Understanding AWS Services: A Comprehensive Guide

As more businesses move their companies to the cloud, they need to store their data and other sensitive information virtually. This is important because it is environmentally friendly, fosters remote collaboration, saves costs by making users pay only for used resources, and keeps sensitive data safe by encrypting it. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the most popular cloud providers, with affordable offerings for businesses.

AWS offers free access to cloud computing resources through some projects for educational purposes and class projects. Some initiatives include AWS Educate, AWS Cloud Credit for Research, and AWS Activate. AWs Educate is the most popular project among students and teachers because it provides an accessible learning environment. Virtual classrooms can be set up, either by making a custom one or choosing from pre-built ones set on popular topics.

This article aims to give an overview of AWS, its services, and how businesses and individuals in need of them can utilize them.

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is the act of delivering computer storage services over the internet on a pay-as-you-go basis. Instead of using on-premise or traditional cloud systems that require more resources and have restrictions, cloud providers offer flexible cost options.

Cloud computing can be categorized into two; service models and deployment models. We will only discuss deployment models in this article.

Deployment Model

The deployment model has three subsets: public cloud services, private cloud services, and hybrid cloud services.

Public cloud services are available to anyone on the internet and are owned by cloud service providers. Examples of these third-party owners are AWS, GCP, Microsoft Azure, and Digital Ocean.

Private cloud services are cloud computing operations that are exclusively managed by an organization. It can be controlled by the owners, or by third-party cloud providers.

As the name rightly suggests, hybrid cloud services combine the functionalities that public and private cloud services offer.

AWS and Its History

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com. With a mixture of cloud computing models, AWS provides on-demand cloud computing services to companies and individuals in need of them. These services are offered on a pay-as-you-go basis. Its first modern infrastructure service, Elastic Compute Cloud, popularly known as the EC2 instance, was launched in 2006.

At first, it began with simple services such as the S3 bucket, EC2 instance, and SimpleDB. With time, more companies began to incorporate their services and more services were invented. Now, AWS has data centers in various large cities to support the continuous delivery of its services.

The sudden increase in the need for cloud computing services caused other cloud computing service providers to spring up. AWS has other competitors in the cloud provider market, like Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, Digital Ocean, and IBM.

AWS remains the largest cloud service provider in the market, with customers with different financial backgrounds, from startups to large, established businesses.

Core AWS Services

AWS offers a wide range of services to its clients. Some of its core services are:

1. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2): Amazon EC2 is a service that allows users to develop and deploy applications on the AWS cloud. It can be used to launch virtual servers, manage storage and configure security and networking options. Some of its features include instances, instance types, key pairs, Amazon machine images, security groups, and availability zones.
2. Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3): Amazon S3 is a storage service used to store and protect varying amounts of data. It provides management features that allow users to optimize and configure to meet up with business and compliance requirements. Its features include storage monitoring and logging, access management, analytics, storage classes, and management.
3. Amazon CloudFront: CloudFront is a web service used to deliver static and dynamic web page content to users with the aid of edge locations. Edge locations are a global network of data centers. Its use cases include serving private content from custom origins, acceleration of static website content globally, video-on-demand streaming, and live streaming.
4. Amazon Lambda: AWS Lambda is a compute service developers use to run code for software applications and backend services virtually. The code is to be supplied in the programming languages Lambda supports, and organized in Lambda Functions. It can be used for file processing, mobile and IoT backends, web applications, and stream processing. Lambda’s features include database and file systems access, function blueprints, and code signing.
5. Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC): Amazon VPC is a virtual working environment similar to local networks operated in data centers. It allows users to incorporate other AWS services such as EC2 and RDS instances to provide connectivity for their applications. It can be used to launch websites, and blogs, create hybrid connections and host multi-tier web applications.

Common AWS Terms

1. Elastic Block Store (EBS): These are devices mounted on EC2 instances as storage devices. They provide access to raw, unformatted storage and can be used as the primary storage for file systems and databases.
2. Auto Scaling: This is a cloud computing method used to monitor applications. It automatically adjusts the resource capacity to maintain optimal production at the lowest cost possible.
3. Availability Zone: This is an isolated data location within a region where a public cloud service manages its operations. It has independent network connections, power, cooling, and connectivity. These centers are physically separated from each other. It is used to ensure the availability of an application in a region.
4. Elastic load balancing: A load balancer distributes workload(incoming traffic) equally across healthy targets(compute resources) in several availability zones. Compute resources can be added or removed according to the user’s discretion.
5. Amazon machine image (AMI): These are images provided by AWS that contain the information needed to launch an instance. It must be specified before launching an instance. One AMI can be used to launch several instances. It contains one or more elastic block store snapshots, launch permissions, and a block device.

Tips for Securing Your AWS Environment

Security is an important factor while hosting applications on the cloud, especially third-party service providers. Follow these steps to secure your AWS environment.

1. Make use of strong passwords. A strong password should have a minimum of eight characters, consist of uppercase and lowercase letters, and have numbers and symbols. Create a strong password for each AWS account manually, or with the aid of a password manager, change the passwords regularly. Also, implement multi-factor authentication when adding new users. This prevents cyberattacks and ensures that security and compliance rules are observed.
2. Test for vulnerabilities regularly. Regular tests for vulnerabilities help identify potential security breaches and security weaknesses in the IT infrastructure. This can be done through automated testing, penetration testing, analysis, and the eventual tackling of vulnerabilities. These tests have to adhere to AWS policies for penetration testing. Users are not allowed to carry out any security assessments on AWS infrastructure and services but can do so for certain permitted services.
3. Data encryption. This is the process of converting sensitive information into an unreadable, coded format that cannot be accessed by unauthorized users. It can be accessed only by a decryption key, held by the owner. Data encryption should be tested on data at rest and data in transit. Its processes should be constantly checked for vulnerabilities and successful encryption.

Best Practices for Cost Management

Hosting applications on cloud computing platforms costs a tangible amount of money and can skyrocket if not properly managed. The following are best practices for cost management while using AWS.

1. AWS Cost Explorer is a cost optimization feature that is used to manage costs hourly or monthly. This allows businesses to get the highest value at the lowest possible cost. It is enabled on the Billing and Cost Management Console of an active AWS account. It is important that users enable this, for optimal cost optimization.
2. Reserved instances allow users to save money by receiving hourly discounts when they are created in advance. It lasts for a period of one to three years. It is flexible, allows long-term usage, and maintains optimal infrastructure performance. It is beneficial cost-wise for users with steady computing needs, compared to other instances on AWS. Reserved instances on EC2 can have up to 72% discount, compared to the On-Demand Instance pricing range. An upfront commitment of one to three years achieves this.
3. AWS Budget Tools is a service used to set custom spending limits for an AWS account. When the account exceeds these limits, you get a notification. This service can be utilized by setting up multiple budgets and realistic spