aws intro to elastic compute cloud ec2

EC2 is a secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud.

The concept for EC2 is for it to act similarly to a VM, but be hosted in AWS rather than our own data centers. This design enables web-scale cloud computing for developers and gives users access to almost any scale of compute that we could need (entirely on demand).

EC2 gives the capacity that we want, when we need it while maintaining complete (root) access to the machine.

EC2 as a game changer for IT

• The first public cloud virtual machine in industry.
• Pay as you go model - changing the economics of computing
  • This drastically reduces infrastructure costs (upfront and ongoing) for tech companies
• No wasted capacity - the sizing that is used is directly correlated to what users need

Before EC2 was announced

Companies had on premises infrastructure that would require capacity estimates. These estimates would then have to purchase a long term investment with a time window of 3-5 years that would be overestimated to "grow into" the capacity you expect.

Additionally, purchase requests and the general acquisition process would take months whereas EC2 provisioning takes minutes.

Physical infrastructure also requires:

• Shipping time
• Networking
• Sysops teams to install OS/backup/security software
• Physical space

Exam tips for EC2

• Similar to a virtual machine, hosted in AWS instead of in a data center
• Select the capacity that we need, without oversizing our estimation
• Grow and shrink when we need to (on demand)
• Pay for what you use
• Wait minutes, not months, for installation/availability