Which EC2 instance to use to meet our requirements?

In the previous blogs, we looked at creating a Linux and a Windows instance. There are lots of parameters which can be configured during the instance creation. One of the important parameter is in the instance type and size. AWS provides many instance types as mentioned here. While some of them are optimized for CPU, others are optimized for Memory etc. It's important to pick up a right instance type to meet our requirements. If we pick a smaller instance, we won't be able to meet the requirements. On the other end, if we pick a larger instance then we need to pay more.

So, which one do we pick? Here is a nice video from the nice AWS folks on picking the right EC2 instance to match the requirements. In the same video here , there is also a flow chart to help you pick the right instance type.

Without the Cloud, we need to do the sizing and the capacity planning carefully as per our requirements before ordering the hardware, as we are stuck to it. With the Cloud, we can try an instance, identify the bottle necks and move to another instance type without any commitment. Once, we are sure of the proper EC2 type, then we can also go with the Reserved Instances. That's the beauty of the cloud.

Amazon has been introducing new EC2 instance types regularly, so picking the right EC2 instance is a continuous exercise to leverage the benefits of the new EC2 instance types.