fyi: there's a step-by-step tutorial here on how to move the JumpBox to EC2 once you have your app deployed-> http://blog.jumpbox.com/2008/06/27/a-beginners-guide-to-runn...

Why this? If you have developed and app as a part of a webapp business, learn a lot about deployment on rails. It's not hard, and is a must.

Plus, as far as I can tell, you don't really get any of the benefits of EC2, i.e. easy scaling.

If you want simple scalable Rails deployment, check out Heroku.

Well given that the JumpBox for Ruby on Rails isn't really about EC2 or scalability the original submission is a little misleading. JumpBoxes do run on EC2, but they are also downloadable and run on VMWare, Parallels, Microsoft Virtual PC and Xen so that you can have the exact same environment whether in the cloud, on a local server or on your desktop. This is the unique advantage.