Amazon EC2 Concepts
Internal
Security Concepts
AMI (Amazon Machine Image)
An Amazon machine image is a template that contains a software configuration (operating system, application server, application).
To browse through available AMIs go to the EC2 console -> Left Navigation Pane -> AMIs.
External Documentation:
Internal Documentation:
Instance
From an AMI, you can launch an instance, which is a copy of the AMI running as a virtual server on a host computer in Amazon's data center. You can launch multiple instances from an AMI. An instance can be accessed using its public DNS name or public IP address. The DNS name follows the following pattern: ec2-<public_ip>.<region_code>.compute.amazonaws.com. An instance keeps running until it is explicitly stopped or until they fail. You can start from an existing AMI, log onto the instance, customize it with additional settings and software, and then save this customized image as a new AMI.
Instance Type
Each instance type offers different compute, memory, and storage capabilities and are grouped in instance families based on these capabilities. An example of instance type is t2.micro.
External Documentation:
- http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/instance-types.html
- Instance Type Description (contains Instance Types Matrix) http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/
- How many instances can I run? http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#How_many_instances_can_I_run_in_Amazon_EC2