Amazon EC2 FAQs - AWS Site
Amazon EC2 FAQs - AWS Site
Amazon EC2 FAQs - AWS Site
Amazon EC2 is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the
cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.
Just as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) enables storage in the
cloud, Amazon EC2 enables “compute” in the cloud. The Amazon EC2 simple
web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal
friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and
lets you run on Amazon’s proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces
the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing
you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing
requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by
allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use.
To sign up for Amazon EC2, select the “Sign up for This Web Service” button on
the Amazon EC2 detail page. You must have an AWS account to access this
service; if you do not already have one, you will be prompted to create one when
you begin the Amazon EC2 signup process. After signing up, please refer to
the Amazon EC2 documentation, which includes our Getting Started Guide.
Q: Why am I asked to verify my phone number when signing up for Amazon EC2?
Amazon EC2 registration requires you to have a valid phone number and email
address on file with AWS in case we ever need to contact you. Verifying your
phone number takes only a couple of minutes and involves receiving a phone call
during the registration process and entering a PIN using the phone key pad.
Until now, small developers did not have the capital to acquire massive compute
resources and ensure they had the capacity they needed to handle unexpected
spikes in load. Amazon EC2 helps developers use Amazon’s own benefits of
massive scale with no upfront investment or performance compromises.
Developers are now free to innovate knowing that no matter how successful
their businesses become, it will be inexpensive and simple to ensure they have
the compute capacity they need to meet their business requirements.
The “Elastic” nature of the service allows developers to instantly scale to meet
spikes in traffic or demand. When computing requirements unexpectedly change
(up or down), Amazon EC2 can instantly respond, meaning that developers have
the ability to control how many resources are in use at any given point in time. In
contrast, traditional hosting services generally provide a fixed number of
resources for a fixed amount of time, meaning that users have a limited ability to
easily respond when their usage is rapidly changing, unpredictable, or is known
to experience large peaks at various intervals.
Once you have set up your account and select or create your AMIs, you are ready
to boot your instance. You can start your AMI on any number of On-Demand
instances by using the RunInstances API call. You simply need to indicate how
many instances you wish to launch. If you wish to run more than your On-
Demand quota, complete the Amazon EC2 instance request form.
If Amazon EC2 is able to fulfill your request, RunInstances will return success,
and we will start launching your instances. You can check on the status of your
instances using the DescribeInstances API call. You can also programmatically
terminate any number of your instances using the TerminateInstances API call.
If you have a running instance using an Amazon EBS boot partition, you can also
use the StopInstances API call to release the compute resources but preserve
the data on the boot partition. You can use the StartInstances API when you are
ready to restart the associated instance with the Amazon EBS boot partition.
In addition, you have the option to use Spot Instances to reduce your computing
costs when you have flexibility in when your applications can run. Read more
about Spot Instances for a more detailed explanation on how Spot
Instances work.
If you prefer, you can also perform all these actions from the AWS Management
Console or through the command line using our command line tools, which have
been implemented with this web service API.
Q: What is the difference between using the local instance store and Amazon
Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) for the root device?
When you launch your Amazon EC2 instances you have the ability to store your
root device data on Amazon EBS or the local instance store. By using Amazon
EBS, data on the root device will persist independently from the lifetime of the
instance. This enables you to stop and restart the instance at a subsequent time,
which is similar to shutting down your laptop and restarting it when you need it
again.
Alternatively, the local instance store only persists during the life of the
instance. This is an inexpensive way to launch instances where data is not
stored to the root device. For example, some customers use this option to run
large web sites where each instance is a clone to handle web traffic.
Amazon EC2 allows you to set up and configure everything about your instances
from your operating system up to your applications. An Amazon Machine Image
(AMI) is simply a packaged-up environment that includes all the necessary bits
to set up and boot your instance. Your AMIs are your unit of deployment. You
might have just one AMI or you might compose your system out of several
building block AMIs (e.g., webservers, appservers, and databases). Amazon EC2
provides a number of tools to make creating an AMI easy. Once you create a
custom AMI, you will need to bundle it. If you are bundling an image with a root
device backed by Amazon EBS, you can simply use the bundle command in the
AWS Management Console. If you are bundling an image with a boot partition on
the instance store, then you will need to use the AMI Tools to upload it to
Amazon S3. Amazon EC2 uses Amazon EBS and Amazon S3 to provide reliable,
scalable storage of your AMIs so that we can boot them when you ask us to do
so.
Or, if you want, you don’t have to set up your own AMI from scratch. You can
choose from a number of globally available AMIs that provide useful instances.
For example, if you just want a simple Linux server, you can choose one of the
standard Linux distribution AMIs.
The RunInstances call that initiates execution of your application stack will
return a set of DNS names, one for each system that is being booted. This name
can be used to access the system exactly as you would if it were in your own
data center. You own that machine while your operating system stack is
executing on it.
Yes, Amazon EC2 is used jointly with Amazon S3 for instances with root devices
backed by local instance storage. By using Amazon S3, developers have access
to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage
infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. In
order to execute systems in the Amazon EC2 environment, developers use the
tools provided to load their AMIs into Amazon S3 and to move them between
Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2. See How do I load and store my systems with
Amazon EC2? for more information about AMIs.
