how to know the kernel version of dom 0 in amazon EC2 - amazon-ec2

As we know, amazon ec2 is built on Xen, so
how to know the kernel version of dom 0 in amazon EC2
I found different version of dom 0 kernel has some impact on my experiments. So I want to make sure which version amazon uses.

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Datastax Cassandra - Amazon EC2 instance - Cluster with three node spanning across Amazon region

I am planning to create cluster with three nodes and each node will be launched in three different Amazon EC2 zone.
As per Datastax Documentation, I will use Ec2MultiRegionSnitch and replication stragey is NetworkTopologyStrategy. Below is my needs to be achieved
Cluster Size : 3 (Spanning Across Amazon EC2 Region).
Replication Factor: 3
Read and Write Level : QUORUM.
Based on the above configuration, I can survive on single node loss(Meaning that down of any one of amazon region. Correct me if I am wrong).
In order to achieve the above configuration, I have two option
Option-1 : Using Datastax provided Amazon EC2 AMI image.
This option launch the instance with almost all components needed to run cassandra with some monitoring tools(opscenter..etc)
But It store all data on EC2 Instance Store hence data persists only during the life of the instance and the storage size depends upon instance type.
Option-2 : Using Customised installation
In this option, I have to launch Amazon EC2 Ubuntu AMI,installing JAVA,installing Datastax community edition.
This option enable me to store all my data on EBS. Hence I can expand EBS whenever I needed and the same time I can restore any node using EBS snapshot.
My Question:
Which one of the option is suitable for my needs?.
Note:
I read the documentation provided by Datastax and very new to cassandra. Hence, Whatever inputs you provided will be very useful to me.
Thanks
It's not true that you get Datastax AMI only with EC2 ephemeral storage. Starting from version 2.5 they claim you can choose EBS as well: Introducing the DataStax Auto-Clustering AMI 2.5. That's an relatively easy way of getting started which I've personally chosen.
Should you choose EBS or EC2 ephemeral storage?
The answer is: it depends...
The past (~2012-2013):
EC2 instances with ephemeral storage were a better choice. There were detailed performance benchmarks over the years which indicated that EBS is getting better, but still, attached physical drives were better.
The past (~2014):
EC2 choice is still better. Datastax wrote a nice post about pricing, network and failure resilience: What is the story with AWS storage?
Present (~2016):
instaclustr claims:
By running Cassandra on Amazon EBS, you can run denser, cheaper
Cassandra clusters with just as much availability as ephemeral storage
instances.
Nice presentation here: AWS re:Invent 2015 | (BDT323) Amazon EBS & Cassandra: 1 Million Writes Per Second on 60 Nodes
All in all, I suggest you doing a TCO analysis and if there isn't a big difference in price, choose EBS - because of out of the box ability to make a snapshot. What's more, chances are EBS will be improved over the time.

Common APIs to launch EC2 and Openstack instances

At work we use Amazon linux Ec2 instances for production purposes. Also, for our internal dev setup we use openstack Cent OS instances.
I want to make a common CLI or expose REST APIs to start and stop instances on both these cloudstacks. (I already have machine images). I understand I can use any of the common SDKs (I plan to use GO) and build this.
Recently, I came across this. I am just wondering if such a thing is already available. Or does the above repo mean something else? There have been also some other articles which mention EC2 support for openstack. I am not sure if it means the same as I what I want to achieve.
There already is some compatibility with ec2 command line clients, for Nova, what you have linked to expands on that to include some network functions (VPC etc.), and openstack heat is compatible with some aws cloudformation templates.
have you looked at euca2ools? - this client was developed by Eucalyptus cloud and is compatible with AWS and nova EC2

How make a cluster of CoreOS on my local infrastructure?

