01. AWS Overview

What is EC2?

Amazon Web Services has a service called Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) , which allows you to launch virtual servers (or “instances”) , including instances with attached GPUs. The specific type of GPU instance you should launch for this tutorial is called “p2.xlarge” .

What is an Amazon Machine Image?

Amazon Machine Image or AMI is a template for an operating system and basic services (e.g., an application server and specific applications). By running an AMI instance, the AMI will be running "as a virtual server in the cloud" (as per AWS Documentation .

We will use this AMI image to define the operating system for your instance and to make use of its pre-installed software. In order to use this AMI, you must change your AWS region to one of the following (and you are encouraged to select the region in the list that is closest to you):

  • EU (Ireland)
  • Asia Pacific (Seoul)
  • Asia Pacific (Tokyo)
  • Asia Pacific (Sydney)
  • US East (N. Virginia)
  • US East (Ohio)
  • US West (Oregon)

If you are unsure, please check the AWS documentation to confirm which region may be closest to you.

After changing your AWS region, view your EC2 Service Limit report at this link , and find your "Current Limit" for the p2.xlarge instance type.

What is a P2 instance?

P2 are powerful and scalable parallel processing GPU instances. You can read more about these on AWS Documentation .

DO NOT FORGET TO SHUT DOWN YOUR EC2 INSTANCE or YOU WILL RUN OUT OF YOUR FREE PROMO CREDITS.

Your credits will be used for any inactive running instances . If you are in the middle of the project and need to step away, PLEASE SHUT DOWN YOUR EC2 INSTANCE . You can re-instantiate later.
We have provided adequate credits to allow you to complete your projects.

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