Debian-Med images for Amazon Compute Cloud?!?

[Steffen Moeller <steffen_moeller@gmx.de>]

Hello,

you may have heard of the compute cluster of Amazon that everyone can
use on a per-cpu-minute-basis. It is pretty amazing. 1000 CPU hours is
100$ or in other words if you exchange your 100% busy 500$ zero-energy
machine every 7 months then you are better of with Amazon.

I found a Debian Etch image
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=639

and some Ubuntu with minimal Bioinformatics
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=1259&categoryID=101

I cannot tell exactly about the difficulties that arise with an image
that comprises the complete Debian-Med. However, at least for docking or
 molecular dynamic with gromacs, I could well imagine that this would
make perfect sense to try.

I will not need it myself in the next couple of months, but if someone
of yours is thinking about hiring an extra technician to help a cluster,
then please be aware that 50k$ would pay for 500kh which is 57 CPU-years
alone. What I personally like is that one can easily specify costs for
cluster-computations in grant proposals.

Best,

Steffen