AWS can build your stack (DNS, servers, DB, LB, etc) for you using "Cloud Formation":<p><a href="http://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/aws-cloudformation-templates/" rel="nofollow">http://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/aws-cloudformation-temp...</a><p>Look at <i>"Application Framework Examples"</i> and the templates for <i>"A simple Ruby on Rails "Hello World" application"</i> to start. You can build your whole stack with a single click.<p>Later on, if you decide you want to be devops instead of dev, you can learn about how these templates were written. Go here to roll your own:<p><a href="http://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/aws-cloudformation-articles-and-tutorials/" rel="nofollow">http://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/aws-cloudformation-arti...</a><p>In the meantime, keep learning Rails and node, and let AWS Cloud Formation set the servers up for you. That's sort of the point of the cloud.
That's a somewhat difficult questions to answer, and it depends on which aspect of EC2 you're interested in. EC2 isn't really a thing for which there are tutorials because EC2 is essentially a server to rent, It's how you use EC2, and there's hardly a standard for that currently. I think the more important thing is to become familiar with the Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a whole, of which EC2 is only a part. There are some AWS SDK's which I find wildly helpful. Here's the docs for the php sdk <a href="http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSSDKforPHP/latest/#i=AmazonEC2" rel="nofollow">http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSSDKforPHP/latest/#i=Ama...</a><p>following other people companies who are using AWS can be a great way discover ways of using AWS. Netflix operates a great blog. <a href="http://techblog.netflix.com/" rel="nofollow">http://techblog.netflix.com/</a><p>If you're interested in in just renting a server, and putting Wordpress on it, there are tutorials for that, and you'll have to deal with setting up a web server, domain name etc... But perhaps you're interested in learning about how build out a scalable protein folding cluster, and the set of challenges will be completely different. AWS only provides the hardware and you must create whatever you wish to implement.
For very nice tutorials for someone completely new to EC2 and server-side admin stuff in general, check out Paul Stamatiou's tutorials. here is one of them:
<a href="http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-getting-started-with-amazon-ec2" rel="nofollow">http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-getting-started-with-amazon-...</a><p>For those that are familiar with the command line and remote servers, but new to EC2, Flurdy's tutorials are pretty solid<p><a href="http://flurdy.com/docs/ec2/" rel="nofollow">http://flurdy.com/docs/ec2/</a><p>Besides that if you plan on making any public AMIs, the blog posts by Eric Hammond of Alestic are required reading and his example github repo for this task should be checked out.
The "Getting started with" guides at <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/documentation/ec2/" rel="nofollow">http://aws.amazon.com/documentation/ec2/</a> are great. Once you're done with those might as well just read the docs at there too.
I know it's kind of tangential, but one of the MASSIVE benefits of using EC2 and clouds for hosting is the simplicity of provisioning new machines when problems occur (nodes dying, high traffic, etc.).<p>One attitude to take when using Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is to always expect failure - nodes can easily disappear when a problem occurs and take out your entire website.<p>The best backup plan you can have for this is to capture the entire configuration of your stack in some version controlled way. One of the tools I use for this falls under the domain of "configuration management", with the best products being Chef[1] or Puppet[2], or just writing a normal bash script that installs your Rails stack and checks out your code from github.<p>When utilizing these technologies, I usually do the following:<p>1. Create a virtual image that has your CM tools + dependencies installed on it.
2. Add a bootstrap script that runs at boot (usually /etc/rc.local on Linux). This script will acquire and parse user-data[3] that is provided in the provisioning request to EC2[4], an then kick off your main configuration logic.
3. Capture the image and use it as your base image that you perform deployments from.<p>Feel free to let me know if you have any questions with this method! It's a bit overkill at the learning phases of IaaS clouds and OS administration, but it will save you a TON of time down the road as a programmer.<p>[1] Chef: <a href="http://www.opscode.com/chef/" rel="nofollow">http://www.opscode.com/chef/</a>
[2] Puppet: <a href="http://puppetlabs.com" rel="nofollow">http://puppetlabs.com</a>
[3] <a href="http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/2007-03-01/DeveloperGuide/AESDG-chapter-instancedata.html" rel="nofollow">http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/2007-03-01/Develope...</a>
[4] This user-data should contain runtime arguments that your configuration scripts can use to run properly (e.g. a specific git commit version or the hostname of your database node).
I know the title says EC2, but if your just looking for a Linux box at roughly the same price, then linode is also a very good option. Railscasts has a couple of screencasts that deal directly with setting up a linux box with Rails and Postgres that I would highly recommend to someone just getting started. It is a pro cast, so it would cost 9 a month, but definitely worth the price.
I have found the EC2 guide at <a href="http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/EC2_GetStarted.html" rel="nofollow">http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/EC...</a> to be the most useful.<p>PS: I have started using EC2 in the past few months only. Their forums are also pretty informative and supportive.
We have about 100 AWS how-to guides - simple work flow scripts that support new AWS user getting started as well as advanced ones - check them out <a href="http://www.newvem.com/learning-center/how-to-guides/" rel="nofollow">http://www.newvem.com/learning-center/how-to-guides/</a><p>We also have a community of cloud experts that contributed on a weekly basis best practices, case studies and bunch of AWS goodies. <a href="http://www.newvem.com/amazon-cloud-knowledge-center/" rel="nofollow">http://www.newvem.com/amazon-cloud-knowledge-center/</a>
I found this to be a good tutorial for setting up a nodejs server on EC2
<a href="http://cuppster.com/2011/05/12/diy-node-js-server-on-amazon-ec2/" rel="nofollow">http://cuppster.com/2011/05/12/diy-node-js-server-on-amazon-...</a>
Go look at the SDK docs... they're not half bad. I got a system up and running with them (not knowing anything about AWS beforehand) in a day or two. Most of it is just knowing the lingo and getting some practice in.
I wrote a tutorial on this a while ago: <a href="http://www.dirktheman.com/tutorial/setting-up-your-lamp-stack-on-aws/" rel="nofollow">http://www.dirktheman.com/tutorial/setting-up-your-lamp-stac...</a>
It sounds like maybe what you really want to learn is the basics of Linux system administration. If you start with that, it will become much clearer how you can use EC2 to host your applications.