An Introduction to AWS
Amazon Web Services(AWS) is a cloud service from Amazon, which provides services in the form of building blocks, these building blocks can be used to create and deploy any type of application in the cloud.
These services or building blocks are designed to work with each other, and result in applications which are sophisticated and highly scalable.
Each type of service in this blog, is categorized under a domain, the few domains which are widely used are:
- Compute
- Storage
- Database
- Migration
- Network and Content Delivery
- Management Tools
- Security & Identity Compliance
- Messaging
The Compute domain includes services related to compute workloads, it includes the following services:
- EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)
- Lambda
- Elastic Beanstalk
- Amazon LightSail
The Storage domain includes services related data storage, it includes the following services:
- S3 (Simple Storage Service)
- Elastic Block Store
- Amazon Glacier
- AWS Snowball
The Database domain is used for database related workloads, it includes the following services:
- Amazon Aurora
- Amazon RDS
- Amazon DynamoDB
- Amazon RedShift
The Migration domain is used for transferring data to or from the AWS Infrastructure, it includes the following services:
- AWS database Migration Service
- AWS SnowBall
The Networking and Content Delivery domain is used for isolating your network infrastructure, and content delivery is used for faster delivery of content. It includes the following services:
- Amazon Route 53
- AWS CloudFront
The Management Tools domain consists of services which are used to manage other services in AWS, it includes the following services:
- AWS CloudWatch
- AWS CloudFomation
- AWS CloudTrail
The Security & Identity, Compliance domain consist of services which are used to manage to authenticate and provide security to your AWS resources. It consists of the following services:
- AWS IAM
- AWS KMS
- AWS Shield
The Messaging domain consists of services which are used for queuing, notifying or emailing messages. It consists of the following domains:
- Amazon SQS
- Amazon SNS
- Amazon SES
- Amazon Pinpoint
HISTORY OF AWS
The origins of AWS as a developer tool can be traced all the way back to 2002, when an initial beta was released (named Amazon.com Web Service) that offered SOAP and XML interfaces for the Amazon product catalogue. This welcome mat for developers was the first step by Amazon to embracing the potential of developer-friendly tools, particularly in an infrastructure space, as an actual product.
Publicly launched on March 19, 2006, AWS offered Simple Storage Service (S3) and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), with Simple Queue Service (SQS) following soon after. By 2009, S3 and EC2 were launched in Europe, the Elastic Block Store (EBS) was made public, and a powerful content delivery network (CDN), Amazon CloudFront, all became formal parts of AWS offering. These developer-friendly services attracted cloud-ready customers and set the table for formalized partnerships with data-hungry enterprises such as Dropbox, Netflix, and Reddit, all before 2010.
Why AWS?
Easy to use
AWS is designed to allow application providers, ISVs, and vendors to quickly and securely host your applications — whether an existing application or a new SaaS-based application. You can use the AWS Management Console or well-documented web services APIs to access AWS’s application hosting platform.
Flexible
AWS enables you to select the operating system, programming language, web application platform, database, and other services you need. With AWS, you receive a virtual environment that lets you load the software and services your application requires. This eases the migration process for existing applications while preserving options for building new solutions.
Cost-Effective
You pay only for the compute power, storage, and other resources you use, with no long-term contracts or up-front commitments. For more information on comparing the costs of other hosting alternatives with AWS, see the AWS Economics Center.
Reliable
With AWS, you take advantage of a scalable, reliable, and secure global computing infrastructure, the virtual backbone of Amazon.com’s multi-billion dollar online business that has been honed for over a decade.
Scalable and high-performance
Using AWS tools, Auto Scaling, and Elastic Load Balancing, your application can scale up or down based on demand. Backed by Amazon’s massive infrastructure, you have access to compute and storage resources when you need them.
Secure
AWS utilizes an end-to-end approach to secure and harden our infrastructure, including physical, operational, and software measures. For more information, see the AWS Security Center.
Region vs Availability Zone vs Edge Location
REGION :-
A region is a physical location in the world which consists of two or more availability zones.
AVAILABILITY ZONE :-
An availability zone is one on more discrete data centers, each with redundant power, networking and connectivity, housed in separate facility.
EDGE LOCATION :-
Edge locations are the endpoints of AWS which are used for caching content.Typically, this contsist of cloudFont, Amazon’s CDN.
