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Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Last Updated : 02 Aug, 2025
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EC2 stands for Elastic Compute Cloud is a service from Amazon Web Services (AWS). EC2 is an on-demand computing service on the AWS cloud platform called instances. It lets you rent virtual computers to run your applications. You pay only for what you use.

Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) Linux Instances

Step 1: First login into your AWS account. Once you are directed to the management console. From the left click on "Services" and from the listed options click on EC2.

EC2Step 2: Afterward, you will be redirected to the EC2 console. Here is the image attached to refer to various features in EC2.

AWS EC2

Working of AWS EC2

Instead of buying and managing your own servers, EC2 gives you a virtual machine, where you can run websites, apps, or even big data tasks.

  • Choose the memory, storage, and CPU you need, and stop the instance when done.
  • EC2 offers secure, reliable, high-performance, and cost-effective infrastructure.
  • Deploy applications without managing physical hardware.
  • Secure your instance using VPC, Subnets, and Security Groups.
  • Attach Auto Scaling to scale EC2 based on demand.
  • Automatically scale up or down based on traffic.

The following figure shows the EC2-Instance which is deployed in VPC (Virtual Private Cloud).

AWS-EC2-Instance

Features of AWS EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)

The following are the features of AWS EC2:

1. AWS EC2 Functionality

EC2 Offers a virtual computing platform where users can run operations and launch additional EC2 instances. It enhances security and allows full customization of the virtual environment at any time. EC2 provides default AMI(Amazon Machine Image) with pre-configured settings for various operating systems and resources. Users can also create custom AMIs with their preferred configurations and save them for future use, avoiding the need to reconfigure each time.

2. AWS EC2 Operating Systems

Amazon EC2 includes a wide range of operating systems to choose from while selecting your AMI. Not only are these selected options, but users are also even given the privilege to upload their own operating systems and opt for that while selecting AMI during launching an EC2 instance. Currently, AWS has the following most preferred set of operating systems available on the EC2 console.

Linux OS Flavours

  • Amazon Linux
  • Windows Server
  • Ubuntu Server
  • SUSE Linux
  • Red Hat Linux

3. AWS EC2 Software

Amazon is single-handedly ruling the cloud computing market, because of the variety of options available on EC2 for its users. It allows its users to choose from various software present to run on their EC2 machines. This whole service is allocated to AWS Marketplace on the AWS platform. Numerous software like SAP, LAMP, Drupal, etc are available on AWS to use.

4. AWS EC2 Scalability and Reliability

EC2 provides us the facility to scale up or scale down as per the needs. All dynamic scenarios can be easily tackled by EC2 with the help of this feature. And because of the flexibility of volumes and snapshots, it is highly reliable for its users. Due to the scalable nature of the machine, many organizations like Flipkart, and Amazon rely on these days whenever humongous traffic occurs on their portals.


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