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What is Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)?

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EC2 stands for Elastic Compute Cloud. EC2 is an on-demand computing service on the AWS cloud platform. Under computing, it includes all the services a computing device can offer to you along with the flexibility of a virtual environment. It also allows the user to configure their instances as per their requirements i.e. allocate the RAM, ROM, and storage according to the need of the current task. Even the user can dismantle the virtual device once its task is completed and it is no more required. For providing, all these scalable resources AWS charges some bill amount at the end of every month, the bill amount is entirely dependent on your usage. EC2 allows you to rent virtual computers. The provision of servers on AWS Cloud is one of the easiest ways in EC2. EC2 has resizable capacity. EC2 offers security, reliability, high performance, and cost-effective infrastructure so as to meet the demanding business needs.

AWS EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)

Amazon Web Service EC2 is a web service which is provided by the AWS cloud which is secure, resizable, and scalable. These virtual machines are pre-configured with the operating systems and some of the required software. Instead of managing the infrastructure AWS will do that so you can just launch and terminate the EC2 instance whenever you want. You can scale up and down the EC2 instance depending on the incoming traffic. The other advantage of AWS EC2 is that you need to pay only for how much you use it is like the pay-as-you-go model.

What is Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)?

Amazon Web service offers EC2 which is a short form of Elastic Compute Cloud (ECC) it is a cloud computing service offered by the Cloud Service Provider AWS. You can deploy your applications in EC2 servers without any worrying about the underlying infrastructure. You configure the EC2-Instance in a very secure manner by using the VPC, Subnets, and Security groups. You can scale the configuration of the EC2 instance you have configured based on the demand of the application by attaching the autoscaling group to the EC2 instance. You can scale up and scale down the instance based on the incoming traffic of the application.

The following figure shows the EC2-Instance which is deployed in VPC (Virtual Private Cloud).

AWS-EC2-Instance-types

Use Cases of Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)

  1. Deploying Application: In the AWS EC2 instance, you can deploy your application like .jar,.war, or .ear application without maintaining the underlying infrastructure.
  2. Scaling Application: Once you deployed your web application in the EC2 instance know you can scale your application based upon the demand you are having by scaling the AWS EC2-Instance.
  3. Deploying The ML Models: You can train and deploy your ML models in the EC2-instance because it offers up to 400 Gbps), and storage services purpose-built to optimize the price performance for ML projects.
  4. Hybrid Cloud Environment: You can deploy your web application in EC2-Instance and you can connect to the database which is deployed in the on-premises servers.
  5. Cost-Effective: Amazon EC2-instance is cost-effective so you can deploy your gaming application in the Amazon EC2-Instances

AWS EC2 Instance Types

Different Amazon EC2 instance types are designed for certain activities. Consider the unique requirements of your workloads and applications when choosing an instance type. This might include needs for computing, memory, or storage.

The AWS EC2 Instance Types are as follows:

  • General Purpose Instances
  • Compute Optimized Instances
  • Memory-Optimized Instances
  • Storage Optimized Instances
  • Accelerated Computing Instances

Features of AWS EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)

AWS EC2 Functionality

EC2 provides its users with a true virtual computing platform, where they can use various operations and even launch another EC2 instance from this virtually created environment. This will increase the security of the virtual devices. Not only creating but also EC2 allows us to customize our environment as per our requirements, at any point of time during the life span of the virtual machine. Amazon EC2 itself comes with a set of default AMI(Amazon Machine Image) options supporting various operating systems along with some pre-configured resources like RAM, ROM, storage, etc. Besides these AMI options, we can also create an AMI curated with a combination of default and user-defined configurations. And for future purposes, we can store this user-defined AMI, so that next time, the user won’t have to re-configure a new AMI(Amazon Machine Image) from scratch. Rather than this whole process, the user can simply use the older reference while creating a new EC2 machine.

AWS EC2 Operating Systems

Amazon EC2 includes a wide range of operating systems to choose from while selecting your AMI. Not only are these selected options, but users are also even given the privilege to upload their own operating systems and opt for that while selecting AMI during launching an EC2 instance. Currently, AWS has the following most preferred set of operating systems available on the EC2 console.

Linux OS Flavours

  • Amazon Linux
  • Windows Server
  • Ubuntu Server
  • SUSE Linux
  • Red Hat Linux

AWS EC2 Software

Amazon is single-handedly ruling the cloud computing market, because of the variety of options available on EC2 for its users. It allows its users to choose from various software present to run on their EC2 machines. This whole service is allocated to AWS Marketplace on the AWS platform. Numerous software like SAP, LAMP, Drupal, etc are available on AWS to use.

AWS EC2 Scalability and Reliability

EC2 provides us the facility to scale up or scale down as per the needs. All dynamic scenarios can be easily tackled by EC2 with the help of this feature. And because of the flexibility of volumes and snapshots, it is highly reliable for its users. Due to the scalable nature of the machine, many organizations like Flipkart, and Amazon rely on these days whenever humongous traffic occurs on their portals.

Pricing of AWS EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) Instance

The pricing of AWS EC2-instance is mainly going to depend upon the type of instance you are going to choose. The following are the pricing charges on some of the EC2-Instances.

  1. On-Demand Instances: The On-Demand instance is like a pay-as-you-go model where you have to pay only for the time you are going to use if the instance is stopped then the billing for that instance will be stopped when it was in the running state then you are going to be charged. The billing will be done based on the time EC2-Instance is running.
  2. Reserved Instances: Reversed Instance is like you are going to give the commitment to the AWS by buying the instance for one year or more than one year by the requirement to your organization. Because you are giving one year of Commitment to the AWS they will discount the price on that instance.
  3. Spot Instances: You have to bid the instances and who will win the bid they are going to get the instance for use but you can’t save the data which is used in this type of instance.

AWS EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) Instance Types

Different Amazon EC2 instance types are designed for certain activities. Consider the unique requirements of your workloads and applications when choosing an instance type. This might include needs for computing, memory, or storage. To know more about AWS EC2-Instance types refer to Amazon EC2–Instance Types.

Create AWS Free Tier Account

Amazon Web Service(AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally. Millions of customers including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies are using AWS to lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster. AWS offers new subscribers a 12-month free tier to get hands-on experience with all AWS cloud services. To know more about how to create an AWS account for free refer to Amazon Web Services (AWS) – Free Tier Account Set up.

Get Started With Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) Linux Instances

Step 1: First login into your AWS account. Once you are directed to the management console. From the left click on “Services” and from the listed options click on EC2.

EC2

Afterward, you will be redirected to the EC2 console. Here is the image attached to refer to various features in EC2.

AWS EC2

To know more about creating an EC2-Instance in a Step-by-Step guide refer to the Amazon EC2 – Creating an Elastic Cloud Compute Instance.

FAQs On AWS EC2-Instance

1. What Is The Difference Between S3 And EC2?

S3 and EC2 are the two diffrent service offered by the Amazon Web Services one is to store the data in the form of objects and another is to deploy the Web Application.

2. Is EC2 A PAAS or IaaS?

EC2 belongs to Infrastructure as a service where the underlaying infrastructure is taken care by AWS.

3. Is EC2 a Virtual Machine?

Yes EC2 is an virtual machine where you can deploy the web applications.

4. What is AWS EC2 vs Elastic?

EC2 is charged based on the types of resources you are using like instance type, region you are deploying it will cost as pay as you go model and elastic beanstalk will be charged based on the resources consumed by elastic beanstalk.



Last Updated : 01 Dec, 2023
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