I have some professional servers, and I want to create a cluster of 7-15 machines with CoreOS. I'm a little familiar with Proxmox, but I'm not clear about how create a virtual machine(VM) with CoreOS on proxmox. Also, I'm not sure if the idea of cluster of CoreOS's VM on proxmox it's right to do.
Then, I need:
How create a VM with CoreOS on proxmox.
If will be viable proxmox to create CoreOS's cluster.
I have no experience with Proxmox, but if you can make an image that runs then you can use it to stamp out the cluster. What you'd need to do is boot the ISO, run the installer and then make an image of that. Be sure to delete /etc/machine-id before you create the image.
CoreOS uses cloud-config to connect the machines together and configure a few parameters related to networking -- basically anything to get the machines talking to the cluster. A cloud-config file should be provided as a config-drive image, which is basically like mounting a CD-ROM to the VM. You'll have to check the docs on Proxmox to see if it supports that. More info here: http://coreos.com/docs/cluster-management/setup/cloudinit-config-drive/
The other option you have is to skip the VMs altogether and instead of using Proxmox, just boot CoreOS directly on your hardware. You can do this by booting the ISO and installing or doing something like iPXE: http://coreos.com/docs/running-coreos/bare-metal/booting-with-ipxe/

Usage of rightscale init script in it's EC2 Centos 5.4 AMI

I was searching for EC2 EBS storage Centos 5.4 AMI in the community AMI and eventually I found Rightscale AMI (I think they called it RightImage).
Now I have created instance using that AMI, but I found out there is some Rightscale stuff inside which is worrying me about the safety on using it. I found out there are the following files in that AMI:
/etc/init.d/rightimage
/etc/init.d/rightlink
/etc/init.d/rightscale
/home/ec2
/home/s3sync
(may be more other files I haven't found out yet)
I know I can look into the script and folder and see what they do, but since a lot of user here recommended using Rightscale Centos AMI in EC2, I hope may be there is already some gurus here know what those mentioned script and folder doing and could advice me
i)whether is it safe to delete them. (I'm more concern on whether my data in the server will be safe by using this AMI)
ii)any installed apps in RightScale AMI that should be deleted
And if you think there is other free EC2 Centos AMI that is secure and solid, do suggest as well, thanks !
In order for RightScale to properly manage instances in ec2 they use a ruby based daemon called RightLink as a communication device between their core platform and each instance that is launched. The init scripts that you saw are required for the instance to self configure itself to the point where it can be managed by RightScale properly.
/etc/init.d/rightimage is the first script that is run. Essentially it just determines the OS, arch version, and installs the correct RightLink package from the S3 bucket. Afterwards it kicks off the /opt/rightscale/bin/post_install.sh script which uses the OS init control tools to register the startup scripts to be invoked on future boots of the OS; this ensures that RightLink will always be started.
/etc/init.d/rightscale is the next script that is run. It initializes RightScale-specific (but not RightLink-specific) system state. It is responsible for caching launch settings (aka userdata) and metadata in /var/spool and installing any available patches to the RightLink agent.
/etc/init.d/rightlink is the final script that is run. It configures and enrolls the RightLink agent idempotently. If configuration and enrollment succeed, rightlink starts the sandboxed monit which starts the persistent agent process. If you're not launching the AMI using the RightScale platform this will never properly enroll because they aren't expecting it to, as such RightScale will have no communication with the instance at all.
Removing all three of these from the image shouldn't in any way harm the overall stability of the image, but from a security standpoint they shouldn't cause any problems if they are present.
If you have any further specific questions about it I'd suggest hopping on their forums at https://forums.rightscale.com/
You could also try #rightscale on freenode.

Recommendation for an EC2 Instance Stack

Our development servers are on Amazons EC2.
We would ideally like the following:
PHP 5.3.x
Oracle Drivers
mHash
mCrypt
Apache
Does anyone have a recommendation on a good place to get a stack that would meet most of those needs with a minimum of additional configuration?
For updated base AMI's you can check Ubuntu canonical AMI's found at Eric's site: www.alestic.com.
The Amazon AMI was also release if you prefer CentOS distro. http://bit.ly/a5fcz3
For security reasons, I suggest you build your own LAMP stack.
Of course there are many existing LAMP AMI's you can find.
We are bootstrapping our instances using chef and a service called Scalarium. Depending on what we setup and configure, it takes up to 8 minutes for the instance to become operational.
Feel free to check out my chef recipes, specifically the one for php-fpm:
http://github.com/till/easybib-cookbooks/tree/master/php-fpm/
I'm also working on a custom php5 debian package to speed up the PHP installation.

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