What is Amazon EC2?

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) provides on-demand, scalable computing capacity in the
Amazon Web Services (AWS) 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.

An EC2 instance is a virtual server in the AWS Cloud. When you launch an EC2 instance, the instance type
that you specify determines the hardware available to your instance. Each instance type offers a different
balance of compute, memory, network, and storage resources. For more information, see the Amazon EC2
Instance Types Guide.

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.
Amazon EBS volumes
Persistent storage volumes for your data using Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS).
Instance store volumes
Storage volumes for temporary data that is deleted when you stop, hibernate, or terminate your
instance.
Key pairs
 Secure login information for your instances. AWS stores the public key and you store the private key
in a secure place.
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.

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 AWS PCI Compliance
Package, see PCI DSS Level 1.

EC2 instances

Different Amazon EC2 instance types are designed for certain activities. Consider the unique requirements of
your workloads and applications when choosing an instance type. This might include needs
for computing, memory, or storage.
What are the AWS EC2 Instance Types?
The AWS EC2 Instance Types are as follows:
1. General Purpose Instances
2. Compute Optimized Instances
3. Memory-Optimized Instances
4. Storage Optimized Instances
5. Accelerated Computing Instances

1. General-Purpose Instances
The computation, memory, and networking resources in general-purpose instances are balanced. Scenarios,
where you can use General Purpose Instances, are gaming servers, small databases, personal projects, etc.
Assume you have an application with a kind of equal computing, memory, and networking resource
requirements. Because the program does not require optimization in any particular resource area, you can use a
general-purpose instance to execute it.
Examples:
● The applications that require computing, storage, networking, server performance, or want something from
everything, can utilize general-purpose instances.
● If high-performance CPUs are not required for your applications, you can go for general-purpose instances.

EC2 General-Purpose Instance Types

Here are several general-purpose examples from which we can pick:
T2. micro: The most well-known instance in AWS is t2.micro, which gives 1 CPU and 1 GB of memory with
low to moderate network performance. It is also free and highly helpful for individuals first starting AWS.
M6a Instance: The third-generation AMD EPYC processors used in the M6 instance are perfect for
general-purpose tasks. In m6a there are different sizes like m6a.large, m6a.2xlarge, m6a.4xlarge, and so on.
m6a.large offers 2 CPUs, 8GiB memory, and network performance up to 12.5 Gigabit.
M5 instance: The newest generation of general-purpose instances, known as M5, are powered by Intel’s Xeon
Platinum 8175 processors. Its M5 divisions include m5. large, m5.12xlarge, and m5.24 large, and the sort of
M5 service we select will depend on memory, CPUs, storage, and network speed.
Features
● Powered by specifically designed AWS Graviton3 processors.
● Default optimized with EBS.
● It consists of dedicated hardware and a lightweight hypervisor.
● The bandwidth is higher when compared to other types.
Applications
1. Web Servers: The web servers can be hosted in General-purpose instances. EC2 instances provide a
flexible and scalable platform for web applications.
2. Development and Test Environment: The developers can use these General-purpose instances to build,
test and deploy the applications. It is a cost-effective solution for running this environment.
3. Content delivery: The hosting of content delivery networks (CDNs) that distribute content to users all
over the world is possible using general-purpose instances. EC2 instances can be set up to provide content
with low latency and great performance.
A popular option for many businesses, AWS EC2 general-purpose instances offer a versatile and scalable
platform for a variety of applications.

2. Compute-Optimized Instances
Compute-optimized instances are appropriate for applications that require a lot of computation and help from
high-performance CPUs. You may employ compute-optimized instances for workloads including web,
application, and gaming servers just like general-purpose instances. This instance type is best suited for
high-performance applications like web servers, Gaming servers.
Examples
● Applications that require high server performance or that employ a machine-learning model will benefit
from compute-optimized instances.
● If you have some batch processing workloads or high-performance computing.
Compute-Optimized Some Instance Types
1. c5d.24large: The c5d instance, which has 96 CPUs, 192 GiB of RAM, 3600 GB of SSD storage, and 12
Gigabit of network performance, was selected primarily for its excellent web server performance. There are
other instance types, including giant and extra-large. Depending on our needs, we will choose between the
c5a big and extra-large instance types.
Features
● Powered by specifically designed AWS Graviton3 processors.
● It will use DDR5 memory, by which it will get 50% more bandwidth than DDR4.
● By default EBS optimisation.
Applications
1. Machine learning: Machine learning operations can be performed on Compute-optimized instances
because it will manage heavy workloads. The processing capacity required to swiftly and effectively train
massive machine learning models can be provided by compute-optimized instances.
2. Gaming: Compute-optimised is well suited for heavy workloads so it can easily manage the Gaming
operations easily. Compute-optimized will decrease the latency and it can deliver a high-quality gaming
experience.

