In this article, you are going to study what is EC2 in AWS? And the ultimate guide on AWS Computing system called Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Estimated Costs for a typical usage scenario in AWS for EC2 are far less and easy to implement as per your application.
EC2 in AWS is designed to be a cost-effective and scalable alternative to on-site hosting.
This article will cover estimated costs for a typical usage scenario and how it can be optimized, as well as provide some sizing guidelines.
What is EC2 in AWS?
Amazon Web Services, or AWS in short, is a cloud computing service that provides a broad set of remote computing services to a large number of companies.
One of these services offered by Amazon Web Services is called Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
EC2 is the virtual machine system of the AWS platform.
It allows you to rent computer time from Amazon where you can run your own software or sell your own products.
EC2 in AWS is a web service that gives resizable computing capacity in the cloud.
The abbreviation “EC2” stands for Elastic Compute Cloud, which represents the ability to scale up or down as needed.
An Amazon EC2 instance is a virtual machine that runs on an Amazon Virtual Server and can be thought of as a personal computer in the sky.
Related Article: What is Elastic Cloud Compute in AWS?
What is Amazon Web Services or AWS?
Amazon Web Services, or rather AWS, is a cloud services provider that offers a massive library of infrastructure and application services for any purpose.
It was officially launched in 2002 to aid Amazon.com in recovering from its growing IT needs, as the company didn’t have an internal IT department.
However, its most rapid growth occurred as a result of Amazon outsourcing its IT infrastructure to AWS in 2006, which led to other companies using it as their cloud provider.
It is estimated that this industry will be worth $241 billion by 2020, with an annual growth rate of 31.5%, due to the proliferation of mobile devices and the advancement of telecommunication technologies that enable almost every device to be connected to the Internet.
Why Do We Need EC2 In AWS?
EC2 in AWS allows you to rent server space in the cloud at a much lower cost than if you were to purchase your own servers.
EC2 in AWS has been designed for organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to global enterprises, It is designed to be a cost-effective and scalable alternative to on-site hosting.
EC2 makes it easy for you to access server resources without having to think about maintaining physical servers and also helps you meet operational requirements such as availability, high performance, and security.
EC2 in AWS is Amazon’s cloud computing platform, It gives developers, startups, and other businesses the flexibility and cost-savings advantages of using off-premise cloud servers, with the security and functionality of on-premise servers.
This makes EC2 in AWS a consistent and dependable cloud option that can be tailored to your needs.
What are the EC2 Instance types?
AWS EC2 Instance types are predefined configurations that let you specify the desired amount of processing power and storage, as well as the cost.
You can choose from 32-bit or 64-bit configurations and select them according to your needs.
For example, if you want a system for storing images and videos, you would want a higher storage configuration.
Related Article: What is an EC2 instance?
What Types of Storage in EC2 Instance?
You can attach a range of storage to your EC2 instance, including Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon Elastic File System (EFS), and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).
Related Article: What is S3 in AWS?
What is AWS EBS Volume Types?
You can add resiliency and fault tolerance to your EC2 instance by attaching one or more EBS volumes.
If the EBS volume fails, your instance is not compromised. You can also grow volumes when you need to increase available storage capacity.
The three types of EBS volumes that you can attach to an EC2 instance are General Purpose (SSD), Provisioned IOPS, and Magnetic.
How does Root Drive Volume work in EC2?
The default size for the root drive volume is 10 GB, which may not be enough. When you create a new volume, you need to enable the “grow volume” option at the time of creation. It will take time for root drive volume to grow.
When you create a volume in Amazon EC2, it’s automatically attached to your instance as the root device volume (i.e., /dev/sda1), this is in the form of EBS (Elastic Block Store) on EC2.
The root drive volume is the default location for all software installations on Amazon EC2.
It includes your operating system and program executables, configuration files, and anything else that needs to run your programs or use the services on your server.
The root drive volume is different from any other EBS volumes or instance store (persistent storage) volumes.
Instead of being used like a regular volume that you can boot up another instance from, its only purpose is to be used by the currently running instance. The root drive grows automatically if it runs out of space.
What is the EC2 AWS Pricing?
With EC2 in particular, you currently get 750 hours of t2.micro computing per month for an entire year, This should be enough free usage for you to get your feet wet with the service.
One last note with pricing in regards to EC2, the Elastic Block Storage that your EC2 instances use has a separate charge associated with it, 10 cents a month per gigabyte for general purpose SSD volumes.
There are currently no additional fees for auto-scaling, but an additional load balancer or elastic IP does cost extra, Just keep these in mind when calculating the total cost for your EC2 usage.
There’s plenty more to EC2 instances than what we have covered, but this should give you a great overview of how EC2 is presented and what you can do with the service.
EC2 is actually used under the covers for other services, like the Relational Database Service we’ll cover in this module.
So it’s a good idea to become comfortable with managing and configuring these instances
Advantages of EC2 in AWS
Amazon EC2 can be broken down into two main categories: Amazon EC2 on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The first set, Amazon EC2 on AWS, is a collection of different services that enable you to run your own application on the cloud.
The other type is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), which essentially gives you the tools to build out your infrastructure as needed.
Related Article: What is S3 in AWS?
Disadvantages of EC2 in AWS
EC2 is a web service that was originally made available to Amazon Web Services users.
EC2 has a few disadvantages, including that any data stored on it will be lost if the user terminates or alters the virtual machine.
The costs for using EC2 are also published every hour and may change from one day to another without notice, which can make budgeting unpredictable.
Conclusion
EC2 is a term referring to the compute services offered by AWS. AWS compute services are sold in two ways, either as a one-time fee or an hourly rate.
EC2 instances are virtual servers that can be configured with a pre-selected operating system and amount of storage.
It is composed of many virtual servers that you can use to run just about anything.
Meet Nitin, a seasoned professional in the field of data engineering. With a Post Graduation in Data Science and Analytics, Nitin is a key contributor to the healthcare sector, specializing in data analysis, machine learning, AI, blockchain, and various data-related tools and technologies. As the Co-founder and editor of analyticslearn.com, Nitin brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the realm of analytics. Join us in exploring the exciting intersection of healthcare and data science with Nitin as your guide.
