Quick Introduction to AWS

What is AWS?

AWS is a global cloud platform. A hosting provider for one to run their applications on the cloud.

What do they do?

They provide

• Infrastructure as a service (IAAS). No need to manage backup or power supply to the units.
• Platform as a service (PAAS). e.g get Java as a service and one doesn’t need to manage the binaries.
• Software as a service (SAAS). e.g send emails.
• Cloud storage platform

Advantages?

• Stable services.
• Services are billed per hour and for storage per GB.
• Easy to sign in and start scaling.

List of services provided

EC2 (Elastic Compute cloud) 

• Bare servers. Run your software on those machines. 
• Steps:
• Choose an AMI (Amazon Machine Image) : OS, Software Info, Access Permissions.
• Can create customized AMIs or choose from a predefined one (AMI marketplace).
• Choose Instance type (HW) [Compute optimized, Memory optimized, GPU optimized, storage optimized or general purpose]
• Configure the instance [# of instances, IP, bootstrap scripts etc]
• Add Storage
• Configure security groups (configure access to your instance)
• Launch
• Select a public/private key (needed for access and security)

VPC (Virtual private cloud)

• Create networks in your cloud and run your servers on those networks

S3 (Simple Storage Service)

• File storage and sharing service

RDS (Relational Database Service)

• Run and manage databases (SQL, MySQL, Oracle etc) on the cloud.

Route 53

• Global DNS Service. Its a managed DNS service where one can point their DNS to Amazon and they take care of it. 

ELB (Elastic Load Balancer)

• Load balance incoming traffic to multiple machines.

Autoscaling 

• Add/Remove capacity on the fly.
• This should ideally be combined with ELB.