Welcome to xlogs http://xlo.gs – a free tool to help manage the Amazon Cloud.
Over the course of the last year of so, and in reviewing a number of AWS environments as a consultant, I noticed a couple of interesting things.
- An incredible number of EC2 sites on Amazon are virtually completely static
- Almost none of these sites are using AWS Reserved Instances
- Almost all of them have zombie instances that nobody remembers why they’re there.
- Amazon makes tracking what’s going on difficult – to put it mildly
So xlogs is my one-stop site to help address the following AWS shortcomings:
- No logfiles. No simple way to tell when an instance appears, vanishes, starts or stops.
- No simple alerts. I want to know when things change.
- No simple way to see how much I might save using Reserved Instances.
As someone who’s taken care of computers for 30 years, I need logfiles. They tell the story of what’s happening on a machine. Amazon doesn’t have something like that where I can see at a glance what’s going on with my instances.
Ditto Alerting. I wrote the first web-based Systems and Network Monitor, Big Brother – http://bb4.com – so I really want to know what’s going on. Even a simple email alert to show me what’s changed. At least it’ll remind me I have stuff running on EC2.
And spending? It’s shocking how much money you can save on Amazon just using reserved instances. Here’s a sample:
So here’s Xlogs – please let me know if its helpful and please tell me of any bugs.
Happy New Year.