Compute Services Design

EC2 Overview

Elastic Compute Cloud: Virtual Machine (VM) in the cloud.

• Leverages pay as you go.
• Integrates with storage, networking and security.

EC2 Deployment

1. Select an Amazon Machine Image (AMI).
2. Configure networking and security.
3. Choose the instance type.
4. Choose AZ Zone.
5. Attach storage (ABS).
6. Start the instance.

EC2 Instance Types:

1. General Purpose: T2 (burst), M5, M4, M3
   • Provides a balance of memory and network resources.
   • T2 provides burst performance, credits accrued on idle stored when bigger load.
2. Storage Optimized: H1, I3, D2
   • Useful for high memory requirements (in-mem dbs, large dbs)
3. Advanced Computing: (P3, P2, G3 and F1)
   • Specialty Hardware (GPU)

Instance types can be swapped at a later time.

EC2 Pricing

Pricing Categories:

1. On Demand: Charged for usage at a flat-rate.
   • Billed in 60-second increments rounded up.
2. Reserved: Reserve usage for a minimum of 1 year, usually cheaper.
   • Cheapest way is to do more years and pay everything up front.
3. Spot Big on unused compute time (up to 90% cheaper than on-demand).