Overview
What is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)?
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Users can launch instances with a variety of OSs, load them with custom application environments, manage network access permissions, and…
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) - A Great Solution
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud review for Machine Learning Developers
EC2 - All in one solution
Great cloud service for flexible compute workloads
EC2 is the best compute cloud service provided by any cloud provider.
EC2 is expensive - expect cost overruns - but works as advertised
Highly Recommend AWS's EC2 Instances
Secure and Smartly Control your business with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
Easily Setup, Scalable and Manageable Virtual Computing Environment
EC2 for Startups
The best and most scalable cloud infrastructure in the entire world!
My wonderful EC2 Experience
Maximum flexibility. Competitive pricing. Great support.
D…
EC2 - Excellent Cloud Computing Service
1. We host multiple …
Awards
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Popular Features
- Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime (19)9.595%
- Elastic load balancing (19)9.494%
- Dynamic scaling (19)9.090%
- Pre-configured templates (19)8.282%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
Data Transfer
$0.00 - $0.09
On-Demand
$0.0042 - $6.528
EBS-Optimized Instances
$0.005
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Product Demos
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Training @ VICTORYSOST
Features
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
IaaS provides the basic building blocks for an IT infrastructure like servers, storage, and networking, in an on-demand model over the Internet
- 9.5Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime(19) Ratings
The service uptime as a percentage defined in the SLA
- 9Dynamic scaling(19) Ratings
Ease of scaling up or down in response to customer needs
- 9.4Elastic load balancing(19) Ratings
Automatic balancing and distribution of resources across multiple virtual computers
- 8.2Pre-configured templates(19) Ratings
Pre-defined templates for virtual machines
- 8Monitoring tools(19) Ratings
Monitoring tools provide alerts when problems are detected
- 8.6Pre-defined machine images(19) Ratings
Range of different server configurations available
- 9.1Operating system support(19) Ratings
Range of operating systems available as pre-configured images
- 9.5Security controls(19) Ratings
Compliance with security protocols like SSL and AES
- 8.9Automation(9) Ratings
Automation of administrative tasks
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)?
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Users can launch instances with a variety of OSs, load them with custom application environments, manage network access permissions, and run images on multiple systems.
Key Features
Bare metal instances
Amazon EC2 Fleet (fleet management)
Pause and resume instances
GPU compute instances
GPU graphics instances
High I/O instances
Dense HDD storage instances
Optimized CPU configurations
Flexible storage options
Pay-as-you-go pricing
Place instances in multiple locations
Elastic IP addresses
Auto-scale capacity up or down
HPC clusters
Elastic Fabric Adapter
Available on AWS PrivateLink
Amazon Time Sync Service
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Technical Details
Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(342)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 27)- Great Response time on GUI as well as automation with Terraform
- Very effective and crisp functioning with all API's
- Easy User Management with IAM
- Secure Key Pair Management
- Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is very well placed and doing quite well and they might increase default resource limits.
- Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) can add Project management feature like Resource Groups or Projects.
- Better Cost Control like Budget High Limit utilization can be help
Great cloud service for flexible compute workloads
- On-demand usage and pricing
- Scale CPU, memory, and disk up or down easily
- Firewall and security features
- Scale-up CPU and memory separately
- Manage SSH keys via web console
- Faster start and stop times
Highly Recommend AWS's EC2 Instances
- Saves Money
- Creates Efficiencies
- Easy to Setup
- Easy to Manage
- Minor improvements to the EC2 User Interface
- Dashboard its nice.
- The product is constantly evolving both in terms of features and user-friendliness.
- Sales is present but not pushy.
- Hard to get used to and often need to search for items instead of them being visible.
- More extensive video library instead of written documentation
- Identifying the cost of the resources is not straight forward.
- EC2 can be used for multiple purposes.
- EC2 can be used for installing Web Application and Middle application
- EC2 can be used for migrating the data from one source to another source
- EC2 can be used for data mining, integration and transformation purposes
- EC2 provides scale up and scale down capability by managing instance type
- EC2 would require often to upgrade with the security patches which cause a burden to manage. Amazon releases new AMI (Amazon Machine Images) which has latest patches frequently. Customer has to upgrade the EC2 with the latest AMI. This is not simple work but could be manageable using automatic scripts. However, it is tedious task.
The best and most scalable cloud infrastructure in the entire world!
