Working of Amazon EC2

Working of Amazon EC2:-

Amazon EC2 presents a true virtual computing environment, allowing you to use web service interfaces to requisition machines for use, load them with your custom application environment, manage your network's access permissions, and run your image using as many or few systems as you desire.

To use Amazon EC2, you simply:

• Create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) containing your applications, libraries, data and associated configuration settings. Or use pre-configured, templated images to get up and running immediately.
• Upload the AMI into Amazon S3. Amazon EC2 provides tools that make storing the AMI simple. Amazon S3 provides a safe, reliable and fast repository to store your images.
• Use Amazon EC2 web service to configure security and network access.
• Start, terminate, and monitor as many instances of your AMI as needed, using the web service APIs.
• Pay only for the resources that you actually consume, like instance-hours or data transfer.

Detailed Description

Using Amazon EC2 to Run Instances

Amazon EC2 allows you to set up and configure everything about your instances from your operating system up to your applications. An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is simply a packaged-up environment that includes all the necessary bits to set up and boot your instance. Your AMIs are your unit of deployment. You might have just one AMI or you might compose your system out of several building block AMIs (e.g., webservers, appservers, and databases). Amazon EC2 provides a number of command line tools to make creating an AMI easy. Once you create a custom AMI, you will need to upload it to Amazon S3. Amazon EC2 uses Amazon S3 to provide reliable, scalable storage of your AMIs so that we can boot them when you ask us to do so.

You can also choose from a library of globally available AMIs that provide useful instances. For example, if you just want a simple Linux server, you can choose one of the standard Linux distributions AMIs. Once you have set up your account and uploaded your AMIs, you are ready to boot your instance. You can start your AMI on any number and any type of instance by calling the Run Instances API. If you wish to run more than 20 instances or if you feel you need more than 5 Elastic IP addresses, please complete the Amazon EC2 instance request form or the Elastic IP request form and your increase request will be considered.

Paying for What You Use

You will be charged at the end of each month for your EC2 resources actually consumed.

As an example, assume you launch 100 instances of the Small type costing $0.10 per hour at some point in time. The instances will begin booting immediately, but they won't necessarily all start at the same moment. Each instance will store its actual launch time. Thereafter, each instance will charge for its hours (at $.10/hour) of execution at the beginning of each hour relative to the time it launched. Each instance will run until one of the following occurs: you terminate the instance with the Terminate Instances API call (or an equivalent tool), the instance shuts itself down (e.g. UNIX "shutdown" command), or the host terminates due to software or hardware failure. Partial instance hours consumed are billed as full hours.

Service Highlights:-

· Elastic

o Amazon EC2 enables you to increase or decrease capacity within minutes, not hours or days

· Completely Controlled

o You have complete control of your instances. You have root access to each one. Instances can be rebooted remotely using web service APIs

· Flexible

o You have the choice of several instance types, allowing you to select a configuration of memory, CPU, and instance storage that is optimal for your application.

· Designed for use with other Amazon Web Services

o Amazon EC2 works in conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) to provide a complete solution for computing, query processing and storage across a wide range of applications.

· Reliable

o Amazon EC2 offers a highly reliable environment where replacement instances can be rapidly and reliably commissioned. The service runs within Amazon's proven network infrastructure and datacenters.

· Features for Building Failure Resilient Applications

o Amazon EC2 provides powerful features to build failure resilient applications including:

Multiple Locations

Amazon EC2 provides the ability to place instances in multiple locations. Amazon EC2 locations are composed of regions and Availability Zones. Regions are geographically dispersed and will be in separate geographic areas or countries. Currently, Amazon EC2 exposes only a single region. Availability Zones are distinct locations that are engineered to be insulated from failures in other Availability Zones and provide inexpensive, low latency network connectivity to other

Elastic IP Addresses

Elastic IP addresses are static IP addresses designed for dynamic cloud computing. An Elastic IP address is associated with your account not a particular instance.

· Secure

o Amazon EC2 provides web service interfaces to configure firewall settings that control network access to and between groups of instances.

· Inexpensive

o Amazon EC2 passes on to you the financial benefits of Amazon's scale. You pay a very low rate for the compute capacity you actually consume