Any government agency, organization, or company needs to host applications and secure and store data, including videos, photos, or any kind of information, at the minimum cost possible to reduce the workload and achieve a smooth working platform.
AWS, which stands for Amazon Web Services, comes up with cloud services to handle high web traffic and the huge amounts of data generated daily on applications or websites. The AWS architecture ensures that customers are following best practices, guidance, and recommendations to develop and maintain cloud solutions.
Why do we use AWS?
AWS is a beginner-friendly platform to use. We can easily create and deploy websites or any application here on AWS. It is also cost-effective as we only have to pay for what we use. There is no particular long-term contract or commitment for payments. Moreover, it provides high performance, availability, scalability, and security. AWS architecture plays a vital role in enhancing the overall performance of this platform for customers to use it to the fullest. So, they can choose AWS as their cloud provider without any doubt.
Types of Deployment Models in Cloud Computing
In this section, we will see the various deployment models that AWS provides. It offers four deployment types, namely, public cloud, private cloud, community cloud, and hybrid cloud.
Public Cloud
If something needs to be deployed openly for public users on the network, the public cloud can be used. This model is best for those organizations that have grown and fluctuating demands.
Private Cloud
A private cloud provides better security control. This model is generally used by independent companies. Here, all the data is backed internally, as well as with firewalls, so that later it can be hosted either externally or internally. If an organization seeks higher security, availability, and management, a private cloud is the best option to go for.
Community Cloud
In this type, different organizations that belong to the same area or community manually share the cloud setups. For example, banks use the community cloud setup.
Hybrid Cloud
This model includes the features of both public and private clouds. In this model, resources can be easily provided via internal or external providers. It is best suitable in cases where companies need scalability, security, and flexibility. In this model, the companies may use a private cloud for data security but will interact with users through the public cloud.
AWS Architecture with Diagram
Let’s now come to the architecture of the AWS cloud provider.
The above diagram is a simple AWS architecture diagram that shows the basic structure of Amazon Web Services architecture. It shows the basic AWS services, such as Route 53, Elastic Load Balancer, EC2, security groups, CloudFront, Amazon S3 bucket, etc. By using S3 (Simple Storage Service), companies can easily store and retrieve data of various types using Application Programming Interface calls.
AWS comes with so many handy options such as configuration server, individual server mapping, and pricing. As we can see in the AWS architecture diagram that a custom virtual private cloud is created to secure the web application, and resources are spread across availability zones to provide redundancy during maintenance. Web servers are deployed on AWS EC2 instances. External traffic to the servers is balanced by Elastic Load Balancer.
We can add or remove instances and scale up or down on the basis of dynamic scaling policies. Amazon CloudFront distribution helps us minimize latency. It also maintains the edge locations across the globe—an edge location is a cache for web and streaming content. Route 53 domain name service, on the other hand, is used for the registration and management of our Internet domain.
What is the importance of AWS architecture?
The AWS architecture makes it possible to offer the best services to clients based on web services technologies, adding or removing virtual servers, the selection of services, etc. AWS services and resources are available worldwide 24/7 and 365 days of the year where solutions are easily deployed according to clients’ requirements.
Uses and advantages of AWS architecture:
- Its feature of memory management makes it very fast and resilient for clients to host websites and get affirmative results.
- Clients can scale up and down the resources according to their needs.
- Clients can get more time to do their business tasks and leave the rest to AWS as AWS is fully loaded with advanced features to reduce workload.
- It provides end-to-end security and privacy to its clients by ensuring the three pillars of security—confidentiality, integrity, and availability—of the client data.
Key Components of AWS Architecture
Load Balancing
The load balancing component of AWS architecture facilitates the enhancement of the application and the efficiency of the server. The hardware load balancer is generally used as a common network appliance in the architecture of traditional web applications to perform load balancing. But with AWS Elastic Load Balancer, the delivery of load balancing has become more efficient. Traffic is easily distributed to EC2 instances across various availability zones in AWS. The traffic is distributed to dynamic additions as well.
Elastic Load Balancing
It can smoothly collapse or increase the capacity of load balancing by tuning a few of the traffic demands. Sticky sessions are also supported to achieve advanced routing services.
Amazon CloudFront
This component is mainly used for the delivery of the content on the website. The content can be of many types, such as streaming content, static or dynamic that are stored in global network locations. Users can request the content from any closest location in an automatic way, which ultimately enhances the performance.
Elastic Load Balancer
ELB components become handy when the required traffic to the web servers needs to be delivered. It increases the performance greatly. Dynamic growth can be easily achieved through an Elastic Load Balancer. Based on various traffic conditions, its capacity can be adjusted.