- elastic compute
- cloud server creation
- infinite scalability
- ability to secure and deploy servers on the run
- cloud imaging and machine images
- user interface
- documentation
- server sizes and regions
Maximum flexibility. Competitive pricing. Great support.
DevOps supports a fleet of reserved EC2 instances to host backend services and pipelines using Kubernetes.
Data Science team uses EC2 instances to run Jupytor notebooks to do feature exploration on pre-loaded data, and sometimes spot instances to support ad-hoc feature generation and model training. Data team uses the spot instances to run backfill jobs whenever needed.
- A great variety of choices in Amazon Machine Image (AMI) types. Users can select a more basic type to run generic workloads, but also have the choice to pick an AMI pre-installed with specific services in the AWS Marketplace.
- The range of instance types can support the usage from a student's exploration (inexpensive general-purpose nano instances) to an enterprise's most intense workloads (memory or storage-optimized instances with terabytes of memory and ultra-fast network connection).
- The pricing options, from regular instances, reserved instances to spot instances allow users to get the job done and make smart choices about how much they want to pay and when they want to pay.
- The choices on AMIs, instance types and additional configuration can be overwhelming for any non-DevOps person.
- The pricing information should be more clear (than only providing the hourly cost) when launching the instance. AWS DynamoDB gives an estimated monthly cost when creating tables, and I would love to see similar cost estimation showing on EC2 instances individually, as not all developers gets access to the actual bills.
- The term for reserving instances are at least 12 months. With instance types changing so fast and better instances coming out every other day, it's really hard to commit to an existing instance type for 1 or more years at a time.
For users who want to use a managed service, for example a Hadoop platform, I would recommend going with Cloudera and similar companies to get the best support possible.
EC2 - Excellent Cloud Computing Service
1. We host multiple backend and cloud solutions on EC2.
2. When we want to train Machine Learning Models that need heavy computation and GPU power, we go with EC2.
3. Some solutions are not mandatory to keep up all the time. We use cloud formation script which spins up EC2 - host the solution and thrash it down when not needed.
- EC2 has wide variety of machine configurations. If the intended solutions are memory heavy, CPU heavy, GPU heavy or IO heavy, EC2 will provide proper machine configurations as per the requirements.
- EC2 has lot of Machine Images to setup OS and required softwares. It also allows you to create the image of your own disk. This facilitates user to stop the EC2 instance without loosing the work. It helps to reduce the bill. The image can be attached again to EC2 to start from the same place from where it was left.
- Amazon allows different way to obtain instances like on-demand, spot and reserved. Depending upon the need, one can take wise decision to save cost and address the situation in the best possible way.
- This service is a bit difficult to consume. New users need a big learning curve to use this service effectively.
- UI for EC2 service is a little complex and at many places, it misses detailed explanation.
- Sometimes it takes too long to create images of EC2 instances. This keeps your EC2 up for that extra time. When instances are heavy, it penalizes a lot of money.
Since EC2 is a complex service, it requires proper monitoring of usage. While users are a novice, it requires a bit more examination for proper usage.
EC2 is my First choice for cloud
- Auto scaling
- Security
- On demand
- I wish amazon come up with a GUI interface for EC2's
Amazon EC2 - Best Cloud Hosting Provider on the market
- Very cost effective
- Easily scalable. Can increase or decrease servers in minutes.
- Very easy to use. Amazing admin console giving you full control of your servers.
- You have the option to do 1 or 3 year reserved instances, but nothing in between.
- AWS CLI (command line interface) can be tricky to learn and use.
- There are a very large amount of services and configuration options, it's sometimes hard to keep track and understand them all.
- It provides you with static IP addresses.
- Auto-scaling feature.
- Easy to configure and set up your instance.
- You can always change the type of your instances (allocation of more or less CPU/memory for your instance).
- Securely log in to your environment with PEM files.
- I think that AWS Console should have a terminal screen through which you can access your EC2 instances easily in the browser.
- Sometimes you cannot have any clue why the instance is auto-scaled, when you may be pretty sure that there is no high traffic in that particular time.
- The ;earning curve is a bit high in order to make your instances fully configured, and the community is still weak.
A Great Choice
- Quick setup: Once you understand the process, the AWS console makes standing up an EC2 instance a breeze.
- Config options: there are plenty of different types of EC2 instances, all geared for specific use cases.
