How to choose the right EC2 for my application?

January 2019 | by Sky.One Solutions

Ever lost control of cloud spending by choosing the wrong instance for your application? So you can get the best deal, at the best price, we'll guide you through Amazon EC2 instance choices.

Choosing the right instance for your workload is critical to ensuring your application's availability, scalability, and efficiency. Amazon Web Services ( AWS) offers several types of EC2 , suitable for different sizes and purposes. But how to choose the best EC2 for your application? You need to know a little more about the subject to be able to choose more assertively.

T2, T3, M4 and M3 instances: EC2 for mainstream applications

EC2 instances are the best choice as they offer a balanced profile of compute, memory, and network resources.

T2 instances: Recommended for medium-sized websites, web and microservices.
T3 instances: update of T2 instances, with cost and performance advantages. They require minor changes to your configuration to work properly. They are also recommended for medium-sized websites, web applications, and microservices.
M4 and M3 instances: Suggested for medium sized databases and data processing applications.
C4 and C3 instances: EC2 for good performance and cost-effectiveness

EC2 instance type is ideal for companies that need high-performance processors at the lowest possible price. They are recommended, for example, for MMO games, batch processing, distributed analysis and high traffic sites.

X1, R4, and R3: EC2 for memory-optimized applications

X1 instances: in-memory databases
R4 instances: Best suited for high-performance databases, data mining applications, and large-scale in-memory caches.
R3 instances: Offer a lower price per GiB of RAM for high-performance databases.

P2, G3 and F1 instances: EC2 for high performance applications

EC2 instance types are designed for graphically intensive workloads. They are capable of hosting high-performance databases and large-scale machine learning

P2 instances: Designed for most Graphics Processing Unit ) applications. Recommended for general purpose GPU computing applications.
G3 instances: designed for GPU ( Graphics Processing Unit ) heavy duty applications. Indicated for intensive graphics applications, such as 3D visualizations.
F1 instances: Designed with hardware . Recommended for video processing.

I3 and D1 instances: EC2 for optimized storage

EC2 instances designed to store and process data. I3 and D1 instances offer low-cost storage.

I3 instances: Designed to run NoSQL, ElasticSearch and in-memory databases. Recommended for those who need high performance.
D1 instances : Designed to run distributed computing and file systems, as well as data processing applications. Recommended for dense storage.

How much does EC2 cost for my application?

One of the main concerns of those thinking about migrating to the cloud is the cost of EC2 . Amazon Web Services ( AWS) offers some alternatives depending on the needs of your applications:

1. On-Demand

On-Demand Instances are purchased at a flat rate per hour and are recommended for applications with short-term irregular workloads that cannot be stopped. They are also suitable for use when testing and developing applications on EC2.

2. Reserved Instances

They tend to be cheaper than On-Demand Instances, but you have to pay for the full year of usage. It's a downside for those who don't need to use the instance often.

3. SPOT Instances

It guarantees the availability of on-demand applications with discounts of up to 90%. The downside of SPOT instances is that they can be terminated by Amazon Web Service (AWS) at any time with a two-minute warning.

If you're torn between two types of EC2 , it's worth comparing the characteristics of each. In this link , you will find all the technical information necessary to make your decision.

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