tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30174199.post856104083966468140..comments2008-01-26T13:24:29.283-08:00Stephane Legayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01593730213717050672noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30174199.post-67109093632593264952008-01-26T13:24:00.000-08:002008-01-26T13:24:00.000-08:00That's really good feedback, thanks Tony. I looked at Flexiscale, it looks very promising. I like your offering, the virtual file storage system makes a lot of sense and seems much easier to use than S3, but there were a couple of reasons why I didn't consider it yet for our application.<BR/><BR/>- As I mentioned, our audience is primarily US-based. Do you guys have plans to open datacenters in the US?<BR/><BR/>- Our parallel processing architecture relies on a highly-available, scalable, distributed message queuing service (we're using SQS at the moment). I guess we could keep using SQS in conjunction with your product, but I was wondering if you guys are planning a similar feature.<BR/><BR/>- Last but not least, for various reasons we're using SQL Server 2005 as a database. Licensing is pretty pricey, so we'd like the database server to perform as close to bare metal as possible without having to deal with purchasing multiple processor licenses - 1 quad-core should get us a long way. How do you guys deal with this kind of issue?<BR/><BR/>Thanks a lotStephane Legayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01593730213717050672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30174199.post-37098903489849116262008-01-26T02:42:00.000-08:002008-01-26T02:42:00.000-08:00It's actually even easier than that, as Amazon (like us) could license it under the Microsoft SPLA http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/licensing/ albeit the license isn't perfect for per hour billing, but it's a start.<BR/><BR/>I suspect one of the other reasons might be that to get Windows working under Xen you need Intel VT (or AMD's equivalant) support in the processor. I would imagine from knowing when Amazon started building their infrastructure they couldn't get that at the time (although I would expect their newer hardware has got it supported).<BR/><BR/>Tony Lucas<BR/>CEO, FlexiScaleToonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08052862503569064994noreply@blogger.com