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<h3>What's Eclat</h3>
<p>
<b>Eclat</b> stands for EC2 Command Line Administrator Tool.  It allows you to
manage Amazon EC2 services from the command line, fast and easy.  It does
not require any resource-consuming libraries.  It is written in plain C,
depends only on libraries which are always installed on any decent system,
and has a tiny memory footprint.
</p>

<h3>Why use it?</h3>
<p>Amazon provides similar command line utilities in its
<code>ec2-api-tools</code> package.  So why use Eclat instead?  The answer is
simple: Eclat performs about 100 times faster, uses 10 times less CPU
and requires 32 times less memory than <code>ec2-api-tools</code>.</p>
<p>
The table below summarizes the results of running various <code>describe</code>
commands on two distinct classes of Amazon instances.
</p>

<table class="comparison">
<thead>
<tr>
 <td rowspan="2" class="action">Action</td>
 <td colspan="3">Real time</td>
 <td colspan="3">CPU usage (%)</td>
 <td colspan="3">Memory usage</td>
</tr>
<tr>
 <td>EC2</td>
 <td>Eclat</td>
 <td>%</td>
 <td>EC2</td>
 <td>Eclat</td>
 <td>%</td>
 <td>EC2</td>
 <td>Eclat</td>
 <td>%</td>
</tr> 
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
 <td colspan="10" class="instance-type">t1.micro</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<tbody>
<tr>
    <td class="action">describe-addresses</td>
    <td>0:07.73</td>
    <td>0:00.25</td>
    <td> 3.2</td>
    <td> 93</td>
    <td>  4</td>
    <td> 4.3</td>
    <td>541.3</td>
    <td>19.4</td>
    <td> 3.6</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="action">describe-instance-status</td>
    <td>0:31.78</td>
    <td>0:00.39</td>
    <td> 1.2</td>
    <td> 98</td>
    <td> 28</td>
    <td>28.6</td>
    <td>538.3</td>
    <td>19.7</td>
    <td> 3.7</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="action">describe-instances</td>
    <td>1:00.99</td>
    <td>0:00.25</td>
    <td> 0.4</td>
    <td> 98</td>
    <td>  9</td>
    <td> 9.2</td>
    <td>420.8</td>
    <td>21.3</td>
    <td> 5.1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="action">describe-tags</td>
    <td>0:12.26</td>
    <td>0:00.45</td>
    <td> 3.7</td>
    <td> 98</td>
    <td> 51</td>
    <td>52.0</td>
    <td>541.6</td>
    <td>20.2</td>
    <td> 3.7</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="action">describe-volumes</td>
    <td>1:01.46</td>
    <td>0:00.39</td>
    <td> 0.6</td>
    <td> 90</td>
    <td>  5</td>
    <td> 5.6</td>
    <td>378.6</td>
    <td>20.2</td>
    <td> 5.3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="action">Average</td>
    <td>0:34.84</td>
    <td>0:00.35</td>
    <td> 1.0</td>
    <td> 95</td>
    <td> 19</td>
    <td>20.3</td>
    <td>484.1</td>
    <td>20.2</td>
    <td> 4.2</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<tbody>
<tr>
 <td colspan="10" class="instance-type">m1.large</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<tbody>
<tr>
  <td class="action">describe-addresses</td>
    <td>0:06.87</td>
    <td>0:00.11</td>
    <td> 1.6</td>
    <td>140</td>
    <td> 14</td>
    <td>10.0</td>
    <td>589.9</td>
    <td>19.2</td>
    <td> 3.3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="action">describe-instance-status</td>
    <td>0:06.75</td>
    <td>0:00.12</td>
    <td> 1.8</td>
    <td>143</td>
    <td> 12</td>
    <td> 8.4</td>
    <td>611.8</td>
    <td>19.5</td>
    <td> 3.2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="action">describe-instances</td>
    <td>0:07.47</td>
    <td>0:00.11</td>
    <td> 1.5</td>
    <td>143</td>
    <td> 21</td>
    <td>14.7</td>
    <td>643.8</td>
    <td>21.1</td>
    <td> 3.3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="action">describe-tags</td>
    <td>0:07.82</td>
    <td>0:00.10</td>
    <td> 1.3</td>
    <td>139</td>
    <td> 19</td>
    <td>13.7</td>
    <td>654.7</td>
    <td>20.1</td>
    <td> 3.1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="action">describe-volumes</td>
    <td>0:08.26</td>
    <td>0:00.10</td>
    <td> 1.2</td>
    <td>129</td>
    <td> 18</td>
    <td>14.0</td>
    <td>654.0</td>
    <td>20.1</td>
    <td> 3.1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td class="action">Average</td>
    <td>0:07.43</td>
    <td>0:00.11</td>
    <td> 1.5</td>
    <td>138</td>
    <td> 16</td>
    <td>12.1</td>
    <td>630.8</td>
    <td>20.0</td>
    <td> 3.2</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>The columns <code>EC2</code> and <code>Eclat</code> contain measurements shown by
<code>ec2-api-tools</code> and Eclat correspondingly.  Each <code>%</code> column
shows the resource usage by Eclat relative to that of <code>ec2-api-tools</code>.</p>
<h3>Requirements and Build Prerequisites</h3>
<p>
There are no special requirements for the system where Eclat is to be run.
As the above table shows, it feels itself quite comfortably even in
conditions of extreme scarcity of resources, such as on <code>t1.micro</code>
instances.
</p>
<p>There are only two prerequisites for building the package:
<a href="http://curl.haxx.se">Curl</a> and
<a href="http://www.libexpat.org">Expat</a> libraries.</p>
<h3>ID Mapping</h3>
One of the unique features of Eclat is <i>ID mapping</i>, which
allows you to identify EC2 resources by arbitrary symbolic names,
instead of Amazon resource identifiers.  Tables that map symbolic
names to identifiers can be stored in several formats, such as
plain text files, <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gdbm/">GDBM</a>
or <a href="http://www.openldap.org">LDAP</a> databases.


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