This post covers Amazon AWS Overview, Concepts, Architecture & 5 reasons why one should start learning Amazon Cloud
This post is for beginners as well as for experienced such as DBA’s, Developers, System Admin, etc who are just starting to learn Amazon Cloud and covers some of the very basic questions like What is Cloud Computing, Service Model, Various Services offered by Amazon AWS & much more.
Introduction to Amazon Web Services (AWS)
In 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) began offering IT infrastructure services to businesses in the form of web services—now commonly known as cloud computing. One of the key benefits of cloud computing is the opportunity to replace up-front capital infrastructure expenses with low variable costs that scale with your business. With the cloud, businesses no longer need to plan for and procure servers and other IT infrastructure weeks or months in advance. Instead, they can instantly spin up hundreds or thousands of servers in minutes and deliver results
faster. Today, AWS provides a highly reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud
that powers hundreds of thousands of businesses in 190 countries around the world.
Before going deep into Amazon AWS, let us understand the basics of Cloud Computing
What Is Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of computing power, database storage, applications, and other IT resources through a cloud services platform via the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Cloud computing provides a simple way to access servers, storage, databases and a broad set of application services over the Internet. A cloud services platform such as Amazon Web Services owns and maintains the network-connected hardware required for these applications services, while you provision and use what you need via a web application.
Cloud Computing Service Models
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) contains the basic building blocks for cloud IT and typically provide access to networking features, computers (virtual or on dedicated hardware), and data storage space.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS): Platform as a Service (PaaS) removes the need for your organization to manage the underlying infrastructure (usually hardware and operating systems) and allows you to focus on the deployment and management of your applications.
- Software as a Service (SaaS): Software as a Service (SaaS) provides you with a completed product that is run and managed by the service provider. In most cases, people referring to Software as a Service are referring
to end-user applications.
Cloud Computing Deployment Models
There are four basic cloud deployment models, which are:
- Private cloud model: In this system, the cloud infrastructure is set up on the premise for the exclusive use of an organization and its customers. In terms of cost efficiency, this deployment model doesn’t bring many benefits. However, many large enterprises choose it because of the security it offers.
- Public cloud model: Public cloud is hosted on the premise of the service provider. The service provider then provides cloud services to all of its customers. This deployment is generally adopted by many small to mid-sized organizations for their non-core and some of their core functions.
- Community cloud: The community cloud model is a cloud infrastructure shared by a group of organizations of similar industries and backgrounds with similar requirements i.e. mission, security, compliance, and IT policies. It may exist on or off-premise and can be managed by a community of these organizations.
- Hybrid cloud model: Hybrid cloud is a combination of two or more models, private cloud, public cloud or community cloud. Though these models maintain their separate entities they are amalgamated through a standard technology that enables the portability of data and applications.
Also read: This post covers the Overview Of Blue-Green Deployment.
Amazon Web Services Cloud Platform
AWS consists of many cloud services that you can use in combinations tailored to your business or organizational needs. This section introduces the major AWS services by category. To access the services, you can use the AWS Management Console, the Command Line Interface, or Software Development Kits (SDKs).
- AWS Management Console: Access and manage Amazon Web Services through the AWS Management Console is a simple and intuitive user interface.
- AWS Command Line Interface: The AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) is a unified tool to manage your AWS services.11 With just one tool to download and configure, you can control multiple AWS services from the
command line and automate them through scripts. - Software Development Kits: Software Development Kits (SDKs) simplify using AWS services in your applications with an Application Program Interface (API) tailored to your programming language or platform.
- Compute
- Amazon EC2: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers. The Amazon EC2 simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon’s proven computing environment.
- Amazon EC2 Container Service: Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS) is a highly scalable, high-performance container management service that supports Docker containers. It allows you to easily run applications on a managed cluster of Amazon EC2 instances.
- Amazon EC2 Container Registry: Amazon EC2 Container Registry (ECR) is a fully-managed Docker container registry that makes it easy for developers to store, manage, and deploy Docker container images. Amazon ECR is integrated with Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS), simplifying your development to production workflow
- Amazon Lightsail: Amazon Lightsail is designed to be the easiest way to launch and manage a virtual private server with AWS.
- Storage
- Amazon S3: Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is an object storage with a simple web service interface to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere on the web.
- Amazon Elastic Block Store: Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) provides persistent block storage volumes for use with Amazon EC2 instances in the AWS Cloud.
- Amazon Elastic File System: Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides simple, scalable file storage for use with Amazon EC2 instances in the AWS Cloud
- Amazon Glacier: Amazon Glacier is a secure, durable, and extremely low-cost storage service for data archiving and long-term backup
- Database
- Amazon Aurora: Amazon Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL compatible relational database engine that combines the speed and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases
- Amazon RDS: Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud
- Amazon DynamoDB: Amazon DynamoDB is a fast and flexible NoSQL database service for all applications that need consistent, single-digit millisecond latency at any scale
These are a glimpse of some of the services from Amazon AWS.
Amazon Web Services – Basic Architecture
Why AWS Certification – Here are Top 5 Reasons
1. Cloud is the Future of Business Technology
Now a day’s cloud computing is the technology that every business wants. Why? Because it’s economical, fast, advanced with better features than conventional technology. No need for heavy integration or heavy maintenance. Cloud can give you all features in a single platform.
2. AWS Certification Reasonable and Within Reach
Now there are tons of certification for cloud computing provided by various vendors but Amazon is the only one which certification are less in cost. Although, It’s not that easy to get AWS certified you must have the basic knowledge that is required to pass.
3. Demanded Skills are always Earning more Money!!! Right?
4. AWS Becomes the God of Cloud
According to a Gartner report, AWS is having growth more than 10 times compared to their 14 competitors combined and their competitors are not a small player they are also well-known name in the cloud computing industry e.g., Microsoft Azure, Google cloud platform, IBM SoftLayer, Rackspace, and Joyent, while they are busy in competing with each other as a software industry aspirant didn’t you notice the biggest opportunity? Yes AWS is expanding and all the big organizations working on AWS, so you need to grab this opportunity and become a certified AWS developer as soon as possible because we all know the competition in the software industry.
5. New Height to Your Expertise
If you want to improve your skills or expertise in the cloud computing field “then” AWS certification is best for you. AWS certification will boost your resume and your profile but for that, you must have the knowledge of AWS theoretically as well as practically and once you fix your path by doing initial certification “then” you can go for another certification or advanced certification in this field.