Audvik Labs

What is Instance in Cloud Computing?

Introduction

A cloud instance is a virtual machine that runs your workloads in the cloud. An instance is much like a physical server. However, it is not dependent on hardware or one single data center location. You use a cloud platform to provision the instances remotely. Some cloud computing platforms include AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. You can choose the instance capacity for your workloads. It includes components such as CPU, memory, network, etc.The cloud platform also offers different cloud computing models. It comes in a public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud services

A cloud instance is a virtual server in a cloud computing environment. It is built and delivered by cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services.A cloud platform offers computing resources & services.The instances are on-demand and can spin up & down based on your requirements. You decide on the instances’ CPU, GPU, RAM, and other compute resources.One instance can host a workload or use a group of instances in a cluster.You can spread out the instances in different geographical regions. In AWS, these are called Regions and Availability Zones. 

Different Instance Types 

1. Standard or General Instances 

The general purpose instance types are configured for standard use. It is the most common instance type for web servers and microservices. 

They deliver an optimum balance of resources for your applications. The CPU, memory allocated are balanced for a wide range of general-purpose workloads. 

2. High CPU Instances 

The high CPU instances are built to provide high computing power. It is used for compute-intensive workloads. The instances offer high performance. The allocated resources are compute-optimized. 

3. High Memory Instances 

High memory instances are designed for running memory-intensive workloads.They deliver fast performance for workloads that process large data sets in the memory. You also have storage optimized instances. 

4. Instances With GPU 

Instances with GPUs provide resources for deep learning. It comes with thousands of computing cores. Training new models is faster on a GPU instance than on a CPU instance. 

Instance Group 

An Instance group is a group of instances running together as a single entity ideally in a cluster.Putting instances together in a group makes enforcing policies & configuration easy. Policies and rules can be about High availability configurations, auto-healing, load balancing, applying updates etc.Managing instances in specific geographic availability zones becomes easier too. 

Instance Life Cycle 

•Provisioning – In this stage, the instances are not running yet. They are allocated to run a workload based on the set of rules, configuration. 

•Staging – Cloud resources get allocated to an instance in this stage. The instance gets prepped up for launch. 

•Running – Instance starts hosting the workload. If multiple Instances are already running in the cluster, the new instance shares the load with other already running instances. 

•Terminated – Instance is down either due to failure or manually done by the user. It can be reset, restarted or deleted at this stage. 

Conclusion 

A virtual server instance helps run your workloads.The cloud platform offers the operating system and hardware of a server. You get storage, CPUs, and pre-loaded application server software. Cloud instances offer the compute capacity from different data centers. It allows for more infrastructure flexibility & scale. 

The instances are easy to scale up & down based on customer demands. 

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *