From the course: AWS: Automation and Optimization

On-Demand EC2 instances - Amazon Web Services (AWS) Tutorial

From the course: AWS: Automation and Optimization

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On-Demand EC2 instances

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- [Instructor] Amazon EC2 provides scalable compute capacity in the form of virtual compute environments, known as instances in the Amazon Web Services cloud. Amazon EC2 provides multiple purchasing options for EC2 instances, allowing you to optimize costs, and choose the right pricing model for your application's requirement. An on-demand EC2 instance runs when you launch it, and ends when you terminate it. You pay for compute capacity by the hour, or by the second, depending on the type of instance, without any long-term commitments. This saves you the time, cost, and complexity, involved in planning, purchasing, and maintaining hardware. On-demand instances are a perfect fit for applications that are being developed or tested on Amazon EC2 for the first time, applications with unpredictable workloads, applications that cannot be interrupted, and for users that prefer low-cost and flexibility of EC2 without long-term commitments and upfront payments. Let's take a look at the pricing of on-demand EC2 instances. This can be found on the online AWS documentation. We are looking at the pricing details for Linux instances in the U.S. East, North Virginia region. The dropdown allows you to view prices for a different region. The prices are based on instance type, and instance size. For example, the price of a t2.micro instance, which provides one virtual CPU, is $0.0116 per hour. Next, I'm going to switch the region to Asia Pacific, Singapore. Now we notice that the price of the same t2.micro instance, is $0.0146 per hour. This is higher than what we have in the U.S. East region. This difference in pricing is due to factors such as cost of real estate, electricity, and internet connectivity. Please keep in mind that EC2 pricing may change over time, and it is best to look up on this website for the most accurate data. The pricing for EC2 also depends on the amount of data transferred. This can be seen by scrolling down the same page. AWS does not charge for data transferred into Amazon EC2 from the internet, but for data transferred from Amazon EC2 to the internet, it is charged in a tiered manner, as can be seen in the table.

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