Cloud computing providers such as Rackspace Cloud and Amazon EC2 provide on-demand computing power at the push of a button, a feature that has become immensely popular with developers and systems administrators alike. One of the most touted benefits of cloud computing is cost savings; however, these on-demand instances can become very expensive if they are left running. Often the capacity of time will be configured in order to handle large-scale events and then left online because of the time required to reconfigure the systems if they are needed again. As underutilized capacity ends up costing money rather than saving it, being able to reduce or expand the capacity quickly and easily will help you match your computing needs while saving both time and money.
This section specifically looks at two of the more popular cloud providers: Amazon EC2 and Rackspace Cloud; however, there are others, and the techniques described here will be broadly applicable to any other supported...