Home > Education > What Is Amazon EC2?

What Is Amazon EC2?

Added: (Wed Jun 19 2019)

Pressbox (Press Release) - Features of Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2 provides the following features:

Virtual computing environments, known as instances

Preconfigured templates for your instances, known as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), that package the bits you need for your server (including the operating system and additional software)

Various configurations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity for your instances, known as instance types

Secure login information for your instances using key pairs (AWS stores the public key, and you store the private key in a secure place)

Storage volumes for temporary data that's deleted when you stop or terminate your instance, known as instance store volumes

Persistent storage volumes for your data using Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), known as Amazon EBS volumes

Multiple physical locations for your resources, such as instances and Amazon EBS volumes, known as Regions and Availability Zones

A firewall that enables you to specify the protocols, ports, and source IP ranges that can reach your instances using security groups

Static IPv4 addresses for dynamic cloud computing, known as Elastic IP addresses

Metadata, known as tags, that you can create and assign to your Amazon EC2 resources

Virtual networks you can create that are logically isolated from the rest of the AWS cloud, and that you can optionally connect to your own network, known as virtual private clouds (VPCs)

For more information about the features of Amazon EC2, see the Amazon EC2 product page.

For more information about running your website on AWS, see Web Hosting.

How to Get Started with Amazon EC2
First, you need to get set up to use Amazon EC2. After you are set up, you are ready to complete the Getting Started tutorial for Amazon EC2. Whenever you need more information about an Amazon EC2 feature, you can read the technical documentation.

Get Up and Running

Setting Up with Amazon EC2

Getting Started with Amazon EC2 Linux Instances

Basics

Instances and AMIs

Regions and Availability Zones

Instance Types

Tags

Networking and Security

Amazon EC2 Key Pairs

Security Groups

Elastic IP Addresses

Amazon EC2 and Amazon VPC

Storage

Amazon EBS

Instance Store

Working with Linux Instances

AWS Systems Manager Run Command in the AWS Systems Manager User Guide

Tutorial: Install a LAMP Web Server on Amazon Linux 2

Tutorial: Configure SSL/TLS on Amazon Linux 2

Getting Started with AWS: Hosting a Web App for Linux

If you have questions about whether AWS is right for you, contact AWS Sales. If you have technical questions about Amazon EC2, use the Amazon EC2 forum.

Related Services
You can provision Amazon EC2 resources, such as instances and volumes, directly using Amazon EC2. You can also provision Amazon EC2 resources using other services in AWS. For more information, see the following documentation:

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling User Guide

AWS CloudFormation User Guide

AWS Elastic Beanstalk Developer Guide

AWS OpsWorks User Guide

To automatically distribute incoming application traffic across multiple instances, use Elastic Load Balancing. For more information, see Elastic Load Balancing User Guide.

To monitor basic statistics for your instances and Amazon EBS volumes, use Amazon CloudWatch. For more information, see the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide.

To automate actions, such as activating a Lambda function whenever a new Amazon EC2 instance starts, or invoking AWS Systems Manager Run Command whenever an event in another AWS service happens, use Amazon CloudWatch Events. For more information, see the Amazon CloudWatch Events User Guide.

To monitor the calls made to the Amazon EC2 API for your account, including calls made by the AWS Management Console, command line tools, and other services, use AWS CloudTrail. For more information, see the AWS CloudTrail User Guide.

To get a managed relational database in the cloud, use Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) to launch a database instance. Although you can set up a database on an EC2 instance, Amazon RDS offers the advantage of handling your database management tasks, such as patching the software, backing up, and storing the backups. For more information, see Amazon Relational Database Service Developer Guide.

To import virtual machine (VM) images from your local environment into AWS and convert them into ready-to-use AMIs or instances, use VM Import/Export. For more information, see the VM Import/Export User Guide.

Accessing Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2 provides a web-based user interface, the Amazon EC2 console. If you've signed up for an AWS account, you can access the Amazon EC2 console by signing into the AWS Management Console and selecting EC2 from the console home page.

If you prefer to use a command line interface, you have the following options:

AWS Command Line Interface (CLI)
Provides commands for a broad set of AWS products, and is supported on Windows, Mac, and Linux. To get started, see AWS Command Line Interface User Guide. For more information about the commands for Amazon EC2, see ec2 in the AWS CLI Command Reference.

AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell
Provides commands for a broad set of AWS products for those who script in the PowerShell environment. To get started, see the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell User Guide. For more information about the cmdlets for Amazon EC2, see the AWS Tools for PowerShell Cmdlet Reference.

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.

If you prefer to build applications using language-specific APIs instead of submitting a request over HTTP or HTTPS, AWS 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 is easier for you to get started. For more information, see AWS SDKs and Tools.




Submitted by:halcyontech
Disclaimer: Pressbox disclaims any inaccuracies in the content contained in these releases. If you would like a release removed please send an email to remove@pressbox.com together with the url of the release.