Understanding AWS EC2: Workflow, Terminologies, and Cloud Computing Basics

Aiming to develop and build large-scale applications or advanced systems often requires high computational resources such as increased RAM, CPU cores, storage, and networking capabilities. Purchasing personal or on-premise servers to meet these requirements is extremely expensive and difficult to scale.
This is where cloud computing comes into play. Cloud computing allows us to rent computing resources on demand, meaning we can use as many resources as needed and pay only for what we use. This approach is far more cost-effective and flexible than buying and maintaining physical servers.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the leading cloud service providers and offers a wide range of services such as EC2, S3, and many others.
Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a core AWS service that provides virtual machines in the cloud.
In cloud terminology, a virtual machine is called an instance. AWS offers multiple instance types, allowing users to choose hardware configurations based on their requirements. For example, t2.micro is a free-tier eligible instance commonly used by beginners and first-time users.
After selecting the instance type (hardware), we choose the software configuration using an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). An AMI is a preconfigured template that includes an operating system and optional software. It can be used directly or customized according to application needs.
The EC2 workflow starts by selecting networking, hardware (instance type), and software (AMI). After configuring storage, networking, and security, the instance is launched as a virtual machine. Developers then connect to the instance via SSH to deploy applications. EC2 instances can be scaled vertically (by changing instance size) or horizontally (by adding more instances) and managed throughout their lifecycle based on application needs.
In summary, EC2 provides scalable, flexible, and cost-effective virtual computing resources, making it an essential service in cloud computing.