Elastic Compute Cloud
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
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| Original author(s) | Amazon.com, Inc. |
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| Developer(s) | Amazon.com |
| Initial release | August 25, 2006 |
| Development status | Active |
| Operating system | |
| Available in | English |
| Type | Virtual private server |
| License | Proprietary software |
| Website | aws |
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) forms a central part of Amazon.com's cloud-computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), by allowing users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications. EC2 encourages scalable deployment of applications by providing a web service through which a user can boot an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) to configure a virtual machine, which Amazon calls an "instance", containing any software desired. A user can create, launch, and terminate server-instances as needed, paying by the hour for active servers – hence the term "elastic". EC2 provides users with control over the geographical location of instances that allows for optimization and high levels of redundancy.
In November 2010, Amazon switched its own retail website to use EC2 and AWS.
Amazon announced a limited public beta test of EC2 on August 25, 2006, offering access on a first-come, first-served basis. Amazon added two new instance types (Large and Extra-Large) on October 16, 2007. On May 29, 2008, two more types were added, High-CPU Medium and High-CPU Extra Large. There are twelve types of instances available.
Amazon added three new features on March 27, 2008, static IP addresses, availability zones, and user selectable kernels. On August 20, 2008, Amazon added Elastic Block Store (EBS) This provides persistent storage, a feature that had been lacking since the service was introduced.
Amazon EC2 went into full production when it dropped the beta label on October 23, 2008. On the same day, Amazon announced the following features: a service level agreement for EC2, Microsoft Windows in beta form on EC2, Microsoft SQL Server in beta form on EC2, plans for an AWS management console, and plans for load balancing, autoscaling, and cloud monitoring services. These features were subsequently added on May 18, 2009.
Amazon EC2 was developed mostly by a team in Cape Town, South Africa led by Chris Pinkham. Pinkham provided the initial architecture guidance for EC2 and then built the team and led the development of the project along with Willem van Biljon and several others.
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