Amazon Web Services

 

Amazon Web Services

Cloud Computing:

It is the on-demand availability or delivery of IT resources such as data storage and virtual machines without direct active management by the user. These computer resources are provided over the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Instead of buying and maintaining physical data centers and servers. The user can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis from a cloud provider. Large clouds often have functions that are distributed over multiple data centers. Cloud computing relies on sharing of resources to achieve "pay-as-you-go" model for their users which can help in reducing capital expenses.

Benefits of cloud computing:

·       Agility: The cloud gives you easy access to a broad range of technologies so that you can innovate faster and build nearly anything that you can imagine. You can quickly get IT resources when you need them. These resources include cloud storage, databases, IOT (Internet of Things), machine learning, data lakes and analytics, APIs, etc. Cloud computing allows us to deploy application services in matter of few minutes. It also gives us the freedom to develop, test new ideas to transform our business.

·       Elasticity: Cloud computing enables in automatically scaling the resources up at the time of peak levels of business activities. The user can also specify the number of resources they actually need. Cloud computing platform scales the resources up or down to instantly grow and shrink capacity according to our business needs.

·       Cost Saving: The cloud provides us with pay-as-you-go model which means user only pays for the resources as he consumes it. This feature of cloud computing reduces the capital expenditure of users as they do not have to spend money on setting up physical servers and data centers. With the pay-as-you-go model the variable expenses are much lower than what users would pay to do it by themselves because of the economies of scale.

·       Deploy in minutes: Cloud computing enables us to expand to new geographic regions and deploy anywhere in the world in minutes. For example, AWS and Azure has infrastructure all over the world, so you can deploy your applications in multiple physical locations with just a few clicks. Deploying the applications in closer location to end users reduces latency and improves their user experience. 

Amazon Web Services:

AWS is a branch of Amazon that provides Cloud Computing Services, Application programming interface (API), to individuals, companies, as well as to governments based on different subscriptions. These cloud computing platforms provide a variety of technical tools and technologies that save money and time of the users. One of these services is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) which allows the users to have virtual computers that can be accessed any time through the internet. AWS's virtual computers emulates all the features of a real computer such as CPU (Central Processing Unit), GPU (Graphical Processing Unit) for graphical processing, RAM (Random Access Memory), Hard disk, SSD-Storage, OS (Operating System), Networking, etc. The AWS technology is implemented at large server farms all over the world. These farms are maintained by the Amazon Subsidiary. User fees is calculated on basis of consumption of resources, hardware requirements, chosen operating system, networking features chosen by the subscriber, security, redundancy, availability. Users can either pay for a single VM or a cluster of VMs based on their requirements.

History:

AWS was founded in the early months of year 2000. Amazon chose to work on service-oriented architecture to scale their engineering operations after working on “Merchant.com” Amazon's e-commerce-as-a-service platform for third-party retailers to create their own web stores. Around the same time, Amazon implement several recommendations such as increasing engineering team autonomy, adopting REST, standardizing infrastructure, removing gate-keeping decision-makers, and implementing continuous deployment. AWS introduced its initial web services in July 2002, making the Amazon platform available to all developers. By 2004, over a hundred apps had been built on AWS. Amazon was taken aback by this unexpected developer enthusiasm, which convinced them that developers were "hungry for more". In the year 2006, Amazon S3 cloud storage was launched. Amazon S3 helped free developers to store data where it will be safe and secure. The stored data was made available when they needed it, the costs associated with server maintenance was kept minimum. Amazon S3 also allowed developers to focus on inventing data.

 

Types of Cloud Computing:

·       Infrastructure as a service (IAAS): In infrastructure as a service the cloud service provider manages the IT infrastructure for the user such as servers, network, storage over the internet. The user has access to all the resources through an application programming interface (API) or dashboard. The cloud service provider is responsible of all the hardware, network configurations, storage, servers, and user manage things like the operating system, applications. Example: Virtual Machines, etc.

·       Platform as a service (PAAS): In platform as a service the cloud service provider manages the hardware, and a software platform is provided to the user. The user then manages the running application and data platform. It allows the user to focus on the deployment and management of their applications. The user does not have to worry about resource procurement, capacity planning, software maintenance. Example: AWS Elastic Beanstalk, etc.

·       Software as a service (SAAS): In software as a service the cloud provides users with a complete software that is run and managed. User only need to think about using that software. Example: Email system, Netflix, MS Office, etc.

Types of Clouds

·       Public Cloud: It is the most common type of cloud. In public cloud all the resources such as hardware, software, storage is owned by the cloud service provider and is delivered over the Internet.

·       Private Cloud: In this infrastructure the user has on-premises datacenter. All the hardware resources are managed by the user. The cloud service provider provides different services to the user on their requirement.

·       Hybrid Cloud: This infrastructure is a combination of public and private cloud. The user has a on-premises datacenter (private cloud) as well as cloud based datacenter (public cloud). 

AWS Core Concepts

·       Operational Excellence: Operational excellence in the cloud is defined in terms of automation and it comprises of 2 main concepts:

1.     Infrastructure as Code (IAC): It is the process of managing your infrastructure through configuration files. IAC provides us with automated way of configuring the infrastructure.

2.     Observability: It is the process of measuring the internal state of our system. It helps to optimize the system state to desired end state. Observability foundation gives us the ability to track the impact of our automation.

·       Security: Security is responsibility of both AWS as well as the client. AWS is generally responsible for the security of the cloud resources such as physical hardware, software, network configurations. Customer is responsible for security in the cloud services such as configuration of services provided by the cloud, application software, managing sensitive data like passwords.

·       Reliability: The reliability feature of AWS basically focuses on how users can build services that are flexible with service and system failure. AWS provides the users with ability to build reliable web services that can with stand system and infrastructure disruption.

·       Performance Efficiency: The performance efficiency feature of AWS allows user to run web services efficiently and scale them when needed. AWS provides features to scale our resources to handle growing traffic.

·       Cost Optimization: AWS helps achieve business outcomes while minimizing the costs. AWS provides users with pay-as-you-go model which means users only pays for the resources as they consume it. This feature of cloud computing reduces the capital expenditure of users as they do not have to spend money on setting up physical servers and data centers.

The Leading Cloud Platform:

·       Most Functionality: AWS offers more services and features than any other cloud provider, ranging from traditional infrastructure technologies like storage, and databases to emerging technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence, data lakes and analytics, and the Internet of Things. This makes building applications faster, easier, and cost-effective.

·       Largest community of customers: There are millions of active customers worldwide. Every practical use case can be executed on the AWS from every industry including startups, businesses, public sector, organizations. The AWS Partner Network (APN) includes thousands of systems integrator who specialize in AWS services and software vendors who adapt their technology to work on AWS. 

·       Most Secure: AWS is most adaptable and secure cloud computing platform in the market today. AWS infrastructure is designed to meet the security needs of the high-profile enterprises. AWS provides 90 security standards and compliance certifications, and all AWS services contain client data encryption capabilities.

·       Fastest pace of innovation: AWS provides its users to explore and innovate quickly by leveraging the latest technology. AWS developed server less computing with the launch of AWS Lambda in 2014 which allowed developers to run code without having to setup or manage servers.

·       Operational Expertise:  AWS provides best experience, maturity, dependability, security, and performance from all other cloud service providers in the market. AWS has been providing cloud services to millions of clients across the world.