What is EC2 Used for?

As mentioned in the previous section, hosting your website in an S3 bucket is not the most optimal solution, as S3 is designed for file storage, not for running a website with dynamic content.

For websites that need more control and flexibility, it's better to use services that provide a full server environment.

That's where a service like AWS EC2 comes in.

EC2 is one of the main components of the AWS cloud platform, enabling various products to be hosted on virtual servers in just a few minutes.

Let's explore the primary use cases of EC2 in production.

Web Hosting

With EC2, deploying any website is simple, whether it's a personal blog or a large corporate application. You rent servers just like traditional hosting, but with added flexibility and cloud scalability. Upload your HTML pages, CSS, and JavaScript files, using EC2 to handle requests and S3 to store media content. It's the ideal solution for those looking for a reliable and scalable web hosting platform.

Data Processing Applications

EC2 is great for running applications that need significant computational power, like big data analytics or machine learning. Virtual servers can be equipped with powerful CPUs and GPUs, making them perfect for processing complex computational tasks involved in handling and analyzing large amounts of data.

Gaming Servers

For online games that require low latency and high throughput, EC2 can be a powerful base for gaming servers. Its scalability makes it easy to adjust to fluctuating player numbers, while the server's high performance guarantees top-notch gameplay quality without any lag.

Business Applications

Running mission-critical business applications like ERP and CRM on EC2 can greatly boost both performance and availability. Servers are accessible 24/7, ensuring that applications continue running smoothly, which is crucial for the ongoing operations of large enterprises.

Summary

Amazon EC2 truly provides a multifunctional, powerful, and flexible platform, making it ideal for a wide range of applications and services. That's why in this section, we'll dive into the features of this service and deploy our website on it, setting up an instance and much more.