what is an instance

In computer science, an instance is a specific occurrence of an object, which exists during the runtime of a computer program. An instance is created when a new context is created based on some model, and this process is called instantiation. In object-oriented programming, an instance is a concrete occurrence of any object, and it is synonymous with "object" as they are each a particular value (realization) . Instances of a class share the same set of attributes, but each instance may differ in terms of what is contained in those attributes. In cloud computing, an instance is a virtual machine that runs workloads in the cloud. An instance group is a collection of many instances that share the same configuration, and all instances in an instance group go through the same lifecycle simultaneously.