A web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is a part of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and allows you to launch virtual machines (VMs), known as instances, in various configurations of memory, CPU, and storage. An EC2 instance is a virtual server that you can launch in the AWS cloud. Each instance has a certain amount of memory and vCPUs, and can be launched with different types of storage volumes such as EBS or instance store. You can choose the operating system and software packages to install on the instances, and you can also configure the security groups and networking settings for the instances. EC2 instances can be used to run a wide variety of applications, including web servers, databases, analytics engines, and more.
Configuring Instances
EC2 allows users to create, launch, and terminate server-instances as needed, paying by the second for active servers. Users can boot an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) to configure a virtual machine, known as an instance, containing any software desired.
Geographical Location Control
EC2 provides users with control over the geographical location of instances, allowing for latency optimization and high levels of redundancy.
Applications
EC2 instances can be used to run a wide variety of applications, including web servers, databases, analytics engines, and more. In November 2010, Amazon switched its own retail website platform to EC2 and AWS.
