Introduction

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a fundamental AWS service that allows you to launch and manage virtual servers in the cloud. In this guide, we will explore the basic concepts of EC2 instances, including their types, usage, and key features.


EC2 Instance Types

EC2 instances come in various types, each designed for specific workloads. Common instance types include:

  • t2.micro: A low-cost, general-purpose instance suitable for small applications.
  • m5.large: A balanced, general-purpose instance with a good balance of CPU and memory.
  • c5.xlarge: Instances optimized for compute-intensive workloads.
  • p3.2xlarge: GPU instances for machine learning and high-performance computing.

You can choose the instance type that best matches your application's requirements.


Creating an EC2 Instance

To create an EC2 instance:

  1. Log in to the AWS Management Console.
  2. Navigate to the EC2 service.
  3. Click "Launch Instance" to start the instance creation wizard.
  4. Select an AMI (Amazon Machine Image), instance type, and configure instance details.
  5. Specify storage, tags, security groups, and optionally configure advanced settings.
  6. Create or select an existing key pair for SSH access.
  7. Review and launch the instance.

Connecting to an EC2 Instance

After creating an EC2 instance, you can connect to it using SSH (for Linux instances) or Remote Desktop (for Windows instances). Use a command like this to connect via SSH:

# Replace 'your-key.pem' with your key file and 'your-instance-ip' with the actual IP address of your instance
ssh -i your-key.pem ec2-user@your-instance-ip

Key Features

EC2 instances offer several key features:

  • Scalability: Easily scale your infrastructure by launching additional instances as needed.
  • Elastic IP: Assign a static public IP to your instance for consistent access.
  • Elastic Block Store (EBS): Attach additional storage volumes to your instances.
  • Security Groups: Control inbound and outbound traffic with security groups.
  • Auto Scaling: Automatically adjust the number of instances based on traffic load.

Conclusion

EC2 instances are the building blocks of AWS and offer incredible flexibility and scalability for your cloud computing needs. With this understanding of basic concepts, you can start creating and managing EC2 instances to host applications, websites, or other workloads.