Introduction to EC2 - Defination, Features and Benefits
Tags: aws, ec2, awsec2
Published: 2023-03-07 10:26:24

Amazon Web Services EC2 cloud platform is a world leader in cloud computing.

Its vast array of services is both complex and useful, but Amazon EC2 is one of the most utilized services.

EC2 allows users to launch and manage server instances whenever they need or want to, for whatever amount of time they need. 

In this article, we'll give you a beginner's guide to Amazon EC2. We'll cover its features, types, and ways you can learn more about it.

By the end, you'll have a good understanding of what Amazon EC2 is and how it can be used.

## What is AWS EC2?

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable computing capacity in the cloud.

It is designed to make web-scale cloud computing easier for developers.

Using Amazon EC2 eliminates the need for hardware provisioning and administration within the enterprise.

Developers simply upload their code and can immediately scale it up or down. You can start small and pay only for the capacity that is used.

This scalable capacity enables organizations to develop applications faster without needing to make any upfront investment in hardware.

This is a huge benefit for companies who want to be able to deploy new applications quickly, without having to worry about the cost of new hardware.

## Why is Amazon EC2 important?

Amazon EC2 is a web service that provides resizable computing capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale cloud computing easier for developers.

Amazon EC2 eliminates the need to invest in hardware upfront, so it enables you to spend more time building your business and less time managing your computing resources.

AWS provides customers with the tools to build an active presence on the web by eliminating the need for the capital expense and offering substantial savings over using the traditional physical infrastructure.

In addition to lowering costs and managing risk, it enables customers to concentrate capital and focus business operations on their core competencies.

By increasing the use of computing power, Amazon EC2 allows companies to significantly reduce their operating costs.

This enables companies to build new products, provide better customer service, and develop new business models.

With Amazon EC2, there is never a need to estimate demand, which is the bane of traditional computer infrastructure.

By paying only for what they use, customers can spend less time configuring, monitoring, and upgrading their computing resources.

## The types of AWS EC2 instances

AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a US-based cloud computing platform that provides a set of cloud-based services.  Here are the types of EC2 instances: 

The Micro Instance: which is the same as a single-core processor computer. It comes with free tier usage and provides an hourly usage price. 

The Small Instance: Provides a multi-core processor computer and comes with free tier usage. 

The Medium Instance: Provides a multi-core processor computer and comes with free tier usage. 

The Large Instance: Provides a multi-core processor computer and is charged per hour of usage. 

The Extra Large Instance: Provides a more powerful EC2 instance, based on the Intel Xeon E5-2670 CPU.

Features of AWS EC2 instances
The attributes of a server can be changed depending on the needs of the user. For example, you can change the storage capacity, the number of processors, memory, and the operating system.

The following is a list of some features that can be found on an Amazon EC2 instance:

### OS
EC2 is compatible with a range of operating systems, from Microsoft and Debian to Linux and CentOS. With AMI, you can set up a virtual machine with any operating system of your choice.


### Elastic IP addresses

Elastic IP addresses are a versatile tool for businesses that want to maintain communication stability without needing a network administrator.

These addresses can be linked to instances and moved to another instance quickly in the event of a failure, making them perfect for fail-over clusters and load balancers. A great example of this is a PBX phone line.

These private phone networks commonly used by businesses are reliant on the cloud for service stability. If an instance handling the phone line goes down, the Elastic IP can be quickly re-routed to another instance to maintain communication.


### Persistent storage

Amazon's Elastic Block Storage (EBS) service is a storage solution that allows you to create blocks of storage that can be attached to EC2 servers.

With EBS, you can provision and manage your storage resources more easily by increasing or reducing the storage for an EC2 instance as needed.

You can also connect EBS volumes to multiple instances simultaneously, providing greater flexibility in how you use your storage resources.

### Automated scaling

The auto-scaling feature on EC2 automatically increases or decreases capacity in reaction to demand, meaning that it can offer additional capacity when there's a spike in traffic volume (like during a launch) or decrease capacity when it's not needed.

This can help save you money by only using the resources you need when you need them.

### ​Amazon CloudWatch

Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring service for AWS that provides insight into resource utilization, application performance, and operational performance to help run AWS applications and workloads.

CloudWatch collects and stores metrics that are generated by Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, [Amazon Simple Storage Service](https://adex.ltd/how-to-host-a-static-website-on-aws-s3/) (Amazon S3) buckets, Amazon DynamoDB tables, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) databases, and other AWS resources.

CloudWatch also allows you to collect custom metrics generated by your applications and services.

CloudWatch makes it easy to collect, view, and monitor these metrics, providing cost and performance insights that help you make better use of Amazon EC2 and your other AWS resources.

You can use CloudWatch to track metrics ranging from the number of active customers to the CPU time consumed by a specific instance.

Pause and restart
If an app is consuming too many resources, it can be stopped and restarted from the previous state later without incurring any usage charges.

This can be a great way to manage your resources and keep costs down. Amazon EC2 instances offer a variety of features to choose from, whether you need a simple virtual machine or something more complex and powerful. With EC2, you can find the right instance for your needs.

## Final thoughts

If you're looking for a way to improve your business efficiency, AWS EC2 is worth considering. AWS EC2 is a powerful tool that can help you save time and money.

In this article, we hope to have helped you understand what AWS EC2 is and how it can benefit you.