title: Using Amazon AWS as a development server.
body: <p>I'm still cheap. </p>
  
  <p>I have a software development environment which is a bog-standard Ubuntu 11.04 plus a pile of updates from Canonical. I would like to set it up such that I can use an Amazon EC2 instance for the 2 hours per week when I need to do full system testing on a server "in the wild". </p>
  
  <p>Is there a way to set up an Amazon EC2 server image (Ubuntu 11.04) so that whenever I fire it up, it starts, automatically downloads code updates (or conversely accepts git push updates), and then has me ready to fire up an instance of the application server. Is it also possible to tie that server to a URL (e.g ec2.1.mydomain.com) so that I can hit my web app with a browser?</p>
  
  <p>Furthermore, is there a way that I can run a command line utility to fire up my instance when I'm ready to test, and then to shut it down when I'm done? Using this model, I would be able to allocate one or more development servers to each developer and only pay for them when they are being used.  </p>