AWS EC2 Complete Guide

What is EC2?

Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) provides resizable virtual servers in the cloud. It's AWS's core compute service — rent a server by the second.

Launching an Instance

1. Choose an AMI (OS image, e.g. Ubuntu).
2. Pick an instance type (t2.micro is free-tier).
3. Configure security groups (firewall).
4. Create/select a key pair for SSH.
5. Launch!

Connecting via SSH

ssh -i my-key.pem ubuntu@<public-ip>

Instance Types

Family	Optimized for
t / m	General purpose
c	Compute (CPU)
r	Memory (RAM)
g / p	GPU (ML)

Pricing Options

• On-Demand — pay per hour, no commitment.
• Reserved — cheaper for 1-3 year commitment.
• Spot — up to 90% off spare capacity.

FAQs

What is an AMI?

Amazon Machine Image — a template with the OS and software. More in our AWS section.

What's a security group?

A virtual firewall controlling inbound/outbound traffic to your instance.