Compute - Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)

Question 1

What is EC2?

Answer 1

• EC2 stands for Elastic Compute Cloud.
• It is a compute service provided by AWS for deploying virtual servers.
• It is one of the most commonly used services within AWS.

Question 2

What is an Amazon Machine Image (AMI)?

Answer 2

• AMIs are templates of pre-configured EC2 instances.
• They allow for quick launching of new EC2 instances based on the configuration within the AMI.
• AWS provides a variety of AMIs covering different operating systems.

Question 3

What are the benefits of using AMIs?

Answer 3

• AMIs save time by including pre-installed operating systems and applications.
• Custom AMIs can be created to speed up deployment by including custom applications and configurations.
• AMIs are useful for implementing auto-scaling and quickly launching multiple instances with the same configuration.

Question 4

What are the different types of instance families?

Answer 4

• Micro instances: Low-cost instances with minimal CPU and memory power.
• General-purpose: Balanced mix of CPU, memory, and storage for small to medium workloads.
• Compute optimized: Instances with high-performance CPUs for compute-intensive applications.
• GPU: Instances optimized for graphic-intensive applications.
• FPGA: Instances for custom hardware accelerations.
• Memory optimized: Instances for large-scale in-memory applications.
• Storage optimized: Instances optimized for enhanced storage performance.

Question 5

What are the different EC2 instance purchasing options?

Answer 5

• On-demand instances: Instances that can be launched at any time and paid by the second.
• Reserved instances: Instances with a discounted price for a one or three-year term.
• Scheduled instances: Instances for recurring scheduled workloads.
• Spot instances: Bidding for unused EC2 instances at a lower cost.
• On-demand capacity reservations: Reserving capacity for EC2 instances.

Question 6

What is EC2 tenancy?

Answer 6

• Shared tenancy: EC2 instances launched on any available host with specified resources.
• Dedicated tenancy: EC2 instances hosted on hardware that no other customer can access.
• Dedicated instances: Instances hosted on dedicated hardware accessible only by the AWS account.
• Dedicated hosts: Offers additional visibility and control over the physical host and allows for using existing licenses.

Question 7

What is user data in EC2 instances?

Answer 7

• User data is a section during instance configuration where commands can be entered.
• These commands run during the first boot cycle of the instance.
• User data can be used to automate tasks like software installation or OS updates.

Question 8

What are the storage options for EC2 instances?

Answer 8

• EBS volumes: Network-attached storage devices logically attached to EC2 instances.
• EBS volumes are separate devices from the EC2 instance and can be detached and reattached.
• Ephemeral storage: Storage physically attached to the underlying host.
• Data on ephemeral storage is lost when the instance is stopped or terminated.