description Amazon EC2 Overview
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, usually called EC2, provides configurable computing instances within AWS. An instance can run an operating system and applications much like a server, with choices suited to different computing needs. It supports Linux and Windows workloads and gives administrators control over the operating system, which is useful when software depends on a particular environment or requires system-level configuration. That control makes EC2 relevant for legacy applications and services that need a persistent server environment.
Unlike an event-driven service such as Lambda, it places more responsibility on the operator for maintaining the guest system and managing capacity. Security also depends on configuration and ongoing administration. AWS describes EC2 as resizable compute capacity, making it a flexible foundation rather than an automatically managed application platform.
help Amazon EC2 FAQ
What is the difference between Amazon EC2 and AWS Lambda for running workloads?
EC2 provides resizable virtual machines where you manage the operating system, networking, and scaling, giving you full control over the environment. Lambda is a serverless compute service that runs code in response to events without provisioning servers, making it better for short-lived, event-driven tasks while EC2 suits long-running processes and applications requiring persistent state.
What are the main EC2 instance families and their use cases?
AWS organizes instances into families: the t-series (like t3 and t4g) are burstable general-purpose instances for low-cost workloads, the m-series offers balanced compute and memory, the c-series is compute-optimized for batch processing and gaming, and the r-series is memory-optimized for databases. AWS also offers GPU instances (p-series and g-series) for machine learning and graphics workloads.
Can I run EC2 instances for free on a new AWS account?
The AWS Free Tier includes 750 hours per month of t2.micro or t3.micro instances (depending on region) for the first 12 months after account creation. This is enough to run one instance continuously, but charges apply once the 12-month period expires or if you exceed the included hours.
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