What is Amazon EC2?

590 Pages·2013·11.93 MB·English

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
User Guide
API Version 2013-02-01
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide
Amazon Web Services
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud: User Guide
Amazon Web Services
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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide
What is Amazon EC2?............................................................................................................................1
Getting Started ....................................................................................................................................... 8
Amazon Machine Images..................................................................................................................... 18
AMI Basics............................................................................................................................................18
Finding a Suitable AMI..........................................................................................................................21
Shared AMIs.........................................................................................................................................24
Paid AMIs ............................................................................................................................................. 26
Creating Amazon EBS-Backed AMIs Using the Console.....................................................................29
Creating Your Own AMIs.......................................................................................................................31
Creating Amazon EBS-Backed Linux AMIs.................................................................................31
Creating Instance Store-Backed Linux/UNIX AMIs ....................................................................35
Tools You Need .................................................................................................................. 35
From an Existing AMI.........................................................................................................37
From a Loopback............................................................................................................... 40
Creating and Launching an AMI from a Snapshot......................................................................48
Creating Paid AMIs ..................................................................................................................... 48
Sharing AMIs Safely....................................................................................................................58
Copying AMIs ....................................................................................................................................... 67
Amazon Linux AMIs..............................................................................................................................71
Enabling Your Own Linux Kernels................................................................................................77
Instances .............................................................................................................................................. 86
Instance Basics.....................................................................................................................................87
Families and Types......................................................................................................................87
Micro Instances..................................................................................................................94
High I/O Instances ........................................................................................................... 101
High Storage Instances....................................................................................................102
Cluster Instances ............................................................................................................. 104
Regions and Availability Zones ................................................................................................. 116
Supported Platforms ................................................................................................................. 121
Root Device Volume..................................................................................................................123
Best Practices ........................................................................................................................... 129
Stopping, Starting, and Terminating Instances..........................................................................130
Spot Instances....................................................................................................................................132
Getting Started with Spot Instances..........................................................................................133
Viewing Spot Price History .............................................................................................. 136
Creating a Spot Instance Request...................................................................................139
Finding Running Spot Instances......................................................................................143
Canceling Spot Instance Requests..................................................................................147
Fundamentals of Spot Instances...............................................................................................150
Placing Spot Requests.....................................................................................................150
Spot Instance Limits............................................................................................... 151
Customizing Your Spot Requests ........................................................................... 152
Tracking Spot Requests with Bid Status Codes......................................................153
Tagging Spot Instance Requests.....................................................................................159
Protecting Your Spot Instance Data Against Interruptions...............................................160
Planning for Interruptions ....................................................................................... 160
Persisting Your Root EBS Partition.........................................................................160
Walkthroughs: Using Spot Instances with AWS Services.........................................................161
Managing Spot Instances with Auto Scaling....................................................................161
Tools for Managing Auto Scaling with Spot Instances............................................162
Launching Spot Instances with Auto Scaling..........................................................164
Obtaining Information About the Instances Launched by Auto Scaling..................167
Updating the Bid Price for the Spot Instances........................................................171
Scheduling Spot Bid Requests...............................................................................173
Using Auto Scaling to Get Notifications for Spot Instances....................................174
Using CloudFormation Templates to Launch Spot Instances..........................................176
Launching Amazon Elastic MapReduce Job Flows with Spot Instances.........................177
Launching Spot Instances in Amazon Virtual Private Cloud............................................178
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Advanced Tasks ........................................................................................................................ 180
Subscribe to Your Spot Instance Data Feed....................................................................180
Programming Spot with AWS Java SDK..........................................................................183
Tutorial: Amazon EC2 Spot Instances....................................................................184
Tutorial: Advanced Amazon EC2 Spot Request Management...............................193
Starting Clusters on Spot Instances................................................................................209
Reserved Instances............................................................................................................................211
Getting Started with Reserved Instances..................................................................................212
Tools for Working with Reserved Instances.....................................................................214
Choosing Reserved Instances Based on Your Usage Plans.....................................................216
Buying Reserved Instances.......................................................................................................218
Becoming a Buyer............................................................................................................219
Purchasing Reserved Instances......................................................................................220
Reading Your Statement (Invoice)....................................................................................226
Understanding Discount Pricing Tiers.......................................................................................228
Obtaining Information About Your Reserved Instances.............................................................236
Understanding the Pricing Benefit of Reserved Instances........................................................240
Reserved Instances and Consolidated Billing..................................................................241
Reserved Instance Marketplace................................................................................................242
Selling in the Reserved Instance Marketplace..........................................................................244
Registering as a Seller.....................................................................................................245
Selling Your Reserved Instances......................................................................................249
After Your Reserved Instance Is Sold...............................................................................269
Requirements Checklist for Reserved Instances.......................................................................271
Launching Instances...........................................................................................................................273
Getting a Key Pair ..................................................................................................................... 273
Have AWS Create the Key Pair........................................................................................274
Generate Your Own Key...................................................................................................278
Verifying Your Key Pair.....................................................................................................282
Launching an Instance from an AMI..........................................................................................283