We expect developers to find the combination of Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 to
be very useful. Amazon EC2 provides cheap, scalable compute in the cloud while
Amazon S3 allows users to store their data reliably.
You are limited to running On-Demand Instances per your vCPU-based On-
Demand Instance limit, purchasing 20 Reserved Instances, and requesting Spot
Instances per your dynamic Spot limit per region. New AWS accounts may start
with limits that are lower than the limits described here.
If you need more instances, complete the Amazon EC2 limit increase request
form with your use case, and your limit increase will be considered. Limit
increases are tied to the region they were requested for.
Q: Are there any limitations in sending email from Amazon EC2 instances?
Yes. In order to maintain the quality of Amazon EC2 addresses for sending email,
we enforce default limits on the amount of email that can be sent from EC2
accounts. If you wish to send larger amounts of email from EC2, you can apply to
have these limits removed from your account by filling out this form.
In our experience, ECC memory is necessary for server infrastructure, and all the
hardware underlying Amazon EC2 uses ECC memory.
Secondly, many hosting services don’t provide full control over the compute
resources being provided. Using Amazon EC2, developers can choose not only to
initiate or shut down instances at any time, they can completely customize the
configuration of their instances to suit their needs – and change it at any time.
Most hosting services cater more towards groups of users with similar system
requirements, and so offer limited ability to change these.
Finally, with Amazon EC2 developers enjoy the benefit of paying only for their
actual resource consumption – and at very low rates. Most hosting services
require users to pay a fixed, upfront fee irrespective of their actual computing
power used, and so users risk overbuying resources to compensate for the
inability to quickly scale up resources within a short time frame.
You are limited to running one or more On-Demand Instances in an AWS account,
and Amazon EC2 measures usage towards each limit based on the total number
of vCPUs (virtual central processing unit) that are assigned to the running On-
Demand instances in your AWS account. The following table shows the number
of vCPUs for each instance size. The vCPU mapping for some instance types may
differ; see Amazon EC2 Instance Types for details.
micro 1
small 1
medium 1
large 2
xlarge 4
2xlarge 8
3xlarge 12
4xlarge 16
8xlarge 32
9xlarge 36
10xlarge 40
12xlarge 48
16xlarge 64
18xlarge 72
24xlarge 96
32xlarge 128
Q: How many On-Demand Instances can I run in Amazon EC2?
There are five vCPU-based instance limits; each defines the amount of capacity
you can use of a given instance family. All usage of instances in a given family,
regardless of generation, size, or configuration variant (e.g. disk, processor
type), will accrue towards the family’s total vCPU limit, listed in the table below.
New AWS accounts may start with limits that are lower than the limits described
here.
Yes, the On-Demand Instance limits for an AWS account are set on a per-region
basis.
Yes, limits can change over time. Amazon EC2 is constantly monitoring your
usage within each region and your limits are raised automatically based on your
use of EC2.
Even though EC2 automatically increases your On-Demand Instance limits based
on your usage, if needed you can request a limit increase from the Limits Page
on Amazon EC2 console, the Amazon EC2 service page on the Service Quotas
console, or the Service Quotas API/CLI.
You can find the vCPU mapping for each of the Amazon EC2 Instance Types or
use the simplified vCPU Calculator to compute the total vCPU limit
requirements for your AWS account.
No, the vCPU-based limits only apply to running On-Demand instances and Spot
Instances.
You can find your current On-Demand Instance limits on the EC2 Service Limits
page in the Amazon EC2 console, or from the Service Quotas console and APIs.
No, opting into vCPU-based limits will not affect any running instances.
With the Amazon CloudWatch metrics integration, you can view EC2 usage
against limits in the Service Quotas console. Service Quotas also enables
customers to use CloudWatch for configuring alarms to warn customers of
approaching limits. In addition, you can continue to track and inspect your
instance usage in Trusted Advisor and Limit Monitor.
With the vCPU limits, we no longer have total instance limits governing the
usage. Hence the DescribeAccountAttributes API will no longer return the max-
instances value. Instead you can now use the Service Quotas APIs to retrieve
information about EC2 limits. You can find more information about the Service
Quotas APIs in the AWS documentation.
No. EC2 usage is still calculated either by the hour or the second, depending on
which AMI you're running and the instance type and size you’ve launched.
As of Januaury 7, 2020, Amazon EC2 began rolling out a change to restrict email
traffic over port 25 by default to protect customers and other recipients from
spam and email abuse. Port 25 is typically used as the default SMTP port to send
emails. AWS accounts that have requested and had Port 25 throttles removed in
the past will not be impacted by this change.
Q: I have a valid use case for sending emails to port 25 from EC2. How can I have
these port 25 restrictions removed?
If you have a valid use case for sending emails to port 25 (SMTP) from EC2,
please submit a Request to Remove Email Sending Limitations to have these
restrictions lifted. You can alternately send emails using a different port, or
leverage an existing authenticated email relay service such as Amazon Simple
Email Service (Amazon SES).