AWS Overview
Amazon Web Services or AWS, provides
- cloud computing infrastructure over
Internet with
- storage
- bandwidth
- customized support for application programming interfaces (API).
AWS facts:
- Was launched in 2006 by Amazon, Inc, USA,
- Before launch, it was Amazon’s internal IT team efforts to build resource management.
- This uses subscription pricing model of pay-as-you-go or pay-for-what-you-use.
- Amazon packages AWS with scalable and virtually unlimited computing, storage and bandwidth resources.
- This offers various cloud computing options like infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) offerings.
How AWS Delivers – Server virtualization
Server virtualization technique –
- partitions a physical server into a number of small, virtual servers with help of virtualization software.
- Each virtual server runs its own operating system and software
- Multiple such virtual server can run on single physical server at same time.
- Adding a new virtual server is quick, compared to purchase / configuring a physical server.
- Virtual server can utilize 100% of hardware.
AWS Services
Various services are listed
Compute Services
- EC2 or Elastic Compute Cloud – Virtual machine for which user has OS level control.
- AWS Lambda — Run program functions in cloud.
Storage Services
- Amazon Glacier- Low-cost storage service for data archiving and backup.
- Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)- Provides block-level storage for Amazon EC2. EBS volumes are network-attached and are free from life of an instance.
- Amazon S3 – S3 or simple storage service. It provides object storage.
- Cloud Front – It is a CDN or content delivery network to distribute inert and active web content. For example, .html, .php files to clients
Security Services
- IAM (Identity and Access Management) — IAM helps to manage users, assign policies, form groups to manage multiple users.
- Certificate Manager — Offers free SSL certificates for domains that are managed by Route53.
Database Services
- Amazon RDS-
- Set up, operate, and scale a relational database in cloud.
- Amazon DynamoDB-
- Fully managed NoSQL database service.
- Amazon ElastiCache-
- Deploy, operate, and scale an in-memory cache in cloud.
- Amazon RedShift
- Data warehousing solution to perform OLAP queries.
Management Services
- CloudWatch — Monitor AWS environments like EC2, RDS instances, and CPU utilization. It also triggers alarms depends on various metrics.
- CloudFormation — It turns infrastructure into cloud. Use templates to get whole production environment in minutes.
- OpsWorks — Automated Chef/Puppet deployments on AWS environment.
AWS Features
- Available – Multiple redundancy to address one component failure. Workload is shifted to a operational replacement. Thus, connect resources in geographically isolated locations and also address failures for a complete region during disaster.
- Scalable –Computing resources as per user’s need, on-demand. Offering should be too low as against costs involved in client running workload on own.
- High levels of security – maintain high standards in IT security. Taking responsibility for AWS networking and compute infrastructure security and, relieving customer of these tasks. Applying AWS Shared Responsibility Model which outlines AWS being responsible for cloud infrastructure only and customer for rest.
- Metering mode– AWS is a self-service system to be used by anyone and with payment only for resource usage. Automated billing as per usage.
AWS Value Proposition
| Principle | Concepts |
| Agility | Speed, Experimentation, Innovation |
| Elasticity | Scale on demand, Eliminate wasted capacity |
| Flexibility | Broad set of products, Low to no cost to entry |
| Security | Amazon has acquired many compliance certifications, Shared responsibility model |