Security Management
AWS is mainly known for its secure environment where users can deploy their work without a doubt. It provides a security grouping feature. This is very similar to inbound network firewalls and ports, source IP ranges, and protocols that need to be specified to reach EC2 instances.
ElastiCache
This tool is very handy in AWS when the memory cache needs to be managed in the cloud. In memory management, clearing cache plays a big role to help reduce the load on the server. Frequently used information is easily cached to increase scalability, reliability, and performance.
Amazon RDS
RDS stands for Relational Database. It offers services very similar to MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server and is very user-friendly and easily accessible.
AWS Cloud Computing Models
In this section, we will be learning about the three Cloud Computing models through which AWS provides its services to clients worldwide.
IaaS
IaaS stands for Infrastructure as a Service, and it is a type of Cloud Computing that provides a virtualized environment of computer resources over the Internet to the clients. It provides clients with on-demand network connectivity, storage, and processing. This model manages IT infrastructures such as servers, storage, and networking resources. Clients can also build their versions of the application on these resources.
PaaS
The Platform-as-a-Service model offers a platform to clients where they can develop, run, and manage any sort of application. PaaS can be offered to the clients via public, private, or hybrid clouds. Services offered by this model are databases, emails, queues, workflow engines, etc. In this model, the cloud service providers are responsible for the better functionality of resources.
SaaS
SaaS stands for Software as a Service, and it is a form of Cloud Computing model where applications are successfully deployed over the Internet to be used as services. This model helps clients get rid of the complex processes of software and hardware management. They are also allowed to customize a few things such as the color of their brand logo, etc.
Now, let’s have a look at the merits and demerits of AWS.
Advantages of AWS
Economical
AWS allows its clients to pay only for the services that they use, which makes it much economical. Moreover, if we are planning to create a physical server, it will cost us for installing and configuring expensive hardware. So, it is better to go for cloud services from cloud service providers, especially AWS, which are cost-effective and reliable at the same time.
Reliability
AWS is highly reliable as it provides 24/7 service throughout the year. If any of the servers gets failed, the hosted applications and services will still be available as they are easily shifted to any of the other servers automatically.
Limitless Storage Capacity
Users always worry about the storage capacity, but AWS provides almost unlimited storage such that users do not need to pay a penny extra for storage. They get as much storage as they want.
Backup and Recovery
AWS makes it easier to store, backup, and restore data as compared to storing it on a physical device. These days, almost all cloud service providers have the feature to recover the entire data in the case of any data loss, so it is suitable and useful for any industry.
Easier Information Access
After registering on the AWS cloud service providing platform, users can access their information from anywhere in the world, provided they have a good Internet connection. However, these facilities vary with the kind of account chosen or the plan opted for.
Disadvantages of AWS
Technical Issues
AWS provides services to numerous users every day without fail. However, at times, there may occur a serious problem in the system that causes a temporary suspension of a company’s business processes. In case the Internet availability is down, then the company will not be able to use any sort of application, cloud data, or servers that it was accessing through AWS.
Security Issues
Companies seek security the most when they go for cloud services because storing data and important files is always a risky task. There are chances that hackers may break into the system. However, AWS is designed in such a way that it provides higher scalability, reliability, security, and flexibility.
Difficulty in Switching Between Service Providers
Although cloud service providers provide full assurance regarding their services when companies want to switch to any other cloud service, they find it very difficult to integrate the current cloud applications into the new cloud platform. This applies to AWS services as well.
Want to learn AWS from basics to advanced concepts? Check out AWS tutorial on YouTube:
Conclusion
The AWS serverless architecture offers to deploy applications without the need to have our own server. Applications deployed on the AWS platform do not require any managing, scaling, and provisioning of the servers manually. AWS offers everything required to build and maintain the applications in the backend. This platform is growing magnificently in the market by competing with all of the cloud service providers. In the era of advanced technology, where everything is digitized, the need for Cloud Computing has increased vitally, which is being fulfilled completely by AWS.
According to a report from Flexera, in 2019, AWS had a whopping adoption rate of 67 percent, whereas Microsoft Azure came in the second position (60%) and Google Cloud came in the third (20%). Simply, AWS is leading the Cloud Computing market with better and exclusive services for its clients.
I hope this blog has cleared every doubt related to AWS architecture. You can thoroughly master all the concepts of AWS and implement them in real-time projects. Do let us know in the comments section if you have any more points to add to this blog.