Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

  • Cloud-based or virtual server (virtual machine), basically a hypervisor (compare zk/Docker_architecture)
  • It is virtual because you are not responsible for its physical implementation
  • Still needs considerable configuration compared to a serverless zk/Lambda_programming_model
  • Like lambdas has the benefit of easy scaling: you can add compute capacity on demand (elasticity)

The following needs to be considered:

  • Naming
  • Application and OS image (known as “Amazon Machine Image”):
    • Which OS you want to use (Linux distribution, Windows, etc)
    • Applications you want pre-installed
    • Block device mapping
  • Instance type an size (basically the type of processor and how powerful you want it to be)
  • An encrypted key-pair for login
  • Your network (typically managed via Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)) and network security
  • Storage: size and type (eg. GP3)
  • Location and latency

EC2 is more expensive copared to serverless options. Accordingly it is better to run smaller servers (in terms of processor and memory) at higher capacity than larger servers under-capacity.

logo