Amazon EC2 – Introduction, Types and Costs

What is Amazon EC2 exactly? – Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
The advancements in data-storage technology have been one of the most significant technological breakthroughs in computers over the past half-century. No longer is a drive required to store just a few megabytes of data. The next breakthrough was remote data storage, which is shrinking storage systems.
Remote storage of data has become a reality with the advent of the internet. Cloud computing was used to accomplish this. Cloud storage allows you to store large amounts of data on a remote cloud server. This allowed many organizations to better store and catalog data. This led to cloud services being offered by a variety of companies.
Amazon, the world’s largest real estate company, joined the list. It offers cloud services through its division, Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS used cloud technology to provide a unique solution to the software and hardware needs of organizations. This is what is being called the future of computing. AWS introduced Amazon EC2 services in 2006.
Amazon EC2 provides remote access to computers via cloud technology. It also offers the option of EC2 mac using the Amazon EC2 Docker.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud is a segment within AWS, Amazon’s cloud-computing platform. Amazon EC2 allows you to rent virtual computers to run your desired applications. The Amazon EC2 server hosts the virtual system that the user rents. This virtual system can be scalable, which means that the hardware configurations can easily be changed. This would allow the user to access any software they wish.
An Amazon Machine Image (AMI), is used to configure an instance. It is flexible because users can subscribe to or terminate the service as they wish and even have the option to pay by the second. This flexibility is why we called it elastic. This revolutionized cloud services. This revolutionized the way organizations could manage their logistics.
There was an option to get the configurations you need without having to spend money upfront. Companies have to pay for hardware upgrades every two years. EC2 allows companies to scale their instances according to technology advances or requirements. This, along with other factors curated and maintained by AWS, has made it one of the most popular services on the platform.
Amazon EC2 Service Features
* It is composed of virtual computers that can be configured according to the requirements of the users. These virtual operating systems are called “instances”.
AWS makes preconfigured templates available. These templates are known as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). These templates can be booted up and down according to your needs. These are often bundled with additional software, such as OS or other required software.
* There are many instance types that are available under EC2 and they are classified based upon key system configuration metrics such as CPU, storage, memory, and so on.
* Two-factor authentication, called key pairs, is used to make login extremely secure. Key pairs are made up of two keys: the private key you share with AWS and the public key that AWS provides. Access must be granted to the pair.
* Temporary data is kept on the server to prevent data loss. This allows you to keep your data safe from system interruptions or hibernating, or for any other reason. These temporary storage volumes are called “instance store volumes”.
* AWS uses Amazon Elastic Book Store (Amazon EBS), which provides a persistent storage volume for data, known as Amazon EBS volumes.
* Access to your data volumes and instances can be made possible by a variety of physical locations, including “Regions” or “Availability zones”.
* A firewall that allows you to specify the protocols and ports that can reach your instances via security groups
* Amazon EC2 offers “security groups”, which are firewalls that allow you to configure protocols, ports, and the source IP range. This allows you to customize the security of your system.
* Elastic IP addresses are static IPv4 addresses that can be used for cloud computing.
* Metadata, also known as tags, can be created and assigned to your Amazon EC2 resources
* It offers the amazing feature of allowing you to create your own virtual network that is isolated from the rest. These are