Since its founding in 2008, Knewton has been exclusively using AWS to power its adaptive learning platform. Peter Norton and Dave Zwieback will share the realities of running completely "in the cloud", and specific design patterns that improve scalability, availability, performance, and security in cloud-based systems. They'll cover topics such as EBS vs ephemeral (instance) storage; auto-scaling; automated deployment and configuration management; and decreasing instance boot time through AMI "stamping".