Launching EC2 instances - Amazon Web Services (AWS)

I hope this article will help some you who is still under the impression that AWS allows you to launch any no of instances on any region instantly.

I had the same misunderstanding till today, and learnt that you need to request them before hand to increase your quota on no of instances you can launch within a region.

First, you should read this page. It allows you to get an idea about all soft limitations on AWS services( please note that all these ec2 limitations can be revised apon your request)

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws_service_limits.html#limits_ec2 

You can also read about it from the EC2 FAQ page as well.

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#How_many_instances_can_I_run_in_Amazon_EC2

Hope AWS team will understand the value of the lost time due to this manual step involved in provisioning certain types of servers for the first time.

Error Msg:
You have requested more instances (1) than your current instance limit of 0 allows for the specified instance type. Please visit http://aws.amazon.com/contact-us/ec2-request to request an adjustment to this limit.

Few other great resources I found that helps to decide which AMI to select for a given instance type:

1. Ubuntu EC2 image locator - http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/locator/ec2/
2. AWS Linux instance type matrix - http://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-ami/instance-type-matrix/