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Amazon EC2

  • Mainly consists the capability of:
    • Renting virtual machines (EC2)
    • String data in virtual drives (EBS)
    • Distributing load across machines (ELB)
    • Scaling the services using an auto-scaling group (ASG)

Sizing and Configuration Options​

  • Operating System, CPU and RAM
  • Storage Space
    • Network-attached (EBS & EFS)
    • Hardware (EC2 Instance Store)
  • Network card: speed of the card, Public IP address
  • Firewall rules

Bootstrap script​

  • Launching commands, only once, when a machine starts.
  • Tasks such as installing software or updates, etc.
  • Script runs with root user.

EC2 Instance Types​

  • General Purpose
    • Balanced between Compute, Memory and Networking
  • Compute Optimized
    • Compute-intensive tasks
  • Memory Optimized
    • Fast performance for workloads that process large data sets in memory.
  • Accelerated Computing
  • Storage Optimized
    • Storage-intensive tasks
  • HPC Optimized
  • Instance Features
  • Measuring Instance Performance

Security Groups​

  • Controls how the traffic is allowed into or out of EC2 Instances.
  • Only contain allow rules.
  • Group rules can reference by IP or by security group.
  • Can be attached with multiple instances.
  • Locked down to a region or VPC combination.
  • Main a separate security group for SSH access.
  • All inbound is blocked by default and all outbound is authorized by default.

Classic Ports​

  • 22: SSH, SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol; upload via SSH)
  • 21: FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
  • 80: HTTP
  • 443: HTTPS
  • 3389: RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol; windows instance)

EC2 Instances Purchasing Options​

  • On-Demand Instances: pay by second
  • Reserved (1 and 3 years): 72% discount compared to on-demand
  • Savings Plans (1 and 3 years): 72% discount; commitment to the amount of usage
  • Spot Instances: 90% discount, cheap, can lose instances, not suitable for critical jobs.
  • Dedicated Hosts: entire physical server, most expensive, bring your own license
  • Dedicated Instances: own a hardware
  • Capacity Reservations: reserve capacity in specific AZ.

EC2 Spot Instance Requests​

  • Discount upto 90% compared to on-demand.
  • Define max spot price, get instance while current spot price < max.
  • If spot prices > max, choose to stop or terminate the instance with 2 min grace period.

Spot Instance

Spot Fleets​

  • Spot Fleets = set of Spot Instances + (optional) On-Demand Instances
  • Spot Fleets allows us to automatically request spot instances with lowest price.

Placement Groups​

  • EC2 instance placement strategy can be defined using placement groups.
  • In placement group, you specify one of the following strategies

Cluster​

cluster-placement-groups

  • Pros: Great Network
  • Cons: If AZ fails, all instances fails.

Spread​

spread-placement-group

  • Pros: Reduced risk of simultaneous failure, instances on different physical hardware.
  • Cons: Limited to 7 instances / AZ / placement group.

Partition​

partition-placement-group

  • Upto 7 partitions / AZ.
  • Mutiple AZs in the same region.
  • 100s of EC2 instances.
  • Instancess in partitions do not share racks.

Elastic Network Interfaces (ENI)​

  • Logical component on a VPC that represents a Virtual Network Card.
  • ENI have the following attributes.
    • Primary private IPv4, one or more secondary.
    • One Elastic IP (IPv4) per private IPv4.
    • One Public IPv4
    • One or more security groups.
  • Can create ENI independently and move them on EC2 instances for failovers.
  • Bound to specific AZ.

EC2 Hibernate​

  • OS is not stopped / restarted.
  • Root EBS volume must be encrypted.
  • Instance cannot be hibernate for more than 60 days.

ec2-hibernate

EC2 Instance Store​

  • High-performance hardware disk
  • Better I/O performance
  • Lose storage, if they are stopped.
  • Risk of data loss if the hardware fails.
  • Backups and replications are user responsibility.