Certainly! Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is a fundamental networking service in Amazon Web Services (AWS) that allows you to create isolated network environments within the AWS cloud. VPC enables you to have complete control over your network settings, including IP address ranges, subnets, routing, and security.

Here are some key concepts and components of AWS VPC:

1. VPC: A VPC is your private network in the AWS cloud. You can think of it as your data centre in the cloud. You can create multiple VPCs within your AWS account.

2. Subnets: VPCs are divided into one or more subnets. Subnets are IP address ranges within your VPC. You can have public and private subnets for different purposes. Public subnets typically have a route to the internet, while private subnets do not.

3. Internet Gateway (IGW): An Internet Gateway allows instances within your VPC to connect to the internet. You attach an IGW to your VPC and configure route tables to route traffic to and from it.

4. Route Tables: Route tables determine how network traffic is routed within your VPC. You can associate different route tables with different subnets, allowing you to control traffic flow.

5. Network Access Control Lists (NACLs): NACLs act as a firewall for controlling inbound and outbound traffic at the subnet level. They are stateless and rule-based.

6. Security Groups: Security Groups are stateful firewalls that control inbound and outbound traffic at the instance level. They are associated with instances and are more fine-grained than NACLs.

7. Elastic IP Addresses: Elastic IP addresses are static, public IP addresses that you can allocate to your instances. They are useful for hosting public-facing services.

8. VPC Peering: VPC Peering allows you to connect two VPCs together, enabling instances in different VPCs to communicate with each other as if they were on the same network.

9. VPN Connections: You can establish secure connections between your on-premises data centres and your VPC using AWS Site-to-Site VPN or Direct Connect.

10. VPC Endpoints: VPC endpoints enable you to privately connect your VPC to AWS services like S3 and DynamoDB without traversing the public internet.

11. Transit Gateway: Transit Gateway simplifies network architecture by allowing you to connect multiple VPCs and on-premises networks through a central hub.

When it comes to hosting applications and services within a VPC, you typically follow these steps:

1. Create a VPC: Set up your VPC with the desired IP address ranges, subnets, and routing tables.

2. Launch Instances: Launch EC2 instances or other AWS resources within your subnets. Make sure to configure security groups and NACLs appropriately to control traffic.

3. Internet Access: If your instances need internet access, create a public subnet, attach an Internet Gateway, and configure the route table to direct traffic to the Internet.

4. Data Storage: Use AWS services like Amazon RDS, Amazon S3, or Amazon EBS for storing data and databases securely.

5. Load Balancers: Implement Elastic Load Balancers (ELB) or Application Load Balancers (ALB) to distribute traffic to multiple instances for high availability and scalability.

6. Security: Follow AWS best practices for security, including proper IAM (Identity and Access Management) policies, encryption, and regular security assessments.

7. Monitoring and Logging: Use AWS CloudWatch and CloudTrail for monitoring and auditing your infrastructure.

8. Scaling: Implement auto-scaling to automatically add or remove instances based on demand.

9. High Availability: Design your architecture to be fault-tolerant by distributing resources across multiple Availability Zones (AZs) within a region.

10. Backups and Disaster Recovery: Set up regular backups and create disaster recovery plans to ensure data integrity and availability.