3. Memory-Optimized Instances
Memory-optimized instances are geared for workloads that need huge datasets to be processed in
memory. Memory here defines RAM which allows us to do multiple tasks at a time. Data stored is used to
perform the central processing unit (CPU) tasks it loads from storage to memory to run. This process of
preloading gives the CPU direct access to the computer program. Assume you have a workload that
necessitates the preloading of significant volumes of data prior to executing an application. A
high-performance database or a task that requires real-time processing of a significant volume of unstructured
data might be involved in this scenario. In this case, consider using a memory-optimized instance. It is used to
run applications that require a lot of memory with high performance.
Examples:
● Helpful for databases that need to handle quickly.
● Processes that do not need a large quantity of data yet require speedy and real-time processing.
Memory-Optimized Some Instance Types
The R and X categories belong to the memory-optimized family. Let’s discuss any one-off them.
R7g.medium: It is run on AWS Gravitation processors with ARM architecture. with 1 CPU, 8 (GiB) of
memory, an EBS storage type, and a maximum of 12.5% network bandwidth.
x1: X1 is mainly suited for enterprise edition databases with memory applications and comes with 64 vCPU,
976 GiB of memory, 1 x 1,920 GB of SSD storage, 7,000 Mbps of dedicated EBS bandwidth, and 10 Gbps of
network performance.
Features
● Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) is supported on the r7g.16xlarge and r7g.metal instances.
● Includes the newest DDR5 memory, which provides 50% more bandwidth than DDR4.
● Compared to R6g instances, improved networking bandwidth is 20% more.
Applications
1. In-Memory Databases: Memory-optimized instances are mostly suited for databases that contain high
bandwidth and memory capacity is high.
2. Big Data Processing: For big data processing workloads like Apache Spark and Apache Hadoop that
demand high memory capacity and bandwidth, memory-optimized instances can be deployed. Instances
that have been optimized for memory can offer the memory space and bandwidth required to process huge
amounts of data fast and effectively.
4. Storage Optimized Instances
Storage-optimized instances are made for workloads that demand fast, sequential read and write access to huge
datasets. Distributed file systems, data warehousing applications, and high-frequency online transaction
processing (OLTP) systems are examples of workloads that are suited for storage-optimized instances.
Storage-optimized instances are built to provide applications with the lowest latency while accessing the data.
Examples:
● The applications which high processing of databases can utilize storage-optimized instances.
● Data Warehousing applications or distributed file systems can use it.
Storage Optimized Instance Types
1. Im4gn: Because Im4gn is powered by AWS Graviton processors, it offers the best pricing performance for
workloads in Amazon EC2 that demand a lot of storage. Im4gn.large’s base configuration has 2 CPUs, 8
GiB of memory, and EBS storage with a network bandwidth of up to 25 Gbps. It offers some other instance
types of ls4gn, l4i, D, and H.
Features
● Using AWS Graviton2 processors, which provide the best price/performance for workloads in Amazon
EC2.
● Geared at tasks that correspond to 4 GB of RAM per vCPU.
● Improved Networking (ENA)-based Elastic Network Adapter (ENA)-based up to 100 Gbps of network
bandwidth.
Applications
1. Amazon EC2 C5d Instance: It is suitable for applications which are having very high intensive
workloads. It can deliver high input and output performance with low latency.
2. Amazon EC2 I3 instance: The storage-optimized instance is well-suited for applications with high
storage needs. It also provides local NVMe storage.

5. Accelerated Computing Instances

Coprocessors are used in accelerated computing instances to execute specific operations more effectively than
software running on CPUs. Floating-point numeric computations, graphics processing, and data pattern
matching are examples of these functions. A Hardware-Accelerator/ Co-processor is a component in
computing that may speed up data processing. Graphics applications, game streaming, and application
streaming are all good candidates for accelerated computing instances.
Examples:
● If the application utilizes floating-point calculations or graphics processing, accelerated computing
instances will be the best among all.
● Also, data pattern matching can be done more efficiently with this instance type.
Accelerated Computing Instance Types
1. Accelerated computing consists of mainly P1, Inf2, G5, G5g, G4dn, G4ad, G3, F1 and VT1.
2. P4: It offers 3.0 GHz 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Processors. of 8 GPUs, 96 CPUs, and memory of
1152(GiB) with network bandwidth of 400ENA and EFA.
Features
● 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, 3.0 GHz (Cascade Lake P-8275CL).
● 8 NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs maximum.
● 400 Gbps instance networking with support for NVIDIA GPUDirect RDMA and Elastic Fabric Adapter
(EFA) (remote direct memory access).
Applications
1. Amazon EC2 P3 Instances: High-performance computing, rendering, and machine learning workloads
are all well-suited to these instances. Its NVIDIA V100 GPUs enable them to deliver up to 1 petaflop of
mixed-precision performance per instance, which makes them perfect for simulations of computational
fluid dynamics, molecular dynamics, and complicated deep learning models.
2. Amazon EC2 G4 Instances: These instances are designed for graphically demanding tasks like video
transcoding, virtual desktops, and gaming. They provide up to 65 teraflops of single-precision performance
per instance and are driven by NVIDIA T4 GPUs.
AWS Instance Types Pricing
AWS Free tier offers EC2 instances for free. t2.micro instance was for up to a certain limit like 750 hours. If
you want to go for a premium plan then it offers three types of plans. They are
On-Demand
On-Demand it charges based on the no.of hours or seconds you use. With the help of on-demand instances, you
can avoid maintaining infrastructure costs.
On-Demand Instances are recommended for:
1. Low cost without any upfront payment or long-term commitment.
2. For testing applications that are being developed.
Saving Plan
When compared to on-demand you can reduce the bill by up to 72%. In order to do that you need to give a
commitment to AWS of using for such an amount of time like up to 1 to 3-year term.
Types of saving plans:
1. Compute Savings Plans.
2. EC2 Instance Savings Plans.
3. SageMaker Savings Plans.
Savings Plans are recommended for:
1. For faster and newest families.
2. Steady and consistent usage.
Amazon EC2 Spot Instances
When compared to other instance plans you can cheaper upto 90% discount. These are unused instances.
Spot Instances are recommended for:
1. Applications that don’t need to save their state.
2. Application flexible start and end time.
3.
AWS Instance Type Cost Calculator
AWS cost calculator is used for calculating the cost of AWS instances based on the types. This AWS
instance-type calculator is a service provided by Amazon itself.

By using the AWS Pricing Calculator you can estimate the cost of services offered by AWS of its pricing. It is
very simple to use first you need to open the AWS console and search for AWS Pricing Calculator after that
add the service to the calculator that you want to know the cost. After all the configuration is done you will get
the estimated cost as a graph or documented format.