Using Amazon EC2

The following details should serve as guidelines for interacting with Amazon EC2.

An EC2 instance will be assigned both an internal and external IP address.
The internal IP address is dynamic.
The external IP address is dynamic or elastic.
The Hostname is auto-assigned.

A few general notes about using the AWS Console:

If it looks like changes are taking an unreasonable amount of time to be applied in AWS, click the Refresh button on the AWS Management Console.
The AWS Management Console has a pretty useful help system that you can view by clicking the Help button, located in the top-left corner of the AWS Console.

Windows compatibility

Windows instances running in the Amazon EC2 cloud have certain constraints that can affect Double-Take full-server protection.

System volumes are always mapped to C:\. For full-server protection, the failover target or recovery server must have a matching drive letter for the system volume. This means all source servers must use the C:\ drive for their system volume in order to recover the server to the cloud; otherwise, the server cannot be recovered to the cloud. However, data recovery would still be possible to any machine, and even system recovery would be possible to a non-cloud machine with the same operating system and Double-Take path as the source.
The system volume of the source server can have at most 145 GB of used space in order to recover the server to the cloud; otherwise, the server cannot be recovered to the cloud. However, data recovery would still be possible to any machine, and even system recovery would be possible to a non-cloud machine with the same operating system and Double-Take path as the source (the Double-Take EC2 Recovery server instance has a fixed sized 150 GB system volume). During a full-server failover or recovery, the contents of the source's \Windows, \Documents and Settings, and \Program Files directories must be stored on the target system volume. This limitation does not affect data volumes, which can be as large as 1 TB.

Remote desktop connections

A remote desktop connection must be enabled on each source server. This is necessary because when a server is recovered to the cloud, there is no true console access. Console access is only enabled through RDC. Therefore, it must be enabled on the source in order to be enabled on the recovery target.

Key pairs

The key pair generated in AWS (keypair_file.pem) will be used each time you launch an instance or create an AMI. Make sure to save it somewhere secure and back it up so that it will be available for future use.