EC2 Basic

EC2 Basic

1. What is?

   • one of the most popular of AWS’ offering
   • Elastic Compute Cloud = Infrastructure as a Service
     • consists of
       • Renting virtual machines (EC2)
       • Storing data on virtual drives (EBS)
       • Distributing load across machines (ELB)
       • Scaling the services using an auto-scaling group (ASG)

2. sizing & configuration options

   • OS
     • MacOs
     • Windows
     • Linux
   • Random access memory
     • RAM
   • compute power & cores
     • CPU
   • storage space
     • hardware (EC2 Instance Store)
     • Network-attached (EBS & EFS)
   • Firewall rules
     • security group
       • fundamental of network security
       • They control how traffic is allowed into or out of our EC2 Instances
       • only contain allow rules
       • can reference by IP or by security group
       • regulate
         • Access to Ports
         • Authorised IP ranges – IPv4 and IPv6
         • Control of inbound network
         • Control of outbound network
           • All inbound traffic is blocked by default; All outbound traffic is authorised by default
   • Bootstrap script (configure at first launch)
     • EC2 User Data
       • used to automate boot tasks
         • such as
           • Downloading common files from the internet
           • etc you can think
           • Installing
             • software
             • updates
       • runs with the root user
     • means launching commands when a machine starts

3. types

   • naming convention
     • m5.2xlarge
       • • m: instance class • 5: generation (AWS improves them over time) • 2xlarge: size within the instance class
   • https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/
   • purpose
     • Great for a diversity of workloads such as web servers or code repositories
     • Balance between: Compute Memory Networking
       • Great for compute-intensive tasks that require high performance processors
       • Fast performance for workloads that process large data sets in memory
       • Great for storage-intensive tasks that require high, sequential read and write access to large data sets on local storage

4. Purchasing Options

   • Reserved: (MINIMUM 1 year)
     • Reserved Instances: long workloads
     • Convertible Reserved Instances: long workloads with flexible instances
     • Scheduled Reserved Instances: example – every Thursday between 3 and 6 pm
     • Recommended for steady-state usage applications (think database)
   • Spot Instances: short workloads, cheap, can lose instances (less reliable)
     • The MOST cost-efficient
     • Useful for workloads that are resilient to failure • Batch jobs • Data analysis • Image processing • Any distributed workloads • Workloads with a flexible start and end time
     • Not suitable for critical jobs or databases
     • you can “lose” at any point of time if your max price is less than the current spot price
   • Dedicated Hosts: book an entire physical server, control instance placement
     • 3-year period reservation
     • More expensive
     • Useful for
       • software that have complicated licensing model (BYOL – Bring Your Own License)
       • companies that have strong regulatory or compliance needs
   • On-Demand Instances: short workload, predictable pricing
     • Pay for what you use
     • Has the highest cost but no upfront payment
     • No long-term commitment
     • Recommended for short-term and un-interrupted workloads
   • Dedicated Instances: no other customers will share your hardware
     • May share hardware with other instances in same account
     • No control over instance placement (can move hardware after Stop / Start