An Introduction to AWS

February 15, 2020

Author: Epaenetu Peruka

Amazon Web Services or AWS is a broad cloud platform by e-commerce giant Amazon. It provides Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) assistance.

Amazon Web Services or AWS provides cloud services from tens of data centers and multiple availability zones (AZs) spread across regions of the world. Each AZ contains multiple data centers. Customers are able to setup virtual machines and replicate their data in multiple AZs in order to have a highly flexible system that’s resistant to a server or data center failure.

The major AWS categories are:

Compute

This is the flagship product of Amazon Web Services. Its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) provides instances (virtual servers) for cloud computing capacity. EC2 has numerous instance types to choose from each of varying size and capacity. Instances are tailored to suit specific applications and workload types such as accelerated computing and memory intensive jobs.

It has auto scaling to accommodate evolving performance, capacity and system health needs. The EC2 Container Service and Registry provide images and Docker containers that customers can work with.

Storage

Simple Storage Service (S3) is a scalable storage that’s ideal for archival, data backup and analytics. Such as the data and files are stored in units referred to as S3 objects, which can be up to 5 GB in size. For better organization the objects are stored in S3 buckets. Businesses can cut or break their costs of S3 storage by picking for the Infrequent Access tier or, for longer-term cold storage, use Amazon Glacier.

Elastic Block Store is a service that provides persistent block storage that’s ideal for EC2 instances while the Elastic File System is a managed cloud-based storage service.

Data management

The Amazon Relational Database Service provides managed data services with options for major databases including Amazon Aurora, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MariaDB and (through DynamoDB) NoSQL. Customers can use DynamoDB Accelerator and Amazon ElastiCache as a cache for applications that require real-time command response.

Amazon Redshift is a data warehouse that simplifies the process of data analysis and business intelligence.

Networking

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) service gives administrators firm control over an isolated portion of Aws cloud that forms their own virtual network. Amazon Web Services provisions resources automatically within the VPC. Administrators can stay at the top of network traffic with Network Load Balancer, Application Load Balancer and other load balancing tools from AWS.

The domain name system Route 53 automatically routes users to respective applications. IT professionals are able to use AWS Direct Connect and create a dedicated connection between the AWS cloud and an on-site data center.

Migration to Amazon Web Services

Many organizations that choose to subscribe to Amazon Web Services already have an on-premises server setup. In cognizance of this, AWS has various services and tools to help customers move their data, databases, and applications from their on-premises servers to the public cloud. The Migration Hub for instance makes it easier to centrally oversee and monitor the migration from end to end.

Once systems and data have been successfully moved to the cloud, the EC2 Systems Manager allows the IT teams to configure AWS instances and on-premises servers. AWS has partnered with several leading technology vendors such as VMWare Cloud and Red Hat Enterprise Linux to streamline migration and hybrid deployment.

Monitoring

Administrators can track and manage their AWS cloud via AWS Config, AWS Config Rules and AWS Trusted Advisor. These help IT teams avoid needlessly expensive and improperly configured cloud deployments. Administrators can also automate the process of infrastructure and system provisioning and configuration with CloudFormation templates, Chef and AWS OpsWork.

They are able to monitor application and also the resource health with CloudWatch and Personal Health Dashboard while using CloudTrail to retain user activity and API calls for later auditing.