What Is An EC2 Instance?
An AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a service provided by Amazon Web Services. An EC2 Instance is a virtual server provided to a user through the AWS EC2 service.
Why use EC2 Instances?
EC2 instances allow end users the ability to create different servers within minutes. You can launch EC2 instances
using a large number of preconfigured templates. These preconfigured templates are called Amazon Machine Images (AMI).
The available Operating Systems include Windows and Linux. Additionally, there are a multitude of EC2 configurations
and AMIs that allow you to pick the number of virtual CPUs and memory allocated. This enables you to deploy your
applications faster and spin up resources without the overhead required for on-premises systems.
There is no requirement to acquire any new hardware or software. This enables you to scale horizontally or
vertically quickly in response to changing requirements for your applications. In addition to pre configured
hardware and software, AWS EC2 Instances provide users with the feature of managing networking rules virtually.
AWS Security Group rules provide instance level security rules based on protocols, ports, and source IP ranges.
These rules can be managed from the AWS console, and essentially take the place of typical firewall rules set on a server.
