new.cfg} | % {$_.Replace(‘PasswordComplexity=1’, ‘PasswordComplexity=0’)} secedit /configure /db $env:windir\security\new.sdb /cfg c:\new.cfg /areas SECURITYPOLICY del c:\new.cfg

Connecting to Official Ubuntu Images for EC2

Read first To connect to an instance of an official Ubuntu image for EC2, you need to ssh to it as “ubuntu” instead of as “root”. Hmm…what next to do?:)

Why can’t I ssh or ping my brand new Amazon EC2 instance?

I just created a free EC2 instance with all the defaults. It says it’s running in the AWS Management Console. On the “Instance Actions” menu, I click “Connect”. I copy the DNS name provided (looks like ec2-a-dashed-IP-address.compute-1.amazonaws.com) and try to SSH to it. No response. I can’t even ping it. What gives? answer: http://goo.gl/T6pQD