01 - EC2 101

Question 1

EC2 Instance Types

Answer 1

Anagram = Fight Dr Mc Px

• F = for FPGA = field programable gate array = hardware accelerate your code
• I = for IOPS = high speed storage = DBs, Data warehousing
• G = for graphics = Video Encoding / 3D streaming
• H = High disk throughput (NEW)
• T = lowest cost / general purpose = for cheap general purpose (think T2 Micro)
• D = for density = dense storage = fileservers / data warehousing
• R = for RAM = memory intensive applications / DBs
• M = for Main choice for general purpose apps = application servers
• C = for compute = CPU Intensive Applications / DBs
• P = for graphics (PICs) / general purpose = for bitcoin mining
• X = for extreme memory

The numbers after the letter indicate the generation (they change over time). The key is to remember the letter mapping

Question 2

EC2 Pricing Options - On-Demand Instances

Answer 2

On-Demand Instances

• Pay fixed rate by the hour (or second), with no commitment
• Best for customers that want the low costs and flexibility of AWS
• No up-front payments or long-term commitments
• Applications being developed or tested for the first time
• Applications with short term needs, spiky

Question 3

EC2 Pricing Options - Reserved Instances

Answer 3

Reserved Instances

• Provide you with a capacity reservation, discounted price on the hourly charge for the instance.
• Contract with AWS - 1 to 3-year terms
• Best for applications with steady-state/predictable usage
• Applications that require reserved capacity
• Can make upfront payments to reduce total computing costs (longer the contract, the greater the discount)
• Reserved Instance (RI) Types:
  
  • Standard Reserved Instances (RI)
    
    • up to 75% off on-demand pricing
  • Convertible Reserved Instances
    
    • up to 54% off on-demand pricing
    • Can change the attributes of the RI as long as the exchange results in the creation of a RI of equal or greater value
  • Scheduled Reserved Instances
    
    • Available to launch within the time window you reserve (can match capacity needs to a predictable recurring schedule)

Question 4

EC2 Pricing Options - Spot Instances

Answer 4

Spot Instances

• Bid for whatever price you want for instance capacity (applications must have flexible start/end times)
• Best for applications with flexible start/end times that are only feasible at very low compute prices (example DNA mapping)
• If you terminate the instance, you will pay for the full hour
• If AWS terminates the instance, you will get the hour it was terminated in for free

Question 5

EC2 Pricing Options - Dedicated Hosts

Answer 5

Dedicated Hosts

• Physical EC2 instance reserved for your use only.
• Best for customers who do not want to run in a multi-tenant virtualization
• Can help save money by allowing you to use existing server bound software licenses for licenses that do not support cloud deployments
• Can be purchased On-Demand (hourly)
• Can be purchased as a Reservation for up to 70% off the on-demand price

Question 6

Storage - EBS Volume Types

Answer 6

SSD Drive Types

• General Purpose SSD - GP2
• Provisioned IOPS SSD - I01

Magnetic Storage Volumes (prior to SSD Drives)

• Throughput Optimized HDD - ST1 (magnetic drive)
• Cold HDD - SC1 (magnetic drive)
• HDD Magnetic - Standard (magnetic drive)

Question 7

Storage - SSD Drive Types

Answer 7

General Purpose SSD - GP2

• Designed for general purpose usage, balances price and performance
• Ratio of 3 IOPS per GB, with unto 10,000 IOPS
• Ability to burst up to 3000 IOPS for extended periods of time (Volumes of 3,334 GB or above)

Provisioned IOPS SSD - I01

• Designed for I/O intensive applications (such as large relational or NoSQL databases)
• Use if you need more than 10,000 IOPS
• Can provision up to 20,000 IOPS per volume

Question 8

Storage - Magnetic Storage Volumes (prior to SSD Drives)

Answer 8

Throughput Optimized HDD - ST1 (magnetic drive)

• Designed for high throughput optimization of sequential writes (logs)
  
  • Big Data
  • Data Warehouses
  • Log Processing
• Cannot be a boot volume, have to be an additional volume

Cold HDD - SC1 (magnetic drive)

• Designed to be lowest cost storage for infrequently accessed workloads
• Cannot be a boot volume, have to be an additional volume

HDD Magnetic - Standard (magnetic drive)

• Designed to be lowest cost per gigabyte of all EBS Volume types that are bootable
• Best for workloads where data is infrequently accessed and where applications need the lowest cost storage
• It is a legacy solution
• Can boot from this drive type (oldest type - not even listed by Amazon now)