I’ve been using ElasticFox for a while now and thought I’d jot down a few notes about it. I don’t use it exclusively to manage my Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2 instances, EBS volumes, etc., but usually I do go there first. It’s worth mentioning that I also use the AWS Management Console and EC2 command line tools (both in Windows and Linux). Typically I keep ElasticFox open as I access it several times a day.
One of the best things about ElasticFox is that you can add “Tags” to instances, EBS volumes, etc. Tags are your own notes about the instance, like a friendly name. I really wish Amazon had a field like this that was tied to the instance so it would be available in all tools. One minor draw-back to tags are that they only apply to the particular browser in which they are created. They don’t, for example, if you logon as a different user to your machine, or on other machines.
With ElasticFox you can connect to various regions, even with different credentials. It allows you to manage the following by selecting the appropriate tab:
- Instances
- Images
- KeyPairs
- Security Groups
- Elastic IPs
- Volumes and Snapshots
- Bundle Tasks
- Reserved Instances
- Virtual Private Clouds
- VPN Connections
- Availability Zones
Read more about and download the Elasticfox Firefox Extension for Amazon EC2 and enjoy.
See also Copying ElasticFox Tags from One Browser to Another.
UPDATE:
ElasticFox doesn’t support versions of FireFox above 3.x, so get Elasticfox (for EC2 Tag) which adds a few more nice features.