What is EC2 -Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2 pricing Models, EC2 instances types

Amazon Elastic compute cloud(Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change.

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Few points from AWS pricing white paper:

• No. of services increasing day by day.
• Pay as per you use.
• Pay less for more use.
• even less pay, if you reserve the capacity.

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EC2 pricing Models:

1.on Demand: Allows you to pay a fixed rate by the hour (or by the second) with no commitment.

2.Reserved: Provides you with a capacity reservation, and offer a significant discount on the hourly                                 charge for an instance. Contract terms are 1 year or 3 year Terms.

              Reserved Pricing Types:

               1.Standard Reserved instances: these offer up to 75% off on demand instances. The more  you pay up front and the longer the contract, the greater the discount.                                                             

               2.Convertible Reserved instances: these offer up to 54% off on demand capability to change                 the attributes of the RI as long as the exchange results in the creation of Reserved instances of equal or greater value.                                                                                                                                                         

               3.Scheduled Reserved instances: These are available to launch within the time windows you                  reserve. This option allows you to match your capacity reservation to a predicable  recurring                    schedule that  only required a fraction of a day, a week, or  month.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

3.Spot: Enables you to bid  whatever price you want for instance capacity, providing  for even                         greater savings if your applications have flexible start and end times.

4.Dedicated Hosts: physical EC2 server dedicated for your use. Dedicated Hosts can help you reduce costs by allowing you to use your existing server-bound software licenses. 

• can be purchased On-Demand(hourly).
• Can be Purchased as a Reservation for up to 70% off the On-Demand price.

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EC2 instance Types: