AWS EC2 tutorial: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

While predicting the required computing power, there can be two scenarios, you may over-estimate the requirement, and buy stacks of servers that will not be of any use, or you may under-estimate the usage, which will lead to the crashing of your application. In this AWS EC2 Tutorial we will understand all the key concepts and instance creation in the following sequence:

• Introduction to AWS EC2?
• Features of EC2
• Types of EC2 Computing instances
• Advantages of Amazon EC2
• Amazon EC2 Pricing
• AWS EC2 Instance Creation

AWS EC2 tutorial: Introduction to AWS EC2

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2 is a web service from Amazon that provides re-sizable compute services in the cloud. They are re-sizable because you can quickly scale up or scale down the number of server instances you are using if your computing requirements change.

An instance is a virtual server for running applications on Amazon’s EC2. It can also be understood like a tiny part of a larger computer, a tiny part that has its own Hard drive, network connection, OS etc. But it is actually all virtual. You can have multiple “tiny” computers on a single physical machine, and all these tiny machines are called Instances.

AWS EC2 tutorial: Why AWS EC2?

Suppose you are a developer, and since you want to work independently you buy some servers, you estimated the correct capacity, and the computing power is enough. Now, you have to look after the updation of security patches every day, you have to troubleshoot any problem which might occur at a back-end level in the servers, and so on. 

But if you buy an EC2 instance, you don’t have to worry about any of these things as it will all be managed by Amazon; you just have to focus on your application. That too, at a fraction of the cost that you were incurring earlier! Isn’t that interesting?

How to run systems in EC2?

• Login to your AWS account and click on AWS EC2.
• Under create an instance, click on launch instance.

Now you have to select an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), AMIs are templates of OS and they provide the information needed to launch an instance.

When we want to launch an instance we have to specify which AMI we want to use. It could be Ubuntu, windows server, etc.

• The AMIs could be preconfigured or you can configure it on your own according to your requirements.
  • For preconfigured AMIs you have to select it from the AWS marketplace.
  • For setting up your own, go to quick-start and select one.

• • While configuring you will reach a point where you have to select an EBS storage option. Elastic Block Storage (EBS) is a persistent block-level storage volume which are used with EC2.

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Next in this AWS EC2 tutorial, let us learn the various types.

AWS EC2 tutorial: Features of EC2

Amazon EC2 has lots of features. Some of them are listed below: 

• Amazon EC2 provides virtual computing environments also known as instances.
• AWS EC2 has preconfigured templates for your instances, also called Amazon Machine Images or AMIs, that package the operating system as well as some additional software.
• EC2 offers multiple configurations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking capabilities for your instances.
• With Amazon EC2, you can securely log in to your instances using key pairs that keep the instances safe from unwanted access.
• Amazon EC2 has various storage volumes for temporary data that is deleted when you stop, hibernate, or terminate your instance. This is also known as instance store volumes.
• Amazon EC2 has Persistent storage volumes for your data using Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS).
• Amazon EC2 has multiple physical locations for your resources, such as instances and Amazon EBS volumes

AWS EC2 tutorial: Types of EC2 Computing Instances

Computing is a very broad term. The nature of your task decides what kind of computing you need.  Therefore, AWS EC2 offers 5 types of instances which are as follows:

• General Instances
  • For applications that require a balance of performance and cost.
    • E.g email responding systems, where you need a prompt response as well as the it should be cost-effective, since it doesn’t require much processing.

• Compute Instances
  • For applications that require a lot of processing from the CPU.
    • E.g analysis of data from a stream of data, like Twitter stream

• Memory Instances 
  • For applications that are heavy in nature, therefore, require a lot of RAM.
    • E.g when your system needs a lot of applications running in the background i.e multitasking.

• Storage Instances
  • For applications that are huge in size or have a data set that occupies a lot of space.
    • E.g When your application is of huge size.

• GPU Instances
  • For applications that require some heavy graphics rendering.  
    • E.g 3D modelling etc.

Now, every instance type has a set of instances which are optimized for different workloads:

Now that you know about the different types of instances, let’s learn about the steps involved in instance creation in this AWS EC2 Tutorial.

