Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Users can launch instances with a variety of OSs, load them with custom application environments, manage network access permissions, and run images on multiple systems.
$0.01
per IP address with a running instance per hour on a pro rata basis
Oracle VM VirtualBox
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Open source, cross-platform, virtualization software that enables developers to deliver code faster by running multiple operating systems on a single device, used to deploy applications on-premises and to the cloud. Oracle VM VIrtualBox is Oracle's cross-platform virtualization offering, acquired with Sun Microsystems in early 2010. The software was originally developed by Innotek GmbH.
N/A
Pricing
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Oracle VM VirtualBox
Editions & Modules
Data Transfer
$0.00 - $0.09
per GB
On-Demand
$0.0042 - $6.528
per Hour
EBS-Optimized Instances
$0.005
per IP address with a running instance per hour on a pro rata basis
Carrier IP Addresses
$0.005 - $0.10
T4g Instances
$0.04
per vCPU-Hour Linux, RHEL, & SLES
T2, T3 Instances
$0.05 ($0.096)
per vCPU-Hour Linux, RHEL, & SLES (Windows)
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Oracle VM VirtualBox
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
—
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Oracle VM VirtualBox
Considered Both Products
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
No answer on this topic
Oracle VM VirtualBox
Verified User
Administrator
Chose Oracle VM VirtualBox
Since OracleBox can do most of what VMware can, but free, the benefit is obvious. The quick set up and tear down are also a huge benefit. I chose Oracle VM VirtualBox for these reasons primarily, but there are countless others too. I would definitely say that this is the way to …
Reviewers of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) frequently mention that they use it for scalable web applications and data processing tasks. Customers appreciate its ability to handle both small-scale separate projects as well as large-scale integrated systems, noting its impressive flexibility and scalability. EC2 shines in handling heavy computing tasks and complex web and application hosting, helping businesses avoid the cost and complexity of buying and managing their own physical servers.
On the other hand, users of Oracle VM VirtualBox often use it for testing new software and configurations or for running operating systems that their main hardware doesn’t support. Reviewers note that they can easily create and manage virtual machines on their personal systems with VirtualBox, often for learning, debugging, or compatibility purposes. Unlike EC2, VirtualBox is praised as being a straightforward, minimalistic, yet powerful tool able to operate on a local computer rather than a larger infrastructure. It is ideal for individuals or small teams that need to quickly set up a virtual environment.
Features
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Oracle VM VirtualBox
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
9.1
18 Ratings
11% above category average
Oracle VM VirtualBox
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime
8.617 Ratings
00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling
9.317 Ratings
00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing
9.217 Ratings
00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates
9.517 Ratings
00 Ratings
Monitoring tools
8.117 Ratings
00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images
9.817 Ratings
00 Ratings
Operating system support
9.617 Ratings
00 Ratings
Security controls
9.617 Ratings
00 Ratings
Automation
8.47 Ratings
00 Ratings
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
I think nowadays, Amazon EC2 is best-suited for most app development and deployment use cases, especially if your resource requirements are not fixed over a long period of time. The flexibility provided by the on-demand pricing and rescaling option makes Amazon EC2 a great service, especially if your tech stack already runs on AWS. On the other hand, I think Amazon EC2 is not the best option if your tech infrastructure runs on another public cloud.
It is best suited when you want to have different operating systems on your laptop or desktop. You can easily switch between operating systems without the need to uninstall one. In another scenario, if you expect some application to damage your device, it would be best to run the application on the VM such that the damage can only be done to the virtual machine. It is less appropriate when time synchronization is very important. At times the VMs run their own times differently from the host time and this may cause some losses if what you doing is critical. Another important thing to take note of is the licensing of the application you want to run your VM. Some licenses do not allow the applications to be run on virtual servers so it is not appropriate to use the VM at this time.
A great variety of choices in Amazon Machine Image (AMI) types. Users can select a more basic type to run generic workloads, but also have the choice to pick an AMI pre-installed with specific services in the AWS Marketplace.
The range of instance types can support the usage from a student's exploration (inexpensive general-purpose nano instances) to an enterprise's most intense workloads (memory or storage-optimized instances with terabytes of memory and ultra-fast network connection).
The pricing options, from regular instances, reserved instances to spot instances allow users to get the job done and make smart choices about how much they want to pay and when they want to pay.
This service is a bit difficult to consume. New users need a big learning curve to use this service effectively.
UI for EC2 service is a little complex and at many places, it misses detailed explanation.
Sometimes it takes too long to create images of EC2 instances. This keeps your EC2 up for that extra time. When instances are heavy, it penalizes a lot of money.
I have had issues in the past when it has come to resizing VM disk storage. The issue is entirely detailed here: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/9103 -- the problem was caused because of having existing snapshots (which error message output was not detailing). I haven't had to deal with the issue due to my dynamic disk sizes not being small from the start anymore (this is mostly an issue for my Windows VMs where the base disk may need significant size for the OS). It looks like, for a resize, that a merge of all snapshots has to occur first -- one user on that list details a workaround to maintain snapshots by cloning the VM. (Note: 5.2 was just released a few weeks ago, and looks like it should prevent the problem happening in the future by properly informing users that it isn't possible with snapshots).
Certain scenarios, like resizing disks, required dropping into a terminal as there were no options to previously do so via the GUI. According to some recent posts, I've seen that v5.2 has added disk management stuff like that to the GUI (or will be adding it). I'm comfortable with dropping into the terminal, but in a teaching scenario or when evaluating the learnability of the tools, it complicates things.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) allows various ways of gaining incidents, such as slow growth, money, and the reserved ones, mostly depend entirely on the necessity, because it makes highly intelligent choices possible at these times, which enable considerable cost savings whilst addressing the situation as best I like.
Easy and quick to use. Runs at sufficient speed even with 5/6 VMs running, and can handle a bridged network with ease. Easy to disassociate from the host to ensure the environment built within VB is quarantined should anything happen, meaning no risk to physical hardware. Quick to pick up. Quick to add new machines. Cloning feature very quick and comprehensive. I've never had a VM crash or freeze.
AWS's support is good overall. Not outstanding, but better than average. We have had very little reason to engage with AWS support but in our limited experience, the staff has been knowledgeable, timely and helpful. The only negative is actually initiating a service request can be a bit of a pain.
Azure VM and Google Compute Engine are alternatives to EC2. AWS EC2 is most matures and advanced of the 3. All these provide easy-to-deploy and automatically configured third-party applications, including single virtual machine or multiple virtual machine solutions.
VirutalBox is very similar to using Vmware with the slight difference in appearance and what might be considered a less polished look. However, what it lacks in polish and looks it makes up for in functionality, easy of use and the wide range of operating systems and features it supports without the need of buying the full professional edition
The only problem I have found is that the deployment is dependent and intrinsically linked to the Host OS. This is different from bare metal solutions which remove that dependency on a Host OS. The latter is more reliable and removes a layer of potential failure.
AWS has had a very positive return on investment for every client we have that uses it. They are saving money in the long run.
AWS includes the underlying operating system licenses with their EC2 instances so no longer do we have to navigate through Microsoft licensing headache.
EC2 allows us to easily create a golden image of servers and store them as AMIs. This makes spinning up new servers that need a particular set of software in the future extremely easy and cost-effective.
For personal use, there is no monetary investment, I am running 5 CentOS servers flawlessly in my home lab.
Saves a ton of money in an enterprise environment by not having to purchase physical test servers. (Cost of Enterprise product is way lower vs Cost of standing up physical servers and/or cloud servers)
Makes virtualization very easy and friendly for everyone for test instances.
