Cloud · AWS
EC2 — Free Learning Resources
Free, printable resources for EC2 — practice problems, quick-reference cheatsheet, and an interview prep sheet. No sign-up required.
EC2 — Practice Worksheet
Structured exercises and problems to build hands-on EC2 skills. Work through key concepts step by step.
EC2 — Cheatsheet
One-page quick-reference for EC2 — key syntax, commands, patterns, and best practices at a glance.
EC2 — Interview Sheet
Top EC2 interview questions with concise answers. Get ready for any technical round with this focused prep sheet.
About EC2
EC2 is a cloud computing platform that provides on-demand infrastructure, platform services, and managed products. It enables teams to provision resources in minutes, scale automatically, and pay only for usage — without managing physical hardware.
EC2Cheat Sheet — What's Covered
- ✓EC2 core services — compute, storage, networking, and managed databases
- ✓IAM — identities, roles, policies, and least-privilege access
- ✓CLI and SDK usage for automation and infrastructure as code
- ✓Cost optimization — pricing model, reserved capacity, and tagging
- ✓Security, compliance, and monitoring fundamentals
Frequently Asked Questions — EC2
What is EC2 and what problems does it solve?
EC2 provides on-demand computing resources. Instead of buying servers, teams provision VMs, databases, and storage in minutes, scale automatically under load, and pay only for actual usage — eliminating capital expenditure on infrastructure.
How does EC2 handle identity and access management?
EC2 uses IAM to control who can access which resources. Define users, groups, and roles with attached policies that grant specific permissions. Follow the principle of least privilege — grant only the permissions needed for each identity's job.
How do you achieve high availability on EC2?
Deploy across multiple availability zones (physically separate data centers in the same region). Use load balancers to distribute traffic. Configure auto-scaling to replace failed instances. Multi-region active-active deployment provides the highest availability.
How do you manage costs on EC2?
Tag all resources by team and project. Use reserved instances or committed use discounts for predictable workloads (up to 60% cheaper than on-demand). Set billing alerts. Review the cost explorer weekly. Right-size instances — over-provisioning is the most common waste.
What monitoring capabilities does EC2 provide?
Most cloud platforms include built-in metrics dashboards, log aggregation, and alerting. Enable platform-native monitoring for resource metrics and set alerts for CPU, memory, error rates, and latency. Add distributed tracing for microservices to diagnose latency across service boundaries.
Who Is This For?
DevOps engineers, cloud architects, and developers who deploy and manage workloads on EC2 and need a quick command and concept reference.