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AWS EC2 tutorial: Advantages of Amazon EC2

• You only pay for what you use
• Easily to scale up or down as needed
• No need to own or maintain physical servers
• Amazon EC2 instances are highly secure and you can log in securely
• Ability to access EC2 instances from any location in the world

AWS EC2 tutorial: Amazon EC2 Pricing

You can get started with Amazon EC2 for free. With a free tier account, you can use 750 hours of Windows and Linux t2.micro instances for up to one year. It is recommended to use only micro instances for free users, as you may be charged for other instances. There are multiple methods for paying for Amazon EC2 instances. These are On-demand, Savings Plan, Reserved Instances, and Spot instances. Let’s look at the pricing structures of these.

On-Demand Pricing

The EC2 on-demand instances are charged on either second (minimum 60 seconds) or hourly basis. This includes no long-time commitment so you don’t have to think much about planning, buying, or maintaining hardware.

Here is the included pricing for instance types

Savings Plan

Savings Plans are a flexible pricing model that offers low prices on Amazon EC2, Amazon Lambda, and AWS Fargate usage. This is in exchange for a commitment of 1 to 3 years while you consistently use the service.

Spot Instances

You can request spare EC2 computing using Spot Instances. This is recommended for applications with flexible start and end times. Some Spot Instances pricings are provided below, but you can refer to the official website to learn more about it.

AWS EC2 Tutorial: Steps for Instance Creation

Next in this AWS EC2 Tutorial, let’s understand the whole EC2 instance creation process through a use case in which we’ll be creating an Ubuntu instance for a test environment.

• Login to AWS Management Console.
  

• Select your preferred Region. Next, Select a region from the drop down, the selection of the region can be done on the basis of the criteria discussed earlier in the blog.

• Select EC2 Service Click EC2 under Compute section. This will take you to EC2 dashboard.

• Click Launch Instance.

• Select an AMI : because you require a Linux instance, in the row for the basic 64-bit Ubuntu AMI, click Select.

• Choose an Instance

 Select t2.micro instance, which is free tier eligible.

• Configure Instance Details.
  Configure all the details and then click on add storage

• Add Storage

• Tag an Instance

Type a name for your AWS EC2 instance in the value box. This name, more correctly known as tag, will appear in the console when the instance launches. It makes it easy to keep track of running machines in a complex environment. Use a name that you can easily recognize and remember.

• Create a Security Group

• Review and Launch an Instance

Verify the details that you have configured to launch an instance.

• Create a Key Pair & launch an Instance

Next in this AWS EC2 Tutorial, select the option ‘Create a new key pair’ and give a name of a key pair. After that, download it in your system and save it for future use.

• Check the details of a launched instance.

• Converting Your Private Key Using PuTTYgen

PuTTY does not natively support the private key format (.pem) generated by Amazon EC2. PuTTY has a tool called PuTTYgen, which can convert keys to the required PuTTY format (.ppk). You must convert your private key into this format (.ppk) before attempting to connect to your instance using PuTTY.

• Click Load. By default, PuTTYgen displays only files with the extension .ppk. To locate your .pem file, select the option to display files of all types.

• Select your.pem file for the key pair that you specified when you launch your instance, and then click Open. Click OK to dismiss the confirmation dialog box.
• Click Save private key to save the key in the format that PuTTY can use. PuTTYgen displays a warning about saving the key without a passphrase. Click Yes.
• Specify the same name for the key that you used for the key pair (for example, my-key-pair). PuTTY automatically adds the. ppk file extension.

• Connect to EC2 instance using SSH and PuTTY

• Open PuTTY.exe
• In the Host Name box, enter Public IP of your instance.
• In the Category list, expand SSH.
• Click Auth (don’t expand it).
• In the Private Key file for authentication box, browse to the PPK file that you downloaded and double-click it.
• Click Open.

• Type in Ubuntu when prompted for login ID.

Congratulations! You have launched an Ubuntu Instance successfully.

Conclusion:

Now that you have created your own Amazon EC2 instance, you can start your cloud journey. If you want to start learning how to build infrastructure using AWS, we would highly recommend you check out our course on AWS Solutions Architect. Here, you will not only learn how to set up your own cloud infrastructure but also how you can build solutions for enterprise-level projects. This is a comprehensive course on how you can utilize the full capabilities of Amazon Web Services to deploy, manage, and maintain clouds.

Here’s a short AWS EC2 tutorial Video that explains Amazon AMI EC2, Demo on AMI creation, Security groups, Key pairs, Elastic IP vs Public IP and a Demo to launch an EC2 Instance etc. It is very important for those who want to become AWS Certified Solutions Architects.

If you found this AWS EC2 Tutorial relevant, you can check out Edureka’s live and instructor-led course on AWS Course, co-created by industry practitioners.