Amazon EC2全称Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud，是Amazon于2006年推出的新一代Hosting服务。

实际上，了解了一下这两个概念后，就基本知道了什么是EC2：

• Amazon Machine Image (AMI) - An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is an encrypted file stored in Amazon S3. It contains all the information necessary to boot instances of your software.
• Instance - The running system based on an AMI is referred to as an instance. All instances based on the same AMI begin executing identically. Any information on them is lost when the instances are terminated or if they fail.

Amazon EC2的价格：

• Instance
  $0.10 per instance-hour consumed (or part of an hour consumed)
• Data Transfer
  $0.10 per GB - all data transfer in
  $0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
  $0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
  $0.13 per GB - data transfer out / month over 50 TB

Amazon EC2不负责储存，每次Instance关掉重启除/mnt外所有数据还原成VM镜像的初始状态，/mnt则被清空。储存由Amazon S3负责。

Amazon S3全称是Amazon Simple Storage Services，是Amazon提供的一个容量无限大的、可靠、快速、可扩展的网络存储服务。提供的一个容量无限大的、可靠、快速、可扩展的网络存储服务。最大支持5G的单个对象的存储，存储对象的个数没有限制，提供REST和SOAP接口的读、写、删除等操作，Uptime达到99.9%。

Amazon S3的价格：

• Instance
  $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used
• Data Transfer
  $0.10 per GB - all data transfer in
  $0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
  $0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
  $0.13 per GB - data transfer out / month over 50 TB
• Requests
  $0.01 per 1,000 PUT or LIST requests
  $0.01 per 1,000 GET and all other requests

Amazon EC2和Amazon S3在国外有很多应用了，比如SmugMug、SlideShow等。进一步的介绍参考这里和这里。

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