How to: EC2 Basics
-	📒 [Homepage](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/) ∙ [Documentation](https://aws.amazon.com/documentation/ec2/) ∙ [FAQ](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/) ∙ [Pricing](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/) (see also [ec2instances.info](http://www.ec2instances.info/)\)
-	**EC2** (Elastic Compute Cloud) is AWS’ offering of the most fundamental piece of cloud computing: A [virtual private server](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_server). These “instances” can run [most Linux, BSD, and Windows operating systems](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#What_operating_system_environments_are_supported). Internally, they've used a heavily modified [Xen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen) virtualization. That said, new instance classes are being introduced with a KVM derived hypervisor instead, called [Nitro](http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-11-29/aws-ec2-virtualization-2017.html). So far, this is limited to the C5 and M5 instance types. Lastly, there's a "bare metal hypervisor" available for [i3.metal instances](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/05/announcing-general-availability-of-amazon-ec2-bare-metal-instances/)
-	The term “EC2” is sometimes used to refer to the servers themselves, but technically refers more broadly to a whole collection of supporting services, too, like load balancing (CLBs/ALBs/NLBs), IP addresses (EIPs), bootable images (AMIs), security groups, and network drives (EBS) (which we discuss individually in this guide).
-	**💸[EC2 pricing](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/)** and **[cost management](#ec2-cost-management)** is a complicated topic. It can range from free (on the [AWS free tier](https://aws.amazon.com/free/)) to a lot, depending on your usage. Pricing is by instance type, by second or hour, and changes depending on AWS region and whether you are purchasing your instances [On-Demand](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/), on the [Spot market](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/spot/) or pre-purchasing ([Reserved Instances](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/reserved-instances/)).
- **Network Performance:** For some instance types, AWS uses general terms like Low, Medium, and High to refer to network performance. Users have done [benchmarking](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18507405/ec2-instance-typess-exact-network-performance) to provide expectations for what these terms can mean.

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