Amazon EC2 instances
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud as virtual servers, known as instances. It allows users to rent virtual machines on demand, paying only for the capacity they actually use, fundamentally changing how businesses acquire and scale computing resources.
Key facts
- First appeared
- 2006
- Category
- technology
- Problem solved
- EC2 solved the significant challenges businesses faced in acquiring, provisioning, and scaling computing infrastructure. Before EC2, organizations had to over-provision hardware to handle peak loads, leading to wasted resources during off-peak times, or face lengthy procurement processes and capital expenditures to scale up. EC2 offered a flexible, on-demand, pay-as-you-go model for compute.
- Platforms
- Windows Server, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, macOS, Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Linux (various distributions)
Related technologies
Notable users
- Airbnb
- NASA
- Capital One
- Expedia
- Netflix
- General Electric
- Pfizer