Let’s get a quick overview of EC2 Tenancy from an AWS certification perspective. We will look at important certification questions regarding Shared vs Dedicated Tenancy.
You will learn
- What is tenancy of EC2 instances?
- What are the different types of EC2 tenancies?
- What is the comparison between Shared and Dedicated Tenancy?
- When do you use Shared vs Dedicated Tenancy?
EC2 Tenancy - Shared vs Dedicated
When ever we create EC2 instances, we are using Shared Tenancy by default. In Shared tenancy, single host machine can have instances from multiple customers.
There are two Dedicated EC2 options:
- EC2 Dedicated Instances
- EC2 Dedicated Hosts
EC2 Dedicated Instances are Virtualized instances on hardware dedicated to one customer:
- You do NOT have visibility into the hardware of underlying host
EC2 Dedicated Hosts are Physical servers dedicated to one customer:
- You have visibility into the hardware of underlying host (sockets and physical cores)
- (Use cases) Regulatory needs or server-bound software licenses like Windows Server, SQL Server
EC2 Dedicated Instances vs Hosts
Let’s look at quick comparison:
| Feature | Dedicated Instance | Dedicated Host |
|---|---|---|
| Billing | Per instance | Per host |
| Targeted Instance Placement | ✓ | |
| Access to Underlying Host Hardware | ✓ |