Introduction

EC2 is designed to replicate the data center/server room experience as closely as possible. At the center of it all is the EC2 virtual server, known as an instance. But, like the local server room, EC2 provides a range of tools meant to support and enhhance your instance’s operations.

This chapter expores:

  1. Provisioning an EC2 instance with the right hardware resources for your project
  2. Configuring the right base OS for your application needs
  3. Building a secure and effective network environment for your instance
  4. Building a secure and effective network environment for your instance
  5. Adding scripts to run as the instance boots to support or start your application
  6. Choosing the best EC2 pricing models for your needs
  7. Understanding how to manage and leverage EC2 instance lifecycle
  8. Choosing right storage drive type for your needs
  9. Securing your EC2 resources using key pairs, security groups, network access lists, and IAM roles
  10. Scaling the number of instances up and down to meet changing demand using Auto Scaling
  11. Accessing your instance as an admin or end-user client

EC2 Instances

EC2 instance may only be a virtualised and abstracted subset of a physical server, but behaves like a real server. Access to storage, memory and a network interface and its primary storage drive will come with a clean OS running.

Provisioning Your Instance