Real-world scenario
A startup needs a server for their MVP this afternoon — no datacenter, no procurement. You spin up an EC2 instance in minutes and tear it down tonight to stop the bill.
By the end you can:
Follow the request/data flow through the architecture.
Work through each concept and mark it understood. This unlocks the knowledge check.
Resizable virtual machines running on AWS hardware, billed per second.
Why it matters
It is the raw building block of IaaS — full OS control when managed services are too restrictive.
When to use it
Use for lift-and-shift, custom runtimes, or stateful workloads. Avoid when a managed service (Lambda, Fargate, RDS) removes the ops burden.
Example
aws ec2 run-instances \
--image-id ami-0abcd1234 \
--instance-type t3.micro \
--key-name my-key \
--security-group-ids sg-0a1b2c3d \
--subnet-id subnet-0e1f2a3b \
--tag-specifications 'ResourceType=instance,Tags=[{Key=Name,Value=web-01}]'Gotcha (exam trap)
Stopping an instance still bills for attached EBS volumes and Elastic IPs. Only terminating frees most charges.
Finish the walkthrough above to unlock the check.
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