- Documented processes: Amazon White papers are such a great resource when questions arise.
- Default limit: In an EC2 Instance the default limit is 20 per region, you must request for more per region.
- User knowledge: since it as a new technology, getting our admins trained quickly and efficiently has slowed our efforts.
- Cost of support: if you need to engage AWS support the cost can hurt.
AWS EC2: Best IaaS Solution on the Market
- Provides flexibility to optimize a lot of workloads.
- Provides clear and transparent pricing.
- With enhanced networking, the latest generations provide high bandwidth and low jitter throughput between tiers.
- I can’t think of any
Scale up with EC2!
- Leverage S3 for backup, storage, and serve up large files
- Increased bandwidth
- Increased speed of deployment
- Pay-as-you-use pricing model
- Dependency on the product - major outages leave you in a tough spot.
- Cross-region communication - complex to setup
- Networking is less flexible compared to other providers
EC2 review from a small interactive shop
- Cost effictiveness is great, they only charge for what you use so you do not have to pay for what you dont use
- Intuitive interface, makes setting up and deploying new and existing projects an ease
- Secure. Have not had server attacks since we migrated to them, so the uptime has been phenomenal
- The PEM keys are a bit confusing if you are not accustomed to it
- A dummy version/starter guide would be great. Once you have it configured its easy to use and makes sense, but my first interaction with it was a bit to grasp
- Add easily installable cPanel or Plesk or equivalent as an option for customers just wanting to host sites, who don't need the more in-depth options
AWC EC2 for elastic compute
- We write micro services in spring boot that runs on EC2.
- Our front ends use node js and those applications run on EC2
- EC2 are elastic linux containers to run any application. This is a very good and reliable service. Improvements could be in UI/dashboard and metric presentation. Tools for visualization of cost optimization should be better for users who have lots of applications running on EC2
- ECS and EKS are being used in docker and kubernetes environments. So more tech companies are use these services than directly using EC2
Highly recommend cloud computing instances like EC2
- Full control over the software and settings.
- Instant availability of a new server with the power you require.
- Thorough permission support to ensure only those who have the rights to monitor or configure the servers can do so.
- Many world wide locations to make sure it's closer to the country your users are in.
- Huge learning curve. To get a basic instance up with default settings is very easy, but there's hundreds or perhaps thousands of settings without explanations of what they do.
- Multiple ways to do the same thing, like the browser console, the command line, and APIs, means finding answers on how to do something may be provided only in one way and not the way you have to do it.
- Lack of documentation on best practices in many scenarios. AWS assumes you have devops experience and makes it too easy for you to make mistakes and follow bad practices.
AWS - launchpad for VPS' at usage-based billing
- It's a very easy task to fire up an EC2, even for first-timer education. Launch a free account, pop into EC2, and follow the prompts.
- Snapshots and Images are particularly nice, fast and easy to work with. I've had my entire catalog erased by mistake, and been able to restore content within minutes.
- Access to data is right there - you have root access to your virtual machine, no clunky interfaces, no negotiation with hosts for resources.
- EC2 is quick to launch, but ends up being an unnecessarily complex rabbit hole. Most users on EC2 are attempting to accomplish the same goals: host content with close to 0 fault tolerance. I want people to be able to buy my stuff. I should be able to one-click a load balancing and autoscaling package for my existing EC2 instance that will scale resources in proportion to my incoming sessions and corresponding usage. Instead, setting up advanced EC2 features ends up requiring an expert to accomplish functions which should be readily available.
- Usage-based billing sounds like you may be getting the best value, but understand that Amazon is not losing money on hosting, and costs are no longer entirely predictable. Cents for data piles up quickly and once you get load balancing up with a influx of customers, your finance department comes at you waving your budget around...
EC2 from AWS makes provisioning and managinig cloud servers cost-effective and quick.
- EC2 makes right-sizing your servers a breeze. You can quickly spin up a server in the cloud and if it turns out the vCPU, RAM, or storage space is wrong, within minutes you can change all of that.
- EC2 makes backups and restores a breeze. We actually had a client that allowed a hacker to remote into their production server. We were able to shutdown the EC2 instance, spin up a backup from an AMI, and then attach the existing elastic IP. This was all done within a 15 minute window.
- EC2 makes quickly deploying multiple servers a very easy. Within minutes, you can deploy a whole fleet of cloud servers.
