Traffic costs between EC2 instances, AZs, and VPCs

Often times when running on AWS you will have multiple AZs, accounts and VPCs.  This is a simple summary of EC2 data transfer costs:

1. Within the same AZ  : Free: It is within the same AZ and over private IP.
2. Between two AZs :   Cost. Will incur inter-az charges for both inbound and outbound

3. Between Accounts in different VPCs :  Cost. Inter-az charges are applicable for data transfer charges between instances in the different AZ's (same region) and in different accounts.
4. Between one EC2 classic instance and VPC EC2 instance in a same AZ : Cost
5. Instances to S3 in the same region: Free
6. Instance to S3 in different region: Cost. cross region charges

Quickbooks on AWS

Running Quickbooks on AWS/EC2 is easy. It is also easy to migrate your data from on premise and online Quickbooks.

Some information on running Quickbooks on AWS/EC2 here:
https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=364272

Next step is to create an EC2 instance:

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/EC2Win_GetStarted.html

You will be running Quickbooks on an AWS EC2 Windows instance and then be using RDP (Microsoft Remote Desktop) to access your AWS online Quickbooks application:
Details on accessing Windows EC2 instances here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/LaunchingAndUsingInstancesWindows.html

1. Migrating data from on premise Quickbooks to AWS:

Transfer Files to Windows Server Instances from Windows

You can work with your instance the same way you would work with any Windows server. For example, you can transfer files between an Amazon EC2 Windows instance and your local Windows computer using the local file sharing feature of Windows Remote Desktop. If you enable this option in your Windows Remote Desktop Connection software, you can access your local files from your Amazon EC2 Windows instances. You can access local files on hard disk drives, DVD drives, portable media drives, and mapped network drives. For information about this feature, go to the Microsoft Support website or go toThe most useful feature of Remote Desktop I never knew about on the MSDN Blogs website.

2. Migrating data from Quickbooks online edition:
http://support.quickbooks.intuit.com/support/articles/HOW12246

You will most likely need more Windows and Quickbooks licenses:

1. By default, can have two concurrent RDP users on Windows. Can connect more then two users but need to change licensing….

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverTS/thread/8987ad6d-5d19-44a9-8835-16208127fdd5/

2. Quickbooks licensing information can be found here:

http://support.quickbooks.intuit.com/support/articles/INF12724