Introduction to upgrade EC2 instance type
EC2 instances on-demand can be upgraded or downgraded at any time. Changing to another instance class or upgrading your tier if your instance cannot handle your workload can help make your applications run smoothly.
The amount of computing power needed to launch an application is extremely difficult to determine. It is possible that they have been overestimated or underestimated in a few cases which could lead to a crash in the future.
What is Amazon EC2?
The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) provides scalable computing power within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. When you use Amazon EC2, you can develop and deploy apps more quickly as you don’t need to invest in hardware upfront. A virtual server in Amazon EC2 can be as many or as few as you need, and you can manage the storage and network as you wish. By scalability on Amazon EC2, you can adapt to variations in demand or popularity spikes, which reduces the need to forecast traffic.
Features of Amazon EC2
- EC2 provides you with a cloud-based platform for hosting your server. In AWS, servers are referred to as instances. You can login to your instance from anywhere and at any time because it is hosted in the cloud.
- AMI, or Amazon Machine Image, is a pre-configured template of OS and apps that is used to build an instance. This lowers the need to go through the entire application configuration after the OS is installed, as well as the total deployment time for instances.
- EC2 has a variety of instance kinds, each of which has a particular CPU, memory, and network setup. This assists you in selecting the appropriate instance for your CPU, memory, and network requirements.
- For instance security, EC2 supports Key Pair. If you don’t already have one, you must create one when you create your instance. AWS keeps the public key, while you receive the private key. No one can access your instance without this private key.
- For instance access management, EC2 supports IAM roles, which you may give to an account for more granular access management.
- You may also use security groups to create a firewall for your instance.
- Depending on your instance’s performance and persistence, EC2 offers a variety of storage options. Temporary data is stored in instance store volumes, which are deleted when your instance is stopped or terminated. Elastic Block Storage, or EBS, is a persistent storage option.
- AWS assigns one optional public IP address and one private IP address to your EC2 instance when you first create it. However, if your instance is terminated or rebooted, the public IP address will change. You can utilize an Elastic IP address for a static public IP address.
- The AWS cloud spans multiple countries. Using regions and availability zones, you can choose the location of your instance.
- You can use a VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) to logically isolate your instance from the rest of the AWS cloud infrastructure; you can establish your own VPC.
What is Amazon EC2 instance?
On Amazon EC2, an instance is used as a cloud platform to launch the software. It can also be thought of as a tiny component of a larger computer with its own network connection, hard disc, operating system, and other features. However, all of these services are only available online. In practice, you can have numerous small computers on a single machine, which are referred to as instances.
Reasons to change or upgrade EC2 instance type
There are so many reasons why you would want to change an AWS EC2 instance. Some of the common reasons are listed below
- Increase the number of resources: possibly higher application demand necessitates additional CPU, RAM, or transmission rate.
- Resources should be reduced: you may want to downsize for cost savings by eliminating any unused resources.
- A change in workload: if the EC2 instance’s workload has shifted from CPU-intensive to RAM-intensive, it may be more cost-effective to switch to a different instance family that is better suited to the new workload.
- Upgrading from an older generation to a newer generation of instance types: AWS updates their instance family on a regular basis, and newer generation instances often provide better performance at a reduced cost.
Prerequisites for changing or to upgrade EC2 instance type
You can simply resize it to another instance type if you need to alter the instance type for performance or cost management reasons, as long as:
- The virtualization type is the same - PV (Para Virtual) or HVM (Hardware Virtual Machine) – EC2 supports both virtualization types, and instances cannot be switched between them.
- The CPU architecture is the same – 32 bit AMIs, Arm processors, and other processors have limited compatibility
- Network compatibility - newer instances must be in a VPC, therefore EC2 classic instances that aren’t in a VPC can’t be scaled to a newer instance type.
- If your root volume is based on instance store , you’ll need to convert your application to the new instance type.
- Enhanced Networking Drivers are installed – you’ll need to install the drivers before resizing if the new instance type supports advanced networking functionality.
- For instances that support NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) SSD instance storage volumes, NVMe Drivers are deployed.
How to upgrade an EC2 instance? (Tutorial)
From the EC2 console, you can quickly change the instance type. You can not modify the tier of an instance while it’s running; you will have to stop it. Let us see how you can change or upgrade EC2 instance.
Login your AWS console
Search for EC2
Go into “Instances” from the left hand side menu
Select your instance and click on “Instance state” and click on “Stop Instance”
Click on “Stop”
Once the “instance State” is “Stopped”, Click on “Actions” → “Instance Settings” → “Change Instance Type”
Change instance type and click on “Apply”
Select your instance and click “Instance State” and select “Start Instance”. your instance type has been upgraded
Conclusion
It’s exceedingly difficult to estimate how much computing power is required to launch a program. It’s probable that in a few situations, they were overstated or underestimated, resulting in a future crash.
AWS includes tools to assist you in selecting or upgrading the suitable instance type from a large list of alternatives.