Overview

• EC2 is one of the most popular AWS’ offering

• EC2 = Elastic Compute Cloud = Infrastructure as a Service

• It mainly consists in the capability of :

  • Renting virtual machines (EC2)

  • Storing data on virtual drives (EBS)

  • Distributing load across machines (ELB)

  • Scaling the services using an auto-scaling group (ASG)

• Knowing EC2 is fundamental to understanding how the Cloud works

Sizing & configuration options

• Operating System (OS): Linux, Windows or Mac OS

• How much compute power & cores (CPU)

• How much random-access memory (RAM)

• How much storage space:

  • Network-attached (EBS & EFS)

  • Hardware (EC2 Instance Store)

• Network card: speed of the card, Public IP address

• Firewall rules: security group

• Bootstrap script (configure at first launch): EC2 User Data

User Data

• It is possible to bootstrap our instances using an EC2 User data script.

• bootstrapping means launching commands when a machine starts

• That script is only run once at the instance first start

• EC2 user data is used to automate boot tasks such as:

  • Installing updates

  • Installing software

  • Downloading common files from the internet

  • Anything you can think of

• The EC2 User Data Script runs with the root user

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