Overview
Service Description: Amazon EC2 is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the AWS cloud. Instances: Virtual servers launched on the AWS cloud are known as instances. Amazon Machine Images (AMIs)
Definition: Preconfigured templates for EC2 instances. Contents: Includes the operating system and any software packages needed to launch the instance. Supported Operating Systems: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server EC2 Compute Units (ECUs): Provide a relative measure of the integer processing power of an EC2 instance.
Control and Access
Full Control: Users have root/admin access at the operating system layer. Components: A public key stored by AWS and a private key file stored by the user. Windows AMIs: Private key file required to obtain the password for logging in. Linux AMIs: Private key file used to securely SSH into the instance. Metadata and User Data
Purpose: Supplied by the user at instance launch, typically in the form of a script. It must be base64-encoded. Availability: Not encrypted and accessible at . Purpose: Data about the instance used for configuration or management. Access: Available at (trailing "/" required). Usage Example: On Linux, use the curl command to view metadata: curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/. Query Tool: Instance Metadata Query tool for querying metadata without typing out the full URI.
