Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web-based service offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that provides scalable computing capacity in the cloud. EC2 enables developers to launch virtual server instances on the AWS cloud, making it easier to perform webscale computing.

Virtual Server Instances:

Each virtual server in EC2 is referred to as an “instance.” EC2 provides a variety of operating systems, including Amazon Linux, Ubuntu, Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Fedora, Debian, CentOS, Gentoo Linux, Oracle Linux, and FreeBSD. With EC2, you have full control over the operating system layer, allowing you to customize and configure your instances to meet your specific requirements.

Instance Limits:

Currently, EC2 is limited to a total of 20 On-Demand instances across the instance family, 20 Reserved Instances, and the ability to request Spot Instances per your dynamic spot limit per region. AWS is transitioning to a vCPU-based limit, which will be rolled out gradually.

Compute Units:

EC2 provides compute units, known as ECU, which measure the relative processing power of EC2 instances. This allows you to choose the instance type that is best suited for your computing needs and ensures that you are using the most appropriate resources for your application.

Key Pairs:

To securely connect to EC2 instances, key pairs are used. A key pair consists of a public key stored by AWS and a private key file that you store. For Windows AMIs, the private key file is required to obtain the password used to log into your instance, while for Linux AMIs, it allows you to securely SSH into your instance.

Conclusion:

Amazon EC2 is a powerful and flexible cloud computing service that provides scalable computing capacity in the cloud. With EC2, you can launch virtual server instances and choose the instance type that is best suited for your computing needs. EC2 provides full control over the operating system layer, allowing you to customize and configure your instances as required. Additionally, EC2 uses key pairs to ensure secure connections to instances. With EC2, you can take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing, including scalability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness.