What is Amazon EC2? - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
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What is Amazon EC2?

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) provides on-demand, scalable computing capacity in the Amazon Web Services (Amazon) Cloud. Using Amazon EC2 reduces hardware costs so you can develop and deploy applications faster. You can use Amazon EC2 to launch as many or as few virtual servers as you need, configure security and networking, and manage storage. You can add capacity (scale up) to handle compute-heavy tasks, such as monthly or yearly processes, or spikes in website traffic. When usage decreases, you can reduce capacity (scale down) again.

The following diagram shows a basic architecture of an Amazon EC2 instance deployed within an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). In this example, the EC2 instance is within an Availability Zone in the Region. The EC2 instance is secured with a security group, which is a virtual firewall that controls incoming and outgoing traffic. A private key is stored on the local computer and a public key is stored on the instance. Both keys are specified as a key pair to prove the identity of the user. In this scenario, the instance is backed by an Amazon EBS volume. The VPC communicates with the internet using an internet gateway. For more information about Amazon VPC, see the Amazon VPC User Guide.


			A basic architecture diagram of an EC2 instance within a VPC.
Tip

This user guide provides information specific to running Linux-based instances on Amazon EC2. See the EC2 User Guide for Windows Instances for information to help you run Windows-based instances on EC2.

Amazon EC2 supports the processing, storage, and transmission of credit card data by a merchant or service provider, and has been validated as being compliant with Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS). For more information about PCI DSS, including how to request a copy of the Amazon Web Services PCI Compliance Package, see PCI DSS Level 1.

If you are looking for technical guidance about Amazon EC2, try Amazon re:Post.

For more information about cloud computing, see What is cloud computing?

Features of Amazon EC2

Amazon EC2 provides the following high-level features:

Instances

Virtual servers.

Amazon Machine Images (AMIs)

Preconfigured templates for your instances that package the components you need for your server (including the operating system and additional software).

Instance types

Various configurations of CPU, memory, storage, networking capacity, and graphics hardware for your instances.

Key pairs

Secure login information for your instances. Amazon stores the public key and you store the private key in a secure place.

Instance store volumes

Storage volumes for temporary data that is deleted when you stop, hibernate, or terminate your instance.

Amazon EBS volumes

Persistent storage volumes for your data using Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS).

Regions, Availability Zones, Local Zones, Amazon Outposts, and Wavelength Zones

Multiple physical locations for your resources, such as instances and Amazon EBS volumes.

Security groups

A virtual firewall that allows you to specify the protocols, ports, and source IP ranges that can reach your instances, and the destination IP ranges to which your instances can connect.

Elastic IP addresses

Static IPv4 addresses for dynamic cloud computing.

Tags

Metadata that you can create and assign to your Amazon EC2 resources.

Virtual private clouds (VPCs)

Virtual networks you can create that are logically isolated from the rest of the Amazon Cloud. You can optionally connect these virtual networks to your own network.

For details about all of the features of Amazon EC2, see Amazon EC2 features.

For options to run your website on Amazon, see Web Hosting.

Get started with Amazon EC2

The following topics can help you get started with Amazon EC2. After you set up to use EC2, you can walk through Tutorial: Get started with Amazon EC2 Linux instances to launch, connect to, and clean up an instance. The remaining topics point to more information about the high-level features of EC2.

Learn the basics of Amazon EC2
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You can provision Amazon EC2 resources, such as instances and volumes, directly using Amazon EC2. In addition, you can provision EC2 resources using other Amazon services, such as the following:

  • Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

    Helps ensure you have the correct number of Amazon EC2 instances available to handle the load for your application.

  • Amazon CloudFormation

    Helps you model and set up your Amazon resources using templates.

  • Amazon Elastic Beanstalk

    Deploy and manage applications in the Amazon Web Services Cloud without having to understand the underlying infrastructure.

  • Amazon OpsWorks

    Automate how servers are configured, deployed, and managed across your Amazon EC2 instances using Chef and Puppet.

  • EC2 Image Builder

    Automate the creation, management, and deployment of customized, secure, and up-to-date server images.

  • Amazon Launch Wizard

    Size, configure, and deploy Amazon resources for third-party applications without having to manually identify and provision individual Amazon resources.

Additional related services

Access Amazon EC2

You can create and manage your Amazon EC2 instances using the following interfaces:

Amazon EC2 console

A simple web interface to create and manage Amazon EC2 instances and resources. If you've signed up for an Amazon account, you can access the Amazon EC2 console by signing into the Amazon Web Services Management Console and selecting EC2 from the console home page.

Amazon Command Line Interface

Enables you to interact with Amazon services using commands in your command-line shell. It is supported on Windows, Mac, and Linux. For more information about the Amazon CLI , see Amazon Command Line Interface User Guide. You can find the Amazon EC2 commands in the Amazon CLI Command Reference.

Amazon Tools for PowerShell

A set of PowerShell modules that are built on the functionality exposed by the Amazon SDK for .NET. The Tools for PowerShell enable you to script operations on your Amazon resources from the PowerShell command line. To get started, see the Amazon Tools for Windows PowerShell User Guide. You can find the cmdlets for Amazon EC2, in the Amazon Tools for PowerShell Cmdlet Reference.

Amazon CloudFormation

Amazon EC2 supports creating resources using Amazon CloudFormation. You create a template, in JSON or YAML format, that describes your Amazon resources, and Amazon CloudFormation provisions and configures those resources for you. You can reuse your CloudFormation templates to provision the same resources multiple times, whether in the same Region and account or in multiple Regions and accounts. For more information about supported resource types and properties for Amazon EC2, see EC2 resource type reference in the Amazon CloudFormation User Guide.

Query API

Amazon EC2 provides a Query API. These requests are HTTP or HTTPS requests that use the HTTP verbs GET or POST and a Query parameter named Action. For more information about the API actions for Amazon EC2, see Actions in the Amazon EC2 API Reference.

Amazon SDKs

If you prefer to build applications using language-specific APIs instead of submitting a request over HTTP or HTTPS, Amazon provides libraries, sample code, tutorials, and other resources for software developers. These libraries provide basic functions that automate tasks such as cryptographically signing your requests, retrying requests, and handling error responses, making it easier for you to get started. For more information, see Tools to Build on Amazon .

Pricing for Amazon EC2

Amazon EC2 provides the following pricing options:

Free Tier

You can get started with Amazon EC2 for free. To explore the Free Tier options, see Amazon Free Tier.

On-Demand Instances

Pay for the instances that you use by the second, with a minimum of 60 seconds, with no long-term commitments or upfront payments.

Reserved Instances

You can reduce your Amazon EC2 costs by making a commitment to a specific instance configuration, including instance type and Region, for a term of 1 or 3 years.

Spot Instances

Request unused EC2 instances, which can reduce your Amazon EC2 costs significantly.

Dedicated Hosts

Reduce costs by using a physical EC2 server that is fully dedicated for your use, either On-Demand or as part of a Savings Plan. You can use your existing server-bound software licenses and get help meeting compliance requirements.

On-Demand Capacity Reservations

Reserve compute capacity for your EC2 instances in a specific Availability Zone for any duration of time.

Per-second billing

Removes the cost of unused minutes and seconds from your bill.

For a complete list of charges and prices for Amazon EC2 and more information about the purchase models, see Amazon EC2 pricing.

Estimates, billing, and cost optimization

To create estimates for your Amazon use cases, use the Amazon Pricing Calculator.

To see your bill, go to the Billing and Cost Management Dashboard in the Amazon Billing and Cost Management console. Your bill contains links to usage reports that provide details about your bill. To learn more about Amazon account billing, see Amazon Billing and Cost Management User Guide.

If you have questions concerning Amazon billing, accounts, and events, contact Amazon Support.

When calculating the cost of a provisioned environment, remember to include incidental costs such as snapshot storage for EBS volumes.

You can optimize the cost, security, and performance of your Amazon environment using Amazon Trusted Advisor.