Compute instance / virtual machine
A rented virtual server that stays yours to configure, patch, run, and monitor until you shut it down.
See it
What it is
A compute instance or virtual machine is a software-defined server with its own operating system, CPU, memory, disk, and network interface. Products such as Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, and Azure Virtual Machines let you provision one without buying the physical hardware underneath it. Every host renames it: DigitalOcean sells Droplets, Linode sells Linodes, Hetzner sells Cloud Servers. Same thing, different marketing.
Reach for a VM when you need operating-system access, a long-running process, custom networking, or software that does not fit a serverless or managed platform. It behaves like a server you can keep, reboot, resize, and log into.
The cloud provider manages the building, not your machine. You still own patches, firewall rules, process supervision, backups, monitoring, and capacity. A lone VM is also a lone failure point unless you add replacement automation and keep durable data elsewhere.
Ask AI for it
Provision an Amazon EC2 instance with Terraform's aws_instance resource. Use an Ubuntu LTS AMI selected by a data source, a t3.small instance, an encrypted gp3 root volume, and metadata_options with http_tokens set to required for IMDSv2. Place it in a private subnet, attach an IAM instance profile plus the ssm, ssmmessages, and ec2messages VPC interface endpoints for AWS Systems Manager Session Manager, and do not open SSH to the public internet.