Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

 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)

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)?

AWS 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, subnet 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.

 

Use Cases of Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)

The following are the use cases of Amazon EC2:

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 type 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

 

1. General Purpose Instances

• It provides the balanced resources for a wide range of workloads.

• It is suitable for web servers, development environments, and small databases.

Examples: T3, M5 instances.

 

2. Compute Optimized Instances

• It provides high-performance processors for compute-intensive applications.

• It will be Ideal for high-performance web servers, scientific modeling, and batch processing.

Examples: C5, C6g instances.

 

3. Memory-Optimized Instances

• High memory-to-CPU ratios for large data sets.

• Perfect for in-memory databases, real-time big data analytics, and high-performance computing (HPC).

Examples: R5, X1e instances.

 

4. Storage Optimized Instances

• It provides optimized resource of instance for high, sequential read and write access to large data sets.

• Best for data warehousing, Hadoop, and distributed file systems.

Examples: I3, D2 instances.

 

5. Accelerated Computing Instances

• It facilitates with providing hardware accelerators or co-processors for graphics processing and parallel computations.

• It is ideal for machine learning, gaming, and 3D rendering.

Examples: P3, G4 instances.

 

Features of AWS EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)

The following are the features of AWS EC2:

1. 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 from scratch. Rather than this whole process, the user can simply use the older reference while creating a new EC2 machine.

2. 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.

 

• Amazon Linux

• Windows Server

• Ubuntu Server

• SUSE Linux

• Red Hat Linux

 

3. 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.

 

4. 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.

 

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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.

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

 

Benefits of Amazon EC2

The following are the benefits of Amazon EC2:

• Scalability: It helps to easily scale the instances up or down based on the demand with ensuring the optimal performance and cost-efficiency.

• Flexibility: It provides wide variety of instance types and configurations for matching different workload requirements and operating systems.

• Cost-Effectiveness: It comes with providing Pay-as-you-go model with options like On-Demand, Reserved, and Spot Instances for managing cost efficiently.

• High Availability and Reliability: It offers multiple geographic regions and availability zones for strong fault tolerance and disaster recovery.

 

Best Practices of Amazon EC2

The following are the best practices of Amazon EC2:

• Optimize Instance Selection: It helps in choosing the right instance type for your workload to balance the performance and cost.

• Implement Security Measures: On using the security groups, VPC, and IAM roles for control access and permissions.

• Enable Monitoring and Logging: It facilitates with utilizing cloudwatch to monitor the instance performance and setup the alarms.

• Automate and Backup: It helps in using the autoscaling features for automatically adjusting the instance capacity based on traffic.