I have my forum hosted on a dedicated server, but was wondering if EC2 would be a good option to scale up running instances to host the site

anyone have experience with it?

We actually use it for our adserver, but when it come to cost, sometimes it could cost more to go with EC2 than a dedicated server (especially when you have large instances)

I was looking into to the other day. I dont think Cloud is prime yet and still have a lot of issue such as persistent storage

You can use S3 as your persistent storage

I gave them a try, but at the end it is too complicated for me

If you want an easier way to manage your AMI, try this service, its free for developers and should be more than enough for hosting single site

http://www.rightscale.com/m/index.html

Tried rightscale, it is a great service. I wish the setup fees for the advance accounts arent that high, 2500 to set up is too much

Persistent storage is available now for ec2