What is Amazon elastic compute cloud (Amazon EC2)

What is Amazon elastic compute cloud (Amazon EC2)

Simplified definition:

Think of EC2 as your basic desktop computer

AWS Definition:

Amazon elastic compute cloud (amazon EC2) provides scalable computing capacity in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. Using Amazon EC2 eliminates your need to invest in hardware up front, so you can develop and deploy applications faster. You can use amazon EC2 to launch as many or as few virtual servers as you need, configure security,networking, and manage storage. Amazon EC2 enables you to scale up or down to handle changes in requirements or spikes in popularity, reducing your need to forecast traffic.

Conceptually understanding EC2:

Basic Computer Components:

1.Operating system (Linux or Windows)
2.Cpu (Processing Power)
3.Hard drive (Local storage)
4.Network card (Internet access)
5.Firewall (Security)
6.RAM

EC2 Instance Components:

1.AMI's (Linux or Windows)
2.Instance type (Processing power)
3.EBS (Local storage)
4.IP Addressing (Internet access)
5.Security groups (Security)
6.RAM