Automating signup and instance creation on Amazon EC2

Background :

I have built an a开发者_运维问答pp that runs well on an EC2 micro instance.

I want my friends to use this app too, but they aren't quite good with computers.

Question :

1. How do I make it easy for everyone to install and use it?

   a. They wouldn't use it if they have to learn what is an instance, AMI and all.

   b. Every individual should be able to have his own credit card billed for the AWS.

   c. I can provide .rpm so that the app installs comfortably in silent mode :)

2. If I decide to sell my product sometime later, how do I do that?

I'm not sure of the nature of your app but you could consider doing more work on it so it could be used in a SaaS (Software as a Service) model, perhaps build in some white-labeling so it could be re-branded completely.

How you could charge for it one day would depend - perhaps you can charge them in a recurring fashion - monthly/yearly/etc or by the level of functionality (free version gets you X, Silver edition gets you X+Y and Gold gets you X+Y+Z).

This is the sort of thing you would need to think before building the app - but if you think someone else would find your app useful enough to pay for it one day then it might well be worth your time rewrite what you have.

Auto-signup: I don't think Amazon will let you automatically sign up for its service.

Automatic management: Automatic instance management is actually very tricky -- more complicated than running a server by itself. Having an instance managed in the background for an end user might end up being very error-prone. I have certainly never heard of anyone even attempting this.

So as Jahufar alluded to, the best way to do what you are trying to do is to roll your own server (which you might run on Amazon or anywhere else), and have all the clients connect to it.