Q: Do you offer support for the metabloc AWS Marketplace AMIs?

A: Yes!

Q: Can you help with deployment?

A: Yes! No charge on a fresh clean deployment should you get stuck. Make sure you review the stack deployment guide.

Q: How does the AMI (Amazon Machine Image) pricing work?

A: Our AMIs are priced on a BYOL (Bring Your Own License) and per hour pay-as-you-go basis. The metabloc AMI pricing includes the development, packaging, optimization, and support of the AMI. The other costs are AWS infrastructure costs, such as the EC2. You can find the AMI pricing per hour under "Pricing" in the AWS Marketplace listing.You can reduce the AWS infrastructure hosting costs by using AWS Reserved Instances and Savings Plans.

Q: Can I develop anything on these AMIs?

A: Yes! Let your imagination run wild.

Q: Do you provide other distros besides Red Hat Linux?

A: Not currently, however let us know your requirements.

Q: Are all EC2 classes available for deployments?

A: No. Only classes designated in the AWS Marketplace listing are available for deployment.

Q: Why run Oracle database on EC2, when this is available on RDS (Relational Database Service)?

A: RDS has some feature restrictions, and a limited choice of Oracle database versions. Oracle database on EC2 can sometimes be more cost effective than RDS. A common use-case for running Oracle database on EC2 is when using legacy applications that do not support later versions of Oracle database. Rarely used application databases that contain historical data or needs to be retained for legal purposes is also a popular use case.

Q: Do you offer any discounts on more than one AMI?

A: No. All of our stacks are pay-as-you-go; however, you can reduce your overall AWS hosting costs by up to 75% by taking advantage of AWS Reserved Instances and Saving Plans.

Q: Can you help migrate my application and database to my new EC2 instance?

A: Yes! Please contact support. We will first need to evaluate the migration conditions, and determine any cost and time.

Q: Do you change the default app paths?

A: No. The default paths by the respective application companies' standards. Keeping these standardized enables easy upgrades and support.

Q: Are the AMIs documented?

A: Yes! All stacks have basic deployment documentation. This site and our Bot also have answers to common technical questions, and you can check our site for deployment videos.

Q: Are these AMIs hardened?

A: To ensure ease of deployment, support, and maximum performance, the AMIs are provided with their vendor delivered configurations. In short, hardening breaks installs, and typically slows down performance. We recommend using AWS security groups, ACLs, and firewalls whenever possible, and Cloud Application Firewalls that act as a global threat prevention service. Cloudflare.com and Dome9.com are great examples. Also, Amazon’s AWS Web Application Firewall [WAF] is a highly recommended service. All of these services offer great centralized management and global security protection.

Q: Can I request an EC2 class that is not available for deployment?

A: Yes! Please contact support and we will see what options are available.

Q: What support do you offer?

A: We support the base stack and default application as delivered via AWS Marketplace to be functional at delivery. We frequently update our stacks when we see an opportunity to improve them, for performance, security, or ease of use. We also provide AWS infrastructure tips and general guidance on how to deploy AWS infrastructure to maximize performance with a metabloc AMI.