AWS EC2 Basics - I

Do you know you can create a simple full-stack web application using some AWS services and a set of tools including a web hosting service? Yes, you can but before this, you should learn some basic cloud services like; Elastic Compute Cloud ( AWS EC2), Simple Storage Service (S3), Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), and AWS Identity & Access Management (IAM).

So let's start with AWS EC2.

What is AWS EC2?

According to AWS documentation "Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) provides scalable computing capacity in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. Using Amazon EC2 eliminates your need to invest in hardware upfront, so you can develop and deploy applications faster."

Shortly for the purposes of launching your websites or applications, you can build servers through the EC2 (Elastic Cloud Compute) service. AWS calls those servers "instances".

AWS Instance Types

You can choose from a variety of instance types on Amazon EC2 to get the CPU, memory, storage, and networking resources you require to execute your applications. The hardware of the host computer utilized for your instance depends on the instance type you pick when you launch it.

Each instance type has unique computation, memory, and storage capabilities, and these features are used to classify each instance type into an instance family.

General purpose instances

A variety of workloads can be run on general purpose instances, which balance out computation, memory, and networking resources. There are two types of general purpose instances: "T" and "M".

Compute optimized instances

High-performance applications that depend on computing power should use compute optimized instances. Those are named with "C" letter like C5, C5a, C5ad, C5d, C5n.

Memory optimized instances

Instances with memory optimization are made to provide quick performance for workloads that process big amounts of data in memory. "R" and "X" types are memory optimized instances.

Storage optimized instances

For workloads that need frequent, sequential read and write access to enormous amounts of data stored locally, storage optimized instances are created. Tens of thousands of random, low-latency I/O operations per second (IOPS) are delivered to applications thanks to their enhanced performance.

There are three types of storage optimized instances: "H", "I" and "D".

Accelerated computing instances

Co-processors, also known as hardware accelerators, are used in accelerated computing instances to carry out certain tasks more quickly than they can be done by CPU-based software, such as processing graphics, matching data patterns, or performing computations using floating point numbers.

"P" and "G" types are accelerated computing instances.

Amazon Machine Image (AMI)

The template known as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) contains a software configuration generally an operating system. You must select an AMI while you create an instance. 

You will need to choose an EBS storage option at some point during configuration. A persistent block level storage volume used with EC2 is called Elastic Block Storage (EBS). In this case, every block serves as a hard disk.

AWS EC2 Pricing

Utilizing the AWS Free Tier; you may start using Amazon EC2 without paying anything If you signed up for your AWS account less than a year ago, and have not already exceeded the free tier benefits for Amazon EC2. The following buying options for instances are available through Amazon EC2:

On-Demand Instances

Without any long-term obligations or upfront payments, you just pay for the instances that you use, at a rate of one cent per second for a minimum of 60 seconds.

Savings Plans

By committing to a constant quantity of consumption, expressed in USD per hour, for a period of 1 or 3 years, you may lower your Amazon EC2 charges.

Reserved Instances

By committing to a certain instance configuration, including instance type and Region, for a duration of 1 or 3 years, you may lower your Amazon EC2 charges.

Spot Instances

Requesting unused EC2 instances can help you save money.

Setting up to use Amazon EC2

So far we have learned the basics of AWS EC2. My next article will be about launching an instance, stay tuned.