TurnKey Linux: Launch Open-Source Appliances in Amazon EC2

The TurnKey Linux project has launched TurnKey Hub, a service designed to make it easy to launch and manage open-source virtual appliances on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). It’s currently in private beta, but TurnKey Hub caught my attention. Here’s why.

TurnKey Hub is aimed at simplifying cloud deployments by making it easy to launch appliances and cheap to keep them active, with their website indicating a price point of less than a US penny an hour, under a “pay-what-you-use” model.

Among the appliances available are the usual suspects: MySQL, Ruby on Rails, Drupal, and a bunch of others with varying degrees of enterprise usefulness. Once launched, TurnKey Hub touts its ease of management, with all assets getting descriptive labels and the ability to automatically set up EBS devices and elastic IP’s when it launches.

Down the pipeline, the website indicates that they want to add support for other cloud platforms, as well as migration and backup functionalities. The eventual goal, per the site:

“Imagine being able to develop your site on a locally running appliance (e.g., running in VirtualBox or VMWare). Then, when you’re ready you can automatically migrate your appliance, with all your customizations to a cloud hosting provider of your choice.”

Never underestimate the power of Linux developers with a goal. TurnKey Hub, which makes it easier, faster, and cheaper to leverage Amazon EC2 and the cloud at large, is worth keeping an eye on as it matures more fully.

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