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Amazon EC2 vs Elastic Cloud: What are the differences?
Key Differences between Amazon EC2 and Elastic Cloud
Pricing Model: Amazon EC2 follows a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where you pay for the compute capacity you use. On the other hand, Elastic Cloud offers a subscription-based pricing model where you pay a fixed amount regardless of usage.
Integration with AWS Services: Amazon EC2 seamlessly integrates with other AWS services such as S3, RDS, and Lambda, providing a comprehensive cloud solution. Elastic Cloud, on the other hand, offers integration with third-party services and may lack the same level of integration with AWS services.
Customizability and Flexibility: Amazon EC2 provides more options for customization and flexibility in terms of instance types, operating systems, storage options, and networking configurations. Elastic Cloud, while offering flexibility in resource allocation, may have limitations in customizing underlying infrastructure.
Managed Services: Elastic Cloud provides a more managed experience where the provider takes care of maintenance, updates, and scaling of the infrastructure. Amazon EC2 requires more hands-on management, giving users more control over their instances but also requiring more technical expertise.
Global Presence: Amazon EC2 has a wider global presence with data centers located in multiple regions across the world, offering better latency and redundancy options. Elastic Cloud may have a more limited global presence, impacting performance and availability for users in certain regions.
Ecosystem and Community Support: Amazon EC2 benefits from a large ecosystem and community support, with a plethora of resources, tutorials, and third-party tools available. Elastic Cloud, while growing, may not have the same level of support and resources as the established Amazon EC2 ecosystem.
In Summary, the key differences between Amazon EC2 and Elastic Cloud lie in pricing models, integration with services, customizability, managed services, global presence, and ecosystem support.
DigitalOcean was where I began; its USD5/month is extremely competitive and the overall experience as highly user-friendly.
However, their offerings were lacking and integrating with other resources I had on AWS was getting more costly (due to transfer costs on AWS). Eventually I moved the entire project off DO's Droplets and onto AWS's EC2.
One may initially find the cost (w/o free tier) and interface of AWS daunting however with good planning you can achieve highly cost-efficient systems with savings plans, spot instances, etcetera.
Do not dive into AWS head-first! Seriously, don't. Stand back and read pricing documentation thoroughly. You can, not to the fault of AWS, easily go way overbudget. Your first action upon getting your AWS account should be to set up billing alarms for estimated and current bill totals.
We first selected Google Cloud Platform about five years ago, because HIPAA compliance was significantly cheaper and easier on Google compared to AWS. We have stayed with Google Cloud because it provides an excellent command line tool for managing resources, and every resource has a well-designed, well-documented API. SDKs for most of these APIs are available for many popular languages. I have never worked with a cloud platform that's so amenable to automation. Google is also ahead of its competitors in Kubernetes support.
GCE is much more user friendly than EC2, though Amazon has come a very long way since the early days (pre-2010's). This can be seen in how easy it is to edit the storage attached to an instance in GCE: it's under the instance details and is edited inline. In AWS you have to click the instance > click the storage block device (new screen) > click the edit option (new modal) > resize the volume > confirm (new model) then wait a very long time. Google's is nearly instant.
- In both cases, the instance much be shut down.
There also the preference between "user burden-of-security" and automatic security: AWS goes for the former, GCE the latter.
Most bioinformatics shops nowadays are hosting on AWS or Azure, since they have HIPAA tiers and offer enterprise SLA contracts. Meanwhile Heroku hasn't historically supported HIPAA. Rackspace and Google Cloud would be other hosting providers we would consider, but we just don't get requests for them. So, we mostly focus on AWS and Azure support.
Pros of Amazon EC2
- Quick and reliable cloud servers647
- Scalability515
- Easy management393
- Low cost277
- Auto-scaling271
- Market leader89
- Backed by amazon80
- Reliable79
- Free tier67
- Easy management, scalability58
- Flexible13
- Easy to Start10
- Widely used9
- Web-scale9
- Elastic9
- Node.js API7
- Industry Standard5
- Lots of configuration options4
- GPU instances2
- Simpler to understand and learn1
- Extremely simple to use1
- Amazing for individuals1
- All the Open Source CLI tools you could want.1
Pros of Elastic Cloud
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Cons of Amazon EC2
- Ui could use a lot of work13
- High learning curve when compared to PaaS6
- Extremely poor CPU performance3
Cons of Elastic Cloud
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What is Amazon EC2?
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