What is an Instance in Amazon Web Services?

A Virtual Computer

An instance is a computer that we use virtually. We can choose different instances in AWS based on specific tasks we are trying to accomplish with the instance. You can choose whether you want to run Linux, Windows or Mac OS too.

What Operating System do you prefer?

In AWS we run instances in a service called EC2 which stands for Elastic Compute Cloud. There are 1000 different instances to choose from in 2026 which seems like a lot but we only need to know the main ones!

You can also run a Website on an Instance

An instance is a way to easily run a web server for specific needs of your business. That includes websites from large to small. So an instance is basically a virtual running resource that you can use for a variety of different needs. If you launch one server its one instance and if you launch 2 servers its two instances and so on.

You may not have the energy to run an entire web server at your home so you will use Jeff Bezo’s infrastructure allowing you to scale up and down for resources based on your website’s needs!

Choosing the right Instance

Choosing the right instance is important because we don’t want to overspend! In regards to a web server it is usually best to choose a General Purpose Instance. This type of instance family starts with the letter “M” just like my name Makayla! A general instance is useful for code repositories and web servers and they have a good balance of compute, memory (which means RAM) and networking services.

An instance is a way to scale beyond the resource boundaries you have at home.

Instance Security

By default instances do not allow any traffic and you are the one that will state who can access the instance. You can use a security group also so you don’t have to keep stating the same people or entities accessing the instance. Security groups can be used to control traffic to and from an instance. They can also separate parts of a network.

Summary

Instances are scalable resources that can belong to different families based on their purposes. They use the policy of least privilege (you must say who is allowed to access) and security groups can control inbound and outbound traffic.