Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) provides scalable computing capacity in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. Using Amazon EC2 eliminates your need to invest in hardware up front, 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. Amazon EC2 enables you to scale up or down to handle changes in requirements or spikes in popularity, reducing your need to forecast traffic.
Amazon EC2 provides the following features:
Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) provide ready-to-use templates with preconfigured OS and software.
EC2 uses key pairs (public and private keys) for secure SSH or RDP authentication.
Persistent block storage that allows data retention and high-performance storage for EC2 instances.
EC2 instances can be deployed across multiple AWS Regions and Availability Zones for high availability.
Firewall rules that control inbound and outbound traffic for EC2 instances.
Elastic IPs provide a static public IPv4 address for EC2 instances, ensuring consistent access.
Metadata labels that help organize and manage EC2 resources efficiently.
Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) enable isolated networking environments for EC2 instances.
Amazon EC2 provides the following purchasing options for instances:
