Last month we announced the release candidate for TurnKey Core 12.0 - the common base for all appliances, based on the rock solid Debian Squeeze (6.0.4).

Yes, that's 'fastest', not closest.

Background

A while back I published a blog post entitled Finding the closest data center using GeoIP and indexing, which described how we automatically determine the AWS regional data center to be used for storing encrypted server backups.

In response to user demand on the forum we've added Hub support for Amazon EC2 reserved instances.

Reserved instances are an Amazon EC2 feature that allows you to reserve server capacity up to 3 years in advance by paying a low one-time fee.

The cloud. Isn't that just a new name everyone on the latest hype bandwagon is slapping on the same old stuff? Yes. Or rather, at least the way some clueless marketing types are using it that is. With so much smoke you'd forgive the cynics for thinking there's no fire. But... there are a few genuinely interesting things an IT guy can do today that just weren't practical a few years back.