In EC2 you have the ability to deploy different instance types. You have the ability to deploy general purpose, this is useful if you need a good balance of CPU, memory, and networking requirements. You also have compute-optimized which is great for applications that require high processing power such as machine learning. You have memory-optimized which would be useful for analyzing and processing large datasets. Then you have storage-optimized which is great for applications that require high read/write storage.
Here is an example of an instance type, that’s free within AWS. I will breakdown which each part means
t2.micro
t – Typically means general purpose, a good solution if you need balanced, RAM, CPU, Networking.
2 – This is the version of the instance type, so this is version two of the general purpose instance type
micro – This is the size of the instance, as you can see this instance is fairly small but it can go to large, xlarge, 2xlarge and even further
Let’s look at one more
c5.large
c – This indicates a compute optimized instance
5 – This is version 5 of the compute-optimized instance
large – This is the size within the instance class.
The below two websites are very useful. When you are creating your EC2 instances it is a good idea to look into the instance types to find which one would work best for you.