It all seems cheap and easy to jump on the offerings by Bitnami and Jumpbox when I was looking for alternative solutions to manage the APPs stack for my AWS instance. After some research it all boils down to trading ease with costs, couple with a few control issues.
If we can take care of the APPs stack oursleves, it will give us back the control and save the cost from Bitnami and Jumpbox. For most people with some server administration experience, I think we dont really need those service, unless you really want to save that bit of time and trade off cost and control. That's cost saving number one.
Then it dawn on me why I am using AWS since its likely more costly in the long term than VPS solutions from the likes of Linode and Rackspace. Until i need the scalability of AWS, it probably make more financial sense for me to go for VPS first with a few servers and keep seeming hidden charges at bay. It also gives more technical controls back when i switch from cloud to VPS. Yes, its the reverse pitch of what you probably have heard from cloud vendors, but for start-ups, its probably really make more sense to use VPS first. It's worth the effort to deal with the technical issues yourself. Cost saving number Two.
Related resources:
http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/reserved-instances/#2
http://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-ami/
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#What_is_the_Amazon_Linux_AMI
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/index.html?LinuxAMIUserGuide.htmlhttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2540959
http://www.craigburke.com/blog/2011/06/27/amazon-web-services-vs-linode/
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/index.html?LinuxAMIUserGuide.html
