Elastic Compute Cloud

AWS EC2 can be thought of as Virtual Machine in the cloud or Servers in the Cloud. EC2 is a part of the compute category, and you get the processing power based on your needs. The beauty of this service is that there are several types of server configuration available to choose from. And you can switch from one type of server to another with minimal effort if needed. In AWS terminology, you will find that it is called EC2 Instances. So if somebody is talking about the EC2 Instance, it is a server in the cloud. The elastic nature of this compute service makes the choice between big versus small and few versus many an easy one, because this can quickly be changed when using AWS. Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) is part of this service, which provides you with persistent data storage for your application and database needs. Whether your application needs more IOPS or Throughput, both the solutions are now provided as part of the EBS. EBS Volumes are automatically replicated in the Availability Zone where it is created. So, high availability and durability is part of the service.