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Explain the purpose of Amazon EC2.

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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a web service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that allows users to rent virtual servers, known as instances, in the cloud. These instances can be used to run applications and workloads, providing scalable compute capacity without the need to invest in and maintain physical hardware. The purpose of Amazon EC2 can be broken down into several technical aspects:

  1. Virtualization:
    • EC2 uses virtualization technology to create virtual instances on physical servers. This allows multiple instances to run on a single physical machine, providing better resource utilization and cost efficiency.
  2. Scalability:
    • EC2 offers a scalable environment, enabling users to easily scale up or down based on their computing requirements. Users can launch additional instances when demand is high and terminate them when demand decreases.
  3. Compute Capacity:
    • EC2 instances come in various sizes and configurations, allowing users to choose the amount of virtual CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity that suits their application needs.
  4. Variety of Instances:
    • Amazon EC2 provides a wide range of instance types optimized for different use cases. Instances may vary in terms of compute power, memory, storage, and networking capabilities. Users can select the most appropriate instance type for their specific workloads.
  5. Pay-as-You-Go Pricing Model:
    • EC2 follows a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where users are billed based on the actual compute capacity they consume. This eliminates the need for large upfront investments in hardware and allows users to pay only for the resources they use.
  6. Custom AMIs (Amazon Machine Images):
    • Users can create custom machine images that include their applications, libraries, and configurations. These AMIs can be used to launch consistent and repeatable instances, making it easy to deploy and manage applications.
  7. Security Groups and Network Configurations:
    • EC2 instances are launched within Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs), allowing users to define network configurations, such as subnets and security groups. Security groups act as virtual firewalls, controlling inbound and outbound traffic to instances.
  8. Elastic Load Balancing:
    • EC2 instances can be used in conjunction with Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) to distribute incoming traffic across multiple instances, improving the availability and fault tolerance of applications.
  9. Integration with Other AWS Services:
    • EC2 instances can be seamlessly integrated with other AWS services, such as Amazon S3 for storage, Amazon RDS for databases, and AWS Lambda for serverless computing.