Hi. I've been learning web2py (I bought the book) at the same time I'm trying to learn Python, so I'm nowhere ready to deploy anything useful (coming from a C# background). Still, I've kept the thought of scalability in the back of my mind while using AWS for my employer's cloud projects.
Amazon recently released this new service, Cloud Formation, and I tested it out with one of their pre-made application templates: Drupal 7. It was amazing! After completing a guided configuration, it creates an entire virtualized infrastructure for you, including virtual servers and security settings, which is automatically scalable via the AWS API. If the load balancer gets loaded with requests for too long, it spins up another copy of the application virtual server, connected to the same back-end SQL database. I'm still trying to determine what a minimum charge would be to run an initial deployment, so it may not be an option until you really need the scalability that it offers (when your web app becomes very popular). You can create your own scripted Cloud Formation deployment for a custom application, so I think a web2py template would be great for anyone needing a high-performance, auto-scaling deployment of their web2py application -- without having to worry about rewriting it to work with Google's object storage model for AppEngine. If a web2py Cloud Formation template script can be created and submitted to Amazon as a default template for people to use, it would generate more interest in the framework! Just a thought... -Derek