- EC2 is easy to script. We are able to save our clients a lot of money by scripting their EC2 instance to shutdown/startup at predetermined times so they are only paying for the server when they are using it.
- EC2 in my opinion, is lacking the ability to connect to a console from within the AWS console. I sometimes miss how I can connect to the console with VMware and Hyper-V but not with EC2. You have to utilize RDP or SSH to connect to an instance.
- Sometimes EC2 instances lockup due to reasons with the underlying hardware and need to be shutdown and the started back up so the instance can spin up on new hardware. This is sometimes a problem because unless you set up proper alerting/scripting, you don't know there is an issue until a user reports it.
- EC2 can be a bit daunting for the beginning user. You really do need some kind of training before you dive in.
EC2 - reliable and cost effective
- On demand instances for limited time and heavy processing greatly saves on cost.
- Reserved instances allow for cost savings for instances that you plan on having running all of the time.
- Many options of instance types allow you to customize the type of processing you need.
- Programming and product changes may be required to use EC2 in the most efficient way.
- EC2 is best used by rethinking your hosting model. You get the most benefit by throwing out the idea of just launching a virtual machine per customer.
- Most users don't understand the pricing model and miss out on cost savings.
Amazon's EC2 is where it's at!
- Scales up and down with ease!
- Cost effective and easy to understand billing/cost analysis
- Many many tools and documentation available for use. Always expanding and changing landscape
- Can be very difficult to get an initial grasp of how things work at EC2 due to proprietary terms and technologies
- The sign-in page has changed a few times, and with its most recent update can be confusing to some
- Billing section can be hard to find at times, but the search function really comes through when looking for features
Best on the market!!
- Launch wizards for new users
- Security groups management for EC2 containers
- Very easy to use for a regular user
- Extensive Documentation
- UI could be improved.
- They can reduce the price a bit.
- They can increase the free tier limit.
EC2 -- take your QA and scaling woes to the cloud!
We use EC2 to pull down current master copies of our code for QA as well as reference tagged versions for our production clusters.
- Cheap -- just about the cheapest you can get out of any options on the market
- CLI administration makes setup and maintenance a breeze -- version controllable dev infrastructure without the overhead of made-for-purpose infra VCS services is great
- Flexible authentication systems -- Amazon goes above and beyond to handle complex security arrangements well
- Well organized web UI
- Low level networking support is minimal but getting better
- EBS outages hurt, and I haven't been thrilled with reliability in previous months (it's been better since, though)
- Latency for storage and instance provisioning can be frustrating while the tech is in the gap between provisioning that takes minutes vs. instant provisioning (waiting 30 secs - 1 minute for storage to provision, for example)
It scales – if you know what you're doing
- A built in service to create autoscaling clusters is a killer feature of EC2. Autoscaling now has a full GUI administration system which allows you to create your clusters by relatively easy point-and-click.
- Starting, stopping, and monitoring EC2 instances is a total breeze.
- Autoscaling now has a full GUI administration system which allows you to create your clusters by relatively easy point-and-click.
- The AIM "Images" are surprisingly reliable and also easy to create. Storing them is an extreemely low cost way to add an additional layer of backup redundancy (although they say it shouldnt be your primary backup). We've found it very convienient.
- The user interface is still far behind similar tools like Rackspace.
- You cannot create AIM images without server downtime, so the server you create an image of must be in a cluster behind a load balancer. This is a big drawback compared to other services that can create images while the service is in use. Sometimes you just don't want to use a full cluster for minor applications.
- Load balancers are really easy to use but lack some features other hosts provide. For example, the SSL termination is not nearly as sophisticated as most standard load balancer servers.
- One year free tier subscription, which makes it very cost effective for training the new resources.
- Large communities with thousands of machines having preinstalled software as per need.
- AWS EC2 has a very competitive pricing scheme with on-demand, spot instances plan and reserved instances.
- Sharing AMI is the one of best features. You can share your machine image with another user.
- Although AWS EC2 is best in the market, in addition, they could provide more robust monitoring tools for EC2 resources.
- They don't have the facility to block IPs for inbound traffic. Although this can be achieved by carefully allowing the inbound traffic. But adding the flexibility to block IPs or exclude some IPs from inbound would be great.
- They need to provide one dashboard where they could show the list of all the resources from a region. Right now a user needs to select a particular region to check the resources being used.