AWS part 3 →Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Aakib
5 min readApr 23, 2023

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#75daysofaws day3

What is EC2 Instance →

EC2 is a service offered by AWS that allows you to rent virtual servers in the cloud. Think of these virtual servers like computers that you can access from anywhere in the world, as long as you have an internet connection.

When you rent an EC2 instance, you can choose how much computing power, storage, and memory you need for your applications. You can then install software and configure settings just like you would on a physical computer.

EC2 instances are a great way to run your applications in the cloud because they are flexible and can easily be scaled up or down depending on your needs. Plus, you only pay for what you use, so you can save money compared to buying and maintaining physical hardware.

Some Important Features of EC2 →

  1. Amazon easy to provide scalable computing capacity in AWS cloud.
  2. You can use Amazon EC2 to Launch as many as or as few virtual servers as you need, configure security and networking, and manage storage.
  3. Amazon EC2 enables you to scale up or scale down the instance.
  4. It is having 2 storage of Storage which we see in upcoming parts EBS in Instance store.
  5. Pre configure templates are available known as Amazon Machine Image.
  6. By default one region is equal to 20 instance with 2 default high input output instance.

Types of EC2 Instance

  1. General Purpose Instances — These instances are good for a wide range of workloads, including web servers, small databases, and development and test environments. They provide a balance of compute, memory, and network resources.
  2. Compute Optimized Instances — These instances are designed for compute-intensive workloads, such as high-performance computing, scientific modeling, and machine learning. They have more compute power and less memory than other instance types.
  3. Memory Optimized Instances — These instances are designed for memory-intensive workloads, such as in-memory databases, big data processing, and real-time processing of large datasets. They have more memory and less compute power than other instance types.
  4. Storage Optimized Instances — These instances are designed for storage-intensive workloads, such as NoSQL databases, data warehousing, and log processing. They provide large amounts of local storage with high I/O performance.
  5. GPU Instances — These instances are designed for workloads that require high-performance graphics processing, such as machine learning, gaming, and video encoding. They have one or more graphics processing units (GPUs) to accelerate processing.
  6. FPGA Instances — These instances are designed for workloads that require custom hardware acceleration, such as genomics research, financial modeling, and real-time video processing. They use field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to provide custom acceleration.

General Purpose Instance →

3 series Available having different specifications

General Purpose Instances are a type of EC2 instance that is designed for a wide range of workloads, including web servers, small databases, and development and test environments. They provide a balance of compute, memory, and network resources, making them a good choice for many different use cases.

There are several types of General Purpose instances, each with its own specifications and highlights:

  1. T4g instances — These instances are powered by AWS Graviton2 processors and provide a cost-effective option for workloads that don’t require a lot of compute power. They are good for small websites, development environments, and other lightweight workloads. Key highlights include:
  • Up to 5 Gbps network bandwidth
  • Up to 16 vCPUs and 64 GiB of memory
  • Lowest cost option among all the instance types
  • Good for running ARM-based applications

2. T3 instances — These instances are designed for general-purpose workloads that require a balance of compute, memory, and network resources. They are good for small to medium-sized databases, web servers, and other similar applications. Key highlights include:

  • Up to 5 Gbps network bandwidth
  • Up to 32 vCPUs and 96 GiB of memory
  • Lowest cost option for burstable workloads
  • Good for workloads that require occasional spikes in compute power

3. M6g instances — These instances are powered by AWS Graviton2 processors and provide a balance of compute, memory, and network resources. They are good for general-purpose workloads, such as web servers, small databases, and development environments. Key highlights include:

  • Up to 25 Gbps network bandwidth
  • Up to 64 vCPUs and 256 GiB of memory
  • Good performance for workloads that require a lot of memory
  • Lower cost compared to other instance types with similar specifications

4. M5 instances — These instances are designed for general-purpose workloads that require a balance of compute, memory, and network resources. They are good for small to medium-sized databases, web servers, and other similar applications. Key highlights include:

  • Up to 25 Gbps network bandwidth
  • Up to 96 vCPUs and 384 GiB of memory
  • High performance for workloads that require a lot of compute power
  • Good for running large-scale applications

Each of these General Purpose instance types has its own unique specifications and highlights, allowing you to choose the right instance type for your workload based on your specific requirements.

Regions and AZ’s

In AWS, a region is a geographic location where AWS has one or more data centers. Each region is completely independent and isolated from other regions, which means that the resources you create in one region are completely separate from those you create in another region.

For example, if you create an EC2 instance in the US-East-1 region, that instance will be physically located in a data center in the eastern part of the United States.

Availability Zones (AZs) are essentially separate data centers within a region that are physically located in different places but are still close enough to each other to provide low-latency network connectivity. Each AZ is designed to be independent and isolated from failures in other AZs, which means that if one AZ goes down, the others will continue to operate normally.

For example, in the US-East-1 region, there are currently 6 AZs (us-east-1a, us-east-1b, us-east-1c, us-east-1d, us-east-1e, and us-east-1f). If you launch an EC2 instance in us-east-1a, that instance will be located in the first AZ of the US-East-1 region. If you launch another EC2 instance in us-east-1b, that instance will be located in the second AZ of the same region.

Using multiple AZs is a way to increase the fault tolerance and availability of your applications by spreading your resources across multiple physical locations within a region.

Reamining parts of EC2 instance discuss in next blog stay tuned!!

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Aakib

Cloud computing and DevOps Engineer and to be as a fresher I am learning and gaining experiance by doing some hands on projects on DevOps and in AWS OR GCP