Which AWS service is closest to a rented virtual server, and which runs code without managing servers?

Options

1. EC2 is the virtual server; Lambda runs code without managing servers (Correct option)
2. Lambda is the virtual server; EC2 runs code without managing servers
3. S3 is the virtual server; RDS runs code without managing servers
4. IAM is the virtual server; VPC runs code without managing servers

Answer

EC2 is the virtual server; Lambda runs functions without servers

Why

EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud): virtual machines you choose, configure and patch.

Lambda: serverless functions; you upload code, AWS runs it on events and bills per execution.

In between: ECS/EKS (containers), Fargate (containers without managing servers), Elastic Beanstalk (PaaS).

The more managed, the less control but less operations work.

Remember

EC2 = virtual machine. Lambda = serverless function.

Key terms

• Amazon EC2
• Serverless
• AWS (Amazon Web Services)
• Virtual machine
• Lambda
• IaaS / PaaS / SaaS