Compute services (for example, Amazon EC2, AWS Elastic Beanstalk)

What are the different types of instances that Amazon EC2 provides and for what use cases are they optimized?

Amazon EC2 provides various instance types optimized for different use cases:

• General Purpose (e.g., M5, T3): Balanced compute, memory, and networking resources for a variety of workloads.
• Compute Optimized (e.g., C5): High CPU performance for compute-intensive applications.
• Memory Optimized (e.g., R5): Fast performance for workloads requiring large memory sizes.
• Storage Optimized (e.g., I3, D2): High, sequential read and write access to very large datasets on local storage.
• Accelerated Computing (e.g., P4, G4): Includes hardware accelerators, or co-processors, such as GPU for graphics and data processing tasks.

Can you explain how auto-scaling works in the context of Amazon EC2 and why it’s important?

Auto-scaling in Amazon EC2 allows you to automatically scale your EC2 instances up or down according to conditions you define (such as CPU utilization, network traffic, etc.). It’s important because it ensures that you have the right number of EC2 instances to handle the load on your application, improving performance and availability while keeping costs down by not running underutilized resources.

What is AWS Elastic Beanstalk and how does it simplify the deployment of applications?

AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a service for deploying and scaling web applications and services developed with Java, .NET, PHP, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, and Docker on familiar servers such as Apache, Nginx, Passenger, and IIS. It simplifies the deployment process by abstracting the infrastructure layer, automatically handling aspects like provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and monitoring.

How does Amazon EC2 provide network security?

Amazon EC2 provides network security through several features:

• Security Groups: These act as a virtual firewall for instances to control incoming and outgoing traffic.
• Network Access Control Lists (ACLs): These provide a layer of security at the subnet level.
• VPC (Virtual Private Cloud): Allows you to logically isolate your AWS resources.
• VPC Endpoints: Enables private connection to AWS services without using the public internet.

What are the different pricing options for Amazon EC2 instances?

There are several pricing options:

• On-Demand: Pay for compute capacity by the hour or second with no long-term commitments.
• Reserved Instances: Provides a discount (up to 75%) compared to On-Demand pricing in exchange for a commitment to a specific instance type in a region for a term of 1 or 3 years.
• Spot Instances: Offers the ability to bid on spare AWS computing capacity for up to 90% off the On-Demand price.
• Savings Plans: Flexible pricing model that provides savings of up to 72% on your AWS compute usage in exchange for a commitment to a consistent amount of usage (measured in $/hour) for a 1 or 3-year period.
• Dedicated Hosts: Physical servers with EC2 instance capacity fully dedicated for use.

How do you monitor and troubleshoot Amazon EC2 instances?

You can monitor EC2 instances using Amazon CloudWatch, which provides detailed metrics on the performance. AWS CloudTrail provides a history of AWS API calls for your account. For in-depth application and infrastructure monitoring, you can use AWS X-Ray and Elastic Load Balancing access logs. AWS Systems Manager can be used for management and troubleshooting.

Describe what Elastic Load Balancing is and how it integrates with Amazon EC

Elastic Load Balancing automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple EC2 instances, improving application availability. It can handle varying loads without intervention and integrates health checks, which reroute traffic away from failed instances to maintain application performance.

How does AWS Elastic Beanstalk handle resource provisioning?

AWS Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment process, from capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling to application health monitoring. It simply requires the user to upload their application, and Elastic Beanstalk automatically launches an environment and provisions the necessary resources.

Can you explain the concept of EC2 instance storage and how it differs from EBS volumes?

EC2 instance store provides temporary block-level storage directly attached to the host computer for an instance. It is intended for data that changes frequently and is ephemeral. Conversely, EBS volumes are persistent block storage volumes that provide reliable, protected storage independent of the life of an EC2 instance, with the option to attach to any running EC2 instance in the same Availability Zone.

What are some of the strategies to optimize costs when using Amazon EC2?

• Use Reserved Instances or Savings Plans for constant baseline usage.
• Leverage Spot Instances for flexible, non-critical workloads.
• Auto-scale to match demand and avoid over-provisioning.
• Right-size your instances to meet performance requirements at a minimal cost.
• Use Amazon EC2’s Scheduled Instances to reserve capacity on a recurring schedule.