AWS Solutions Architect · Module 1 · Day 4

Virtualization & Creating Your AWS Account

⏱ 13 min read🎯 Beginner friendly🖼 2 diagrams🧪 2 live demos

How can AWS rent you “part of a server” by the hour? The answer is virtualization: one physical machine acting as many virtual machines. In this lesson you see the waste problem it solves, how hypervisors work, what AWS uses (Nitro), and then you create and secure your own AWS account.

In this session

The waste problem: three servers, only 17% used
Virtualization and hypervisors, simply
Type 1 vs Type 2 hypervisors, and AWS Nitro
VMs vs containers
Create your AWS account, then secure it

01The waste problem (a Netflix-style example)

A streaming app needs a web server (app download), an app server (sign-up, logic) and a database server (user data). We keep them on separate machines for security and so one crash doesn’t take down everything. Each server costs about ₹7 lakh, so ₹21 lakh in total.

Web server

10% used

App server

30% used

DB server

10% used

All three together

≈17% used

We paid ₹21 lakh but use only about one-sixth of the hardware. Roughly ₹17.5 lakh sits idle. Virtualization fixes this: run all three as separate virtual machines on one physical server, still isolated from each other.

02What is virtualization?

Virtualization: one physical machine acting as multiple virtual machines (VMs).

🏢

Like a big hall with movable walls. One building is divided into three rooms. Each group feels it has its own room, with its own door and lock, but it is one building with one electricity bill.

Word	Meaning
Host	the real physical machine
Hypervisor	software that splits the host into VMs and keeps them apart
Virtual machine (VM)	a “computer inside a computer” with its own OS and apps
Guest OS	the operating system inside a VM
Virtual hardware	the CPU, RAM and disk the hypervisor gives each VM

Clouds use Type 1 hypervisors.

Vendor	Products
VMware	ESXi (bare-metal hypervisor), vCenter (manages many ESXi hosts), vSphere (the full suite), Workstation (desktop, Type 2)
Microsoft	Hyper-V (built into Windows Server and Windows Pro)
AWS	Xen in early EC2 → Nitro (launched in 2017, now runs almost all EC2 instance types)

03AWS Nitro, and VMs vs containers

Every EC2 instance you launch is a VM running on the Nitro System in an AWS data centre.
Nitro moves networking and storage onto dedicated Nitro Cards, leaving a very thin hypervisor, so almost all of the server’s power goes to customers.
AWS staff have no shell access to Nitro hosts running your instances.
Bare-metal instances (e.g. m7i.metal-24xl) give you the whole physical server with no hypervisor.

Both isolate apps; containers are lighter. You will meet containers later in the SAA journey.

04Create your AWS account

You need: an email address, a mobile number, a payment method (card or UPI) and possibly an identity document.

Demo · Do it yourself

Secure it immediately

Demo · Five safety steps (do them today)

Avoid surprise bills: always stop or terminate what you create after practice, and keep the budget alert on.

🎯 Exam corner

Root user: enable MFA, create no access keys, use IAM identities for daily work.
EC2 runs on the Nitro hypervisor (Type 1).

05Summary

One app per physical server wastes most of the hardware (only ~17% used in our example).
Virtualization: one physical machine runs many isolated VMs, managed by a hypervisor.
Type 1 (bare-metal: ESXi, Hyper-V, Nitro) for data centres; Type 2 (VirtualBox) for laptops.
Every EC2 instance is a VM on AWS Nitro.
After creating your account: MFA on root, budget alert, IAM user, stop using root.

06Quick quiz

1. Virtualization means…

2. Which runs directly on the hardware?

3. Which hypervisor runs most EC2 instances today?

4. Web 10%, app 30%, DB 10% on three servers. Share of total capacity used?

5. First security step after creating an AWS account?

07References

Created by Ajeetkumar