Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a web service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that enables users to run virtual servers, known as instances, in the cloud. EC2 instances provide scalable compute capacity, allowing users to launch and terminate instances based on their computing needs.
Key Concepts
- Instances: Virtual servers that run in the AWS Cloud. EC2 instances can be used for various purposes, including running applications, hosting websites, and processing data.
- Amazon Machine Images (AMIs): Pre-configured templates for instances that contain the necessary information to launch instances, including the operating system and application software.
- Instance Types: Different configurations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity. Users can choose instance types that best suit their application requirements.
- Regions and Availability Zones: EC2 instances can be launched in multiple geographic regions, each containing multiple availability zones for high availability and fault tolerance.
- Security Groups: Virtual firewalls that control inbound and outbound traffic to EC2 instances. Users can define rules to allow or deny traffic based on protocols, ports, and IP addresses.
- Key Pairs: Used for securely connecting to instances. Users must have the private key associated with the key pair to log in to an instance.
Use Cases
Amazon EC2 is commonly used for the following purposes:
- Web Hosting: Host websites and web applications on EC2 instances.
- Application Development and Testing: Create development and test environments with scalable compute resources.
- Data Processing: Perform data processing tasks, such as analytics and batch processing, using EC2 instances.
- Machine Learning: Train and deploy machine learning models using GPU-enabled EC2 instances.
- High-Performance Computing (HPC): Run HPC workloads by leveraging specialized instance types.
Amazon EC2 provides a flexible and scalable computing environment, allowing users to quickly scale resources up or down based on demand.