Core Compute on 🏠

5. EC2

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)#

Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) 🔗 is AWS’s service for renting virtual servers in the cloud. Before managed compute services like Lambda existed, every application needed a server — EC2 is that server, virtualized and billed by the second. Understanding EC2 gives you the mental model for what higher-level services like Lambda are actually abstracting away: OS management, patching, capacity planning, and runtime configuration.

For the DVA-C02 exam, EC2 is foundational context rather than the primary focus. That said, several EC2 concepts — security groups, IAM roles on instances, and purchasing options — appear regularly in scenario questions.

6. Lambda

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

AWS Lambda#

Modern applications often need to run small, discrete pieces of logic in response to events — a user uploads a file, a message arrives in a queue, an HTTP request hits an API. Traditionally, this meant provisioning and maintaining servers to host that logic, even when it was idle. AWS Lambda eliminates that overhead entirely: you upload your code, define what triggers it, and AWS handles everything else — infrastructure, scaling, patching, and availability. You pay only for the compute time your code actually consumes, billed in 1ms increments. This model is called serverless compute, and Lambda is its cornerstone on AWS. 🔗

7. ASG

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Auto Scaling Groups (ASG)#

An Auto Scaling Group is an EC2 fleet management service that automatically adjusts the number of running instances based on demand, health, or a schedule. The core problem it solves is twofold: you don’t want to over-provision (wasting money on idle capacity), and you don’t want to under-provision (degrading user experience under load). ASG handles both by adding instances when demand rises and terminating them when it drops — all without manual intervention. 🔗

8. ELB

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)#

When you run multiple EC2 instances (or Lambda functions, containers, or IP targets) to serve user traffic, you need something to sit in front of them and distribute incoming requests evenly, route them intelligently, and stop sending traffic to unhealthy targets. That is exactly what Elastic Load Balancing does. ELB is a managed service — AWS handles provisioning, scaling, and availability of the load balancer itself, so you only configure behavior. 🔗