Amazon Web Services adds Windows Server to free usage tier

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) has started offering Windows Server 2008 R2 to its free usage tier of Amazon Web Services, a move that the company no doubt hopes will lure Windows administrators over to its cloud computing platform. In the past, developers or administrators were limited to a Micro Instance of the Linux platform in order to test-drive AWS for free.

According to ReadWriteWeb, potential customers can opt for one of three Windows AMIs (Amazon Machine Images) being offered by Amazon. This includes the 32-bit version of Windows Server 2008 Base, the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2008 R2 Base, and the 64-bit of Windows Server 2008 R2 with SQL Server Express and IIS. The last version makes it trivial to set up a website utilizing .NET technologies and powered by an SQL Server Express database backend.

As with the free Linux offering, Windows Server will only be offered under the AWS free usage tier, which comes with 613MB of RAM and 5GB of Amazon S3 storage and is available for up to a year. The cost of running one Micro Instance of Windows will be $0.03 per hour after the free trial. Beyond not having to incur capital expenses, one of the benefits of businesses running Windows on AWS is that they need not be concerned about licensing costs.

For more:
- check out this article at The Register
- check out this article at ReadWriteWeb

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