Creating and Launching an AMI from a Snapshot....................................................................289
Connecting to Amazon EC2 Instances...............................................................................................292
Authorizing Network Access to Your Instances.........................................................................292
Connecting to Your Linux/UNIX Instances Using SSH..............................................................294
Connecting to Linux/UNIX Instances from Windows Using PuTTY...........................................300
Connecting to Windows Instances............................................................................................ 304
Importing and Exporting Instances.....................................................................................................306
Importing EC2 Instances...........................................................................................................306
Before You Get Started.................................................................................................... 307
Using the Amazon EC2 VM Import Connector to Import Your Virtual Machine to Amazon
EC2 .................................................................................................................................. 309
Using the Command Line Tools to Import Your Virtual Machine to Amazon EC2............324
Troubleshooting Instance Importation..............................................................................336
Exporting EC2 Instances...........................................................................................................338
Managing Instances............................................................................................................................340
Auto Scaling and Load Balancing Your Instances.....................................................................340
Monitoring Your Instances ......................................................................................................... 342
Monitoring Your Instances with CloudWatch....................................................................343
Monitoring the Status of Your Instances...........................................................................354
Monitoring Instances with Status Checks...............................................................354
Monitoring Events for Your Instances......................................................................358
Ensuring Idempotency .............................................................................................................. 363
Instance Metadata and User Data.............................................................................................365
Stopping Instances ............................................................................................................................. 375
Stopping and Starting Instances...............................................................................................378
Terminating Instances ............................................................................................................... 380
Enabling Termination Protection................................................................................................380
Changing the Shutdown Behavior.............................................................................................384
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Modifying Attributes of a Stopped Instance...............................................................................386
Troubleshooting Instances.................................................................................................................. 389
Instances with Failed Status Checks.........................................................................................389
What To Do If An Instance Immediately Terminates..................................................................412
Getting Console Output and Rebooting Instances....................................................................413
Network and Security ......................................................................................................................... 415
Security Groups..................................................................................................................................415
Controlling Access..............................................................................................................................421
IAM Policies...............................................................................................................................423
IAM Roles..................................................................................................................................425
Amazon VPC ...................................................................................................................................... 428
Instance IP Addressing.......................................................................................................................430
Elastic IP Addresses...........................................................................................................................438
Elastic Network Interfaces .................................................................................................................. 442
Storage ............................................................................................................................................... 454
Amazon EBS ...................................................................................................................................... 456
Increasing EBS Performance.................................................................................................... 461
Creating or Restoring a Volume................................................................................................467
Attaching a Volume to an Instance............................................................................................469
Describing Volumes...................................................................................................................473
Making a Volume Available for Use...........................................................................................475
Monitoring the Status of Your Volumes......................................................................................478
Detaching a Volume from an Instance.......................................................................................489
Deleting a Volume ..................................................................................................................... 491
Creating a Snapshot..................................................................................................................492
Copying a Snapshot..................................................................................................................494
Describing Snapshots ............................................................................................................... 497
Modifying Snapshot Permissions .............................................................................................. 499
Deleting a Snapshot..................................................................................................................501
Expanding a Volume..................................................................................................................502
Updating a Linux Instance ............................................................................................... 505
Updating a Windows Instance..........................................................................................506
Using Public Data Sets..............................................................................................................509
API and Command Overview....................................................................................................511
Instance Store.....................................................................................................................................513
Amazon S3 ......................................................................................................................................... 521
Block Device Mapping ........................................................................................................................ 522
Resources and Tags........................................................................................................................... 534
Resource Locations............................................................................................................................534
Listing and Filtering Your Resources.................................................................................................. 535
Tagging Your Resources..................................................................................................................... 540
Setting Up the CLI Tools.....................................................................................................................560
Verify the Signature ............................................................................................................................ 565
Making API Requests.........................................................................................................................569
Query Requests..................................................................................................................................570
SOAP Requests..................................................................................................................................574
Document History............................................................................................................................... 575
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Amazon EC2 Concepts
What is Amazon EC2?
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable computing capacity
in the cloud. Amazon EC2 eliminates your need to invest in hardware up front and enables you to develop
and deploy applications faster.You can use the web service interfaces to launch as many or as few virtual
servers as you need, configure security and networking, and manage storage.
With Amazon EC2, you pay only for the resources that you use. Amazon EC2 enables you to scale to
handle your changes in requirements or spikes in popularity, reducing your need to forecast traffic.
Topics
• Amazon EC2 Concepts (p.1)
• Working with Amazon EC2 (p.5)
• How You're Charged for Amazon EC2 (p.6)
• Amazon EC2 Resources (p.6)
• What's Next? (p.7)
Amazon EC2 Concepts
As you get started with Amazon EC2, you should understand the key concepts of this computing
environment and how it's similar to or different from your own computing environment.
Amazon Machine Images and Instances
An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is a template that contains a software configuration (for example, an
operating system, an application server, and applications). From an AMI, you launch instances, which
are copies of the AMI running as virtual servers in the cloud.You can launch multiple instances of an
AMI, as shown in the following figure.
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Regions and Availability Zones
Your instances keep running until you stop or terminate them, or until they fail. If an instance fails, you
can launch a new one from the AMI.
Amazon publishes many AMIs that contain common software configurations for public use. In addition,
members of the AWS developer community have published their own custom AMIs.You can also create
your own custom AMI or AMIs; doing so enables you to quickly and easily start new instances that have
everything you need. For example, if your application is a web site or web service, your AMI could include
a web server, the associated static content, and the code for the dynamic pages. As a result, after you
launch an instance from this AMI, your web server starts, and your application is ready to accept requests.
You can launch different types of instances from a single AMI. An instance type essentially determines
the hardware of the host computer used for your instance. Each instance type offers different compute
and memory capabilities. Select an instance type based on the amount of memory and computing power
that you need for the application or software that you plan to run on the instance. For more information,
see Available Instance Types (p.88).
When you launch an instance, the root device contains the image used to boot the instance. For more
information, see Amazon EC2 Root Device Volume (p.123).
All AMIs are categorized as either backed by Amazon EBS, which means that the root device for an
instance launched from the AMI is an Amazon EBS volume, or backed by instance store, which means
that the root device for an instance launched from the AMI is an instance store volume created from a
template stored in Amazon S3.
The description of an AMI indicates the type of root device (either ebs or instance store).This is
important because there are significant differences in what you can do with each type of AMI. For more
information about these differences, see Storage for the Root Device (p.19).
For information about AMIs and instances, see Amazon Machine Images (AMI) (p.18) and Amazon EC2
Instances (p.86).
Regions and Availability Zones
Amazon has data centers in different areas of the world (for example, North America, Europe, and Asia).
Correspondingly, Amazon EC2 is available to use in different regions. By launching instances in separate
regions, you can design your application to be closer to specific customers or to meet legal or other
requirements. Prices for Amazon EC2 usage vary by region (for more information about pricing by region,
see Amazon EC2 Pricing).
Each region contains multiple distinct locations called Availability Zones. Each Availability Zone is
engineered to be isolated from failures in other Availability Zones, and to provide inexpensive, low-latency
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network connectivity to other zones in the same region. By launching instances in separate Availability
Zones, you can protect your applications from the failure of a single location.
For more information about the available regions and Availability Zones, see Regions and Availability
Zones (p.116).
Storage
When using an instance, you may have data that you need to store. Amazon EC2 offers the following
storage options:
• Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)
• Amazon EC2 Instance Store (p.513)
• Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
The following figure shows the relationship between these types of storage.
Amazon EBS
Amazon EBS volumes are the recommended storage option for the majority of use cases, and are
especially suited for applications that require a database, a file system, or access to raw block-level
storage. Amazon EBS volumes are essentially hard disks that you can attach to a running instance and
provide your instance with persistent, block-level storage.
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Databases
As illustrated in the previous figure, you can attach multiple volumes to an instance. Also, to keep a
back-up copy of your data, you can create a snapshot of an EBS volume, which is stored in Amazon S3.
You can create a new Amazon EBS volume from a snapshot, and attach it to another instance.You can
also detach a volume from an instance and attach it to a different instance.
For more information about Amazon EBS volumes, see Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) (p.456).
Instance Store
All instance types, with the exception of micro instances, offer instance store, which provides your instances
with temporary, block-level storage.This is storage that is physically attached to the host computer.The
data on an instance store volume doesn't persist when the associated instance is stopped or terminated.
For more information about instance store volumes, see Amazon EC2 Instance Store (p.513).
Instance store is an option for inexpensive temporary storage.You can use instance store volumes if you
don't require data persistence.
Amazon S3
Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It provides a simple web service interface that enables you to store
and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere on the web. For more information, see the Amazon S3
product page.
Databases
The application you're running on Amazon EC2 may need a database.The following are common ways
to implement a database for your application:
• Use Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), which enables you to easily get a managed
relational database in the cloud
• Launch an instance of a database AMI, and use that instance as the database
Amazon RDS offers the advantage of handling your database management tasks, such as patching the
software, backing up, and storing the backups. For more information, see the Amazon RDS product page.
Networking and Security
You can launch an instance into one of two platforms: EC2-Classic or EC2-VPC. An instance that's
launched into EC2-Classic is assigned a public IP address. An instance that's launched into EC2-VPC
is assigned a public IP address only if it's launched into a default VPC. For more information about
EC2-Classic and EC2-VPC, see Supported Platforms in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide.
Instances can fail or terminate for reasons outside of your control. If one fails and you launch a replacement
instance, the replacement has a different public IP address than the original. However, if your application
needs a static IP address, Amazon EC2 offers Elastic IP addresses. For more information, see Instance
IP Addresses in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide.
You can use security groups to control who can access your instances.These are analogous to an inbound
network firewall that enables you to specify the protocols, ports, and source IP ranges that are allowed
to reach your instances.You can create multiple security groups and assign different rules to each group.
You can then assign each instance to one or more security groups, and we use the rules to determine
which traffic is allowed to reach the instance.You can configure a security group so that only specific IP
addresses or specific security groups have access to the instance. For more information about security
groups, see Amazon EC2 Security Groups (p.415).
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