Configuring a Hibernate second-level cache in AWS is something of a challenge, as the EhCache multicast discovery mechanism doesn't work there. JGroups is another option, but can be difficult to configure. Here's how I got it working.
I'm using the very nice JGroups-AWS project https://github.com/meltmedia/jgroups-aws. In my configuration, you can see that I use "tags=Env,Role". This means that any given server will query EC2 to find out the values of those tags for itself. For example, suppose the server wakes up and finds that it has Env=Production and Role=API_Server. It will look for other servers with the same tag values (using the AWS webservice endpoints) and form a cluster with them. It checks back periodically so that if servers enter or leave the group it will adjust periodically. Very nice.
The 1.3.0 jgroups-aws uses JGroups 3.1.0, which is a bit out of date. I have not tried forcing a later version in the POM yet. I also cannot completely vouch for all the protocols set up in the ehcache.
