DJames617 AWS Service
Amazon EC2
EC2 gives you virtual machines. It is flexible, but you own more of the operating system and scaling work.
What This Service Solves
EC2 gives you virtual machines. It is flexible, but you own more of the operating system and scaling work.
- Use EC2 for custom software, lift-and-shift, specialized agents, OS control, or workloads that do not fit serverless/container abstractions.
When You Should Not Use It
- Do not default to EC2 when the requirement emphasizes least operational overhead and a managed/serverless service fits.
What AWS Manages and What You Manage
AWS manages physical facilities, hardware, and hypervisor. You manage AMIs, OS patches, instance profile, security groups, scaling, and application health.
Security Implications
Use instance roles, hardened AMIs, patch management, IMDSv2, security groups, encrypted EBS volumes, and Systems Manager where possible.
Availability and Scaling
EC2 instances live in one AZ. High availability usually needs multiple instances across AZs behind a load balancer.
Auto Scaling groups provide horizontal scaling. Vertical scaling requires instance type change and often downtime.
Cost Behavior
Cost varies by instance family, size, uptime, data transfer, EBS, Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, and Spot suitability.
Common Integrations
- Auto Scaling
- ELB
- EBS
- EFS
- Systems Manager
- CloudWatch
How AWS Might Present It
Certification-Specific Depth
Cloud Practitioner
Know what the service does and when it is the right family.
Solutions Architect Associate
Know configuration choices, integrations, failure modes, security, operations, and cost tradeoffs.
Related Comparisons
Sources and Review Metadata
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