I am at work. I log into an EC2 instance via ssh. I establish a screen session. I do some work inside of screen. Go home after work, leaving screen running.
I arrive at work the next day. Log into EC2. I type "screen -ls" and I am told that there are no screen sockets. (In my experience, this usually means the server has been restarted.) I am annoyed. I create a new screen session and proceed to get some work done. That evening, I leave the screen session running, and head home.
I arrive the next day at work. I log into the server. I type "screen -ls". I am again told that there are no screen sockets. I am now very annoyed. I start a new screen session and proceed to get some work done. That evening, as before, I leave the screen session running, and I head home.
I arrive the next day at work. Once again, I log into the EC2 instance via ssh. Once again I type "screen -ls". Once again I am told that there are no screen sessions.
This happened 4 days in a row.
I was left feeling angry and I was left feeling like no EC2 instance could be trusted. I also feel like it damages my productivity that I can not rely on screen (I have in the past, on regular Linux servers, had screen sessions that lasted for many months).
Right now I have all of my personal sites on the Rackspace cloud, which I think was taken over from Slicehost. Although this is called a "cloud" service, the "slices" feel like real computers to me -- I can have a screen session that lasts for months.
The EC2 instances are strangely insubstantial, even when compared to other services that promote themselves as cloud services. Personally, I prefer to work with services that are at least solid enough that I can rely on screen sessions.