Virtual Servers in the Cloud

EC2 is the most flexible compute option. It's just a virtual machine where you have full 'Root' access to the OS (Windows or Linux).

1. Instance Families

Choose based on your workload:
- **T3/T4g:** Burstable (Dev/Test).
- **M5/M6g:** General Purpose (Standard APIs).
- **C5/C6g:** Compute Optimized (High-traffic logic).
- **R5/R6g:** Memory Optimized (Caching/DBs).

2. Graviton (ARM) vs x86

Modern .NET (6+) runs perfectly on **ARM (Graviton)** instances. These are 40% better price-performance than standard Intel/AMD instances. **Architect Tip:** Always try to run your .NET Linux containers on Graviton to save significant costs.

3. Architect Insight

Q: "Should I use Spot Instances for my production API?"

Architect Answer: "Only if your architecture is truly **Stateless** and **Resilient**. Spot instances can be 90% cheaper but can be terminated by AWS with a 2-minute warning. Use them for background workers or batch processing, but avoid them for your primary customer-facing API unless you have a highly-available Auto Scaling cluster that can handle sudden node losses."