Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is one of the core services offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It is a web service that provides resizable, virtualized computing resources in the cloud. With EC2, users can easily launch and manage virtual servers, known as instances, which can be scaled up or down based on demand. EC2 is designed to be highly flexible, allowing users to choose various configurations to meet their specific computing needs.

Here are some key features and aspects of Amazon EC2:

• Instances: EC2 instances are virtual machines that run on physical servers within AWS data centers. Users can choose from a wide range of instance types, each tailored to different use cases and performance requirements. Instances can be categorized into families, such as general-purpose, compute-optimized, memory-optimized, storage-optimized, and GPU instances, among others.

• AMI (Amazon Machine Image): An AMI is a template that contains the necessary software configuration to launch an EC2 instance. Users can choose from a variety of pre-configured public AMIs or create custom AMIs with their preferred operating system, applications, and settings.

• Instance Lifecycle: EC2 instances can be started, stopped, terminated, and rebooted as needed. Users can also create auto-scaling groups to automatically adjust the number of instances based on predefined conditions, ensuring that application capacity matches the demand.

• Elastic IP Addresses: To ensure that your instance retains a consistent IP address, you can allocate an Elastic IP address and associate it with your instance. This is useful for scenarios where you need a static IP that can be remapped to different instances as needed.

• Security Groups: Security groups act as virtual firewalls, controlling inbound and outbound traffic for EC2 instances. Users can define rules to allow or deny specific types of traffic based on source, destination, and protocol.

• Storage Options: EC2 instances come with various storage options. Each instance has access to temporary storage called instance store, which is physically attached to the host machine. Additionally, users can choose to attach Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes, providing persistent block-level storage that can be detached from one instance and attached to another.

• Networking: EC2 instances can be launched within Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), allowing users to define a logically isolated virtual network and control network settings like IP address ranges, subnets, and routing tables.

• Monitoring and Metrics: Amazon CloudWatch provides monitoring and visibility into the performance and health of EC2 instances. Users can collect and analyze metrics, set alarms, and automatically react to changes in their AWS environment.

• Integration with Other AWS Services: EC2 seamlessly integrates with other AWS services, making it easy to build scalable and flexible architectures. For example, you can use EC2 instances to host web applications, databases, or use them as part of a big data processing pipeline with services like Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, Amazon DynamoDB, and more.

• EC2's pay-as-you-go pricing model allows users to pay only for the computing resources they consume, making it a cost-effective solution for various workloads, from small-scale applications to large enterprise deployments. With its scalability, reliability, and broad range of options, Amazon EC2 remains a fundamental building block of cloud computing on AWS.