Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is a web service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that offers scalable, on-demand virtual servers in the cloud, known as "instances." It allows users to rent virtual computers to run applications without investing in physical hardware, providing flexibility to launch as many or as few servers as needed and scale capacity up or down based on demand
. Key features of Amazon EC2 include:
- Instances: Virtual servers with configurable CPU, memory, storage, and networking resources.
- Amazon Machine Images (AMIs): Preconfigured templates including operating systems and software to quickly launch instances.
- Instance types: Various hardware configurations optimized for different workloads.
- Storage: Persistent storage via Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) and temporary storage via instance store volumes.
- Security: Secure login through key pairs and network access control via security groups (virtual firewalls).
- Elasticity: Automatic scaling to handle workload spikes and reduce costs during low usage periods
EC2 is billed primarily on a pay-as-you-go basis, with pricing options including on-demand, spot instances, reserved instances, and dedicated hosts, allowing cost optimization based on usage patterns
. In essence, EC2 provides a flexible, scalable, and cost-effective way to run applications in the cloud with full control over the virtual server environment, making it a foundational service in the AWS ecosystem
