A public AMI ami-d8ff7bb1 lets you try Erlang on Xen with minimum effort. If you have Amazon EC2 API tools installed, just issue the following command:
ec2run ami-d8ff7bb1 --kernel aki-88aa75e1 (us-east-1 only)
Alternatively, you can use Amazon Management Console to launch the instance using the AMI. Do not forget to select aki-88aa75e1 as the kernel ID. Take additional care to open port 80 in the default security group or the security group you selected when launching the instance.
After a few seconds point your browser to http://<new-instance-public-dns-name>. Now you will be able to execute Erlang expressions in a way similar to the standard Erlang shell. For instance, type ‘2 + 2.’ and press ENTER. More commands to try:
test:run_tests(lists_SUITE).
test:run_tests(tuple_SUITE).
test:run_tests(binary_SUITE).
test:run_tests(estone_SUITE).
The AMI contains the Ling virtual machine v0.2.2, stdlib and kernel libraries, a cowboy web server, and a simple ‘tryling’ application that creates the shell-like experience. To discover the files included with the image use file:list_dir() and filelib:wildcard() functions.
The only way to boot a custom kernel on Amazon EC2 is to chain-boot it using a pv-grub kernel provided by Amazon. The two-stage boot process adds to the startup latency. Despite the suboptimal boot process, Erlang on Xen starts fast on Amazon EC2.
If you spotted a bug, you may go to issues.erlangonxen.org and file it directly into BugZilla. Please, supplement your bug report with the console output of the failed instance. Use ‘ec2gcons <instance-id>’ to retrieve it.
We are looking forward to hearing from you regarding your experiences with Erlang on Xen on Amazon EC2.