Great 👍
Today you’ll understand why EC2 still matters, even in a serverless world, and how senior engineers actually use it.

📅 DAY 4 — AMAZON EC2 (MASTER LEVEL FOR DATA & PYTHON ENGINEERS)

When to use it, when NOT to use it, and how it fits into real architectures

Amazon EC2

🎯 DAY 4 GOAL

By the end of today, you will:

  • Truly understand what EC2 is and is not
  • Know when EC2 is the RIGHT choice
  • Understand instance types, storage, pricing
  • See real-life EC2 usage in data platforms
  • Answer EC2 interview questions confidently

🧠 PART 1 — WHAT EC2 REALLY IS (NO CONFUSION)

❌ Beginner thinking

EC2 = server

✅ Architect thinking

EC2 = programmable virtual machine with full OS control

You control:

  • OS
  • Libraries
  • Runtime
  • Network
  • Storage

AWS controls:

  • Physical hardware
  • Power
  • Failures at infra level

📌 EC2 = maximum control, maximum responsibility

🧩 PART 2 — EC2 IN THE AWS COMPUTE SPECTRUM

Image
Image
More Control  ─────────────────── Less Control
EC2 ───── ECS ───── EKS ───── Lambda

🧠 Rule of thumb:

  • Need OS-level control → EC2
  • Event-based logic → Lambda
  • Containers → ECS/EKS
  • Spark → EMR (built on EC2)

🧠 PART 3 — INSTANCE TYPES (VERY IMPORTANT)

Instance families (INTERVIEW FAVORITE)

FamilyOptimized forReal-life use
tBurstableDev / testing
mBalancedGeneral workloads
cComputeCPU-heavy jobs
rMemorySpark, databases
iStorageI/O intensive

📌 Spark → memory-heavy (r, m)

🧠 PART 4 — EC2 STORAGE (THIS CONFUSES MANY)

Image
Image

🔹 EBS (Elastic Block Store)

  • Network-attached disk
  • Persistent
  • Can be resized

Used for:

  • OS disk
  • Logs
  • App data

🔹 Instance Store

  • Local disk
  • Very fast
  • Data lost on stop

Used for:

  • Temporary processing
  • Cache

📌 Data engineers mostly use EBS

🧠 PART 5 — EC2 PRICING MODELS (VERY SENIOR TOPIC)

TypeWhen used
On-DemandDefault, flexible
ReservedPredictable workloads
SpotCheap, interruptible

🧠 Real life:

EMR uses Spot instances heavily to reduce cost

🧠 PART 6 — REAL-LIFE EC2 USAGE (DATA ENGINEER VIEW)

🔹 1. Bastion Host

Laptop → EC2 (public) → EMR / RDS (private)

Used for:

  • Secure access
  • Debugging

🔹 2. EMR UNDER THE HOOD

Amazon EMR

  • EMR = managed EC2 fleet
  • You don’t manage instances directly
  • But EC2 concepts still apply

📌 If EC2 concepts are weak → EMR confusion

🔹 3. Legacy Python Services

Some teams still run:

  • Flask APIs
  • Batch scripts
    on EC2 for flexibility

🧠 PART 7 — AUTO SCALING (WHY CLOUD IS POWERFUL)

Image
Image
  • Scale out on load
  • Scale in when idle
  • Cost efficient

📌 EMR does this automatically

🎤 INTERVIEW STATEMENTS (USE THESE)

✔ “EC2 provides full OS-level control and is ideal when flexibility is required.”
✔ “EMR runs on EC2 instances, abstracting cluster management.”
✔ “Spot instances significantly reduce EMR cost for fault-tolerant jobs.”
✔ “EBS provides persistent storage for EC2 workloads.”

🧪 DAY 4 THINKING EXERCISE

Think through these:

  1. Why would a company still use EC2 instead of Lambda?
  2. Why doesn’t Spark run on Lambda?
  3. Why is EMR cheaper than running Spark manually on EC2?

🧠 DAY 4 MEMORY MAP (SAVE THIS)

EC2 = Full Control VM

Control ↑  Ops ↑
Control ↓  Ops ↓

Spark → EMR (built on EC2)
OS Control → EC2
Events → Lambda

⏭️ DAY 5 PREVIEW — S3 DEEP DIVE (MOST IMPORTANT SERVICE)

Tomorrow is the most important day for a Data Engineer:

  • S3 internals
  • Data lake design
  • Cost & performance traps
  • Interview killer concepts

Reply with:

DAY 5

You’re building real mastery, not just knowledge 🚀

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8