Amazon Lightsail Global Rollout Begins For AWS
Service to quickly launch virtual private servers on AWS expanded to UK, Europe, and Asia
Amazon Lightsail has been expanded beyond its US birthplace as the VPS (virtual private server) service arrives in the UK, Europe and Asia Pacific.
Amazon Lightsail for the uninitiated is an Amazon service that is designed to be a easy and quick way for system admins to launch and manage a virtual private server with AWS.
It includes all the needed infrastructure for different types of projects, including a virtual machine, SSD-based storage, data transfer, DNS management, and a static IP. Prices start at just $5 (£3.89) a month.
Additional Regions
Amazon had launched Lightsail back in November, and since then it has gained “many customers.” But when the VPS was launched last year, it was only available in the US East (Northern Virginia) region.
But now according to a blog posting by Amazon’s Jeff Barr, it is now available in nine additional AWS regions including US East (Northern Virginia); US West (Oregon) and US East (Ohio).
And the service is now available outside the US, as supported European regions now include London; Frankfurt and Ireland, as well as Asia Pacific regions in Mumbai (India); Tokyo (Japan); Singapore; and Sydney.
Amazon also launched an updated global console to allow system admins to create and manage resources in one or more regions.
The admin can simply choose the desired region when he or she creates a new instance.
Growing Rollout
Amazon of course is best known as an e-commerce giant, but its AWS cloud service has been a significant growth driver for many years now.
In April AWS contributed yet again to another impressive financial performance for Amazon, but there are signs that strong competition in the public cloud market from Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and others are slowing AWS growth.
That said, Amazon remains committed to the global coverage of AWS. It recently announced plans to open a new infrastructure region in Sweden in 2018 as part of a Nordics expansion to follow on from its new London data centres.
It also launched a cloud training programme called AWS re:Start to help plug a growing UK skills gap.
