AWS Free Usage Tier now includes Amazon EC2 instances 

Amazon is excited to announce that the AWS (Amazon Web Services) Free Usage Tier now includes Amazon EC2 instances running Microsoft Windows Server. Customers eligible for the AWS Free Usage Tier can now use up to 750 hours per month of t1.micro instances running Microsoft Windows Server for free. With this announcement, customers familiar with Windows Server can gain hands-on experience with AWS at no cost. Customers can select from a range of pre-configured Amazon Machine Images with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2. Once running, customers can connect via Microsoft Remote Desktop Client to begin building, migrating, testing, and deploying their web applications on AWS in minutes. The expanded Free Usage Tier with Microsoft Windows Server t1.micro instances is available today in all regions, except for AWS GovCloud. For more information about the AWS Free Usage Tier, please visit the AWS Free Usage Tier web page. To get started using Microsoft Windows Server on AWS, visit the AWS Windows web page.

AWS Free Usage Tier

To help new AWS customers get started in the cloud, AWS is introducing a free usage tier. New AWS customers will be able to run a free Amazon EC2 Micro Instance for a year, while also leveraging a free usage tier for Amazon S3, Amazon Elastic Block Store, Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, and AWS data transfer. AWS’s free usage tier can be used for anything you want to run in the cloud: launch new applications, test existing applications in the cloud, or simply gain hands-on experience with AWS.

Below are the highlights of AWS’s free usage tiers. All are available for one year (except SWF, DynamoDB, SimpleDB, SQS, and SNS which are free indefinitely):

AWS Free Usage Tier (Per Month):

  • 750 hours of Amazon EC2 Linux Micro Instance usage (613 MB of memory and 32-bit and 64-bit platform support) – enough hours to run continuously each month*
  • 750 hours of Amazon EC2 Microsoft Windows Server Micro Instance usage (613 MB of memory and 32-bit and 64-bit platform support) – enough hours to run continuously each month*
  • 750 hours of an Elastic Load Balancer plus 15 GB data processing*
  • 30 GB of Amazon Elastic Block Storage, plus 2 million I/Os and 1 GB of snapshot storage*
  • 5 GB of Amazon S3 standard storage, 20,000 Get Requests, and 2,000 Put Requests*
  • 100 MB of storage, 5 units of write capacity, and 10 units of read capacity for Amazon DynamoDB.**
  • 25 Amazon SimpleDB Machine Hours and 1 GB of Storage**
  • 1,000 Amazon SWF workflow executions can be initiated for free. A total of 10,000 activity tasks, signals, timers and markers, and 30,000 workflow-days can also be used for free**
  • 100,000 Requests of Amazon Simple Queue Service**
  • 100,000 Requests, 100,000 HTTP notifications and 1,000 email notifications for Amazon Simple Notification Service**
  • 10 Amazon Cloudwatch metrics, 10 alarms, and 1,000,000 API requests**
  • 15 GB of bandwidth out aggregated across all AWS services*

In addition to these services, the AWS Management Console is available at no charge to help you build and manage your application on AWS.

* These free tiers are only available to new AWS customers, and are available for 12 months following your AWS sign-up date. When your free usage expires or if your application use exceeds the free usage tiers, you simply pay standard, pay-as-you-go service rates (see each service page for full pricing details). Restrictions apply; see offer terms for more details.

** These free tiers do not expire after 12 months and are available to both existing and new AWS customers indefinitely.