Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is a web service offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that allows users to rent virtual servers, known as instances, in the cloud. Here’s what it does:
- Scalable Compute Capacity: EC2 provides scalable compute capacity, allowing users to increase or decrease their server resources based on demand. This scalability helps in handling varying workloads efficiently.
- Various Instance Types: EC2 offers a wide range of CPU, RAM, storage, and networking configurations, known as instance types, to cater to different application requirements. Users can choose the instance type that best suits their needs.
- On-Demand Provisioning: With EC2, users can provision instances on-demand, meaning they can quickly deploy virtual servers whenever they need them, without the need to invest in physical hardware.
- Pay-As-You-Go Pricing: EC2 follows a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where users are charged only for the resources they consume within a billing cycle. This model allows users to convert capital expenditure (CapEx) into operating expenditure (OpEx), as they pay for the services they use.
- Flexibility in Instance Sizes: EC2 instances are available in different sizes, enabling users to choose the most suitable size for their workloads. This flexibility, known as rightsizing, helps optimize resource utilization and minimize costs.
- Billing Methods: AWS offers various billing methods for EC2, including On-Demand Pricing, Savings Plans, Reserved Pricing, Spot Pricing, and Dedicated Hosts Pricing. Each method has its own pricing structure and benefits, allowing users to choose the most cost-effective option for their needs.
- Billing Flexibility: EC2 pricing can be hourly or per second, with a 60-second minimum commitment for per-second billing. This flexibility allows users to optimize costs based on their workload patterns, such as for testing and staging environments.
Overall, Amazon EC2 provides a flexible and scalable infrastructure solution for hosting applications and managing computing resources in the cloud.
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