Amazon EC2

Vorteile

The ability to spool up a server in a few minutes has always blown my mind. I had a recent server failure that resulted in me spooling up a new server to replace it. I was able to get the job done in under two hours. It would have been much faster than that if I had done it before, but there was some learning required in the process. I've documented the process, so the next time this happens, I will be able to get back up and running in minutes.

Having been in IT my whole life, this ability is quite amazing. It was the stuff of dreams over a decade ago and now I get to live it out. There are way too many good things to say about EC2. I can have multiple servers spread across the world so I can service my customers locally, instead of them having to traverse continents and oceans to hit up a server. I can attach and detach storage so I can start working from where I last started. The list goes on and on.

I want to say that there is a plethora of helpful information available to those who need support. The Amazon support information is great as well as YouTube and other informational sites. If you're Google-Fu is up to date, you can get the help you need without having to pick up the phone.

Nachteile

The biggest con to EC2 is the shear vastness of features, tools, and functionality. For people who are new and want to start off, there is not an easy or simple "get started here" path that I have found. There is so much to learn, and so much you will never know, that getting some help at the beginning should really be considered.

Vorteile

Amazon EC2 handles a lot of our server infrastructure and has in incredible amount of features to help deploy our products in a fast and scaleable fashion. Having integrations with other software allows us to use EC2 in an automated simple "key-turn" clusters.

Nachteile

The thing a least like about EC2 is how rigid creating resources are. Editing things like machine sizes, flavors, and such is not as intuitive. Along with having different sections/consoles for managing instance configurations like networks or security groups.

Vorteile

Pretty easy to use. Wide documentation is available in case you get stuck somewhere. And good quality machines.

Nachteile

For some reason, the p3.16xlarge (8 tesla v100 GPUs) machine is outperformed by p3.8xlarge machine (4 tesla v100 GPUs) (tested on multiple GPU supported model). I was using it for ML training and p3.8xlarge was taking 27 to 28 seconds for an epoch where p3.16xlarge was taking 31 to 32 seconds for an epoch even though it is a larger machine !!!!!! It has twice computing power on paper but that does not reflect in actual performance. I am not sure what might be the reason but paying twice but slower machine does not make any sence. I hope they will fix this soon.

Vorteile

I can use it to store different kind of information, including a personal one. The cloud server makes it easier to control your computer resources.

Nachteile

Interface is a bit complicated for new users. I am used to more intiutive interfaces, probably. Pricing plans coould be more flexible.

Vorteile

This tool is extremely versatile, serves as a vps, and as a base instance for many other aws tools, it allows me to connect to external aws platforms simply, it has a high level of configuration, customization and security. I can specifically choose each hardware component that is needed according to the needs of the projects, and the platform is ready to use in a few minutes, in addition to having a very extensive configuration panel, with many configurations, in addition to a console, which allows Work through commands directly, without opening the instance, its download and upload speed is very high and quite stable.

Nachteile

It is difficult for me to think of a negative aspect on this platform, however, what must be taken into account is that it is a fairly complete and complex tool to use, so the learning curve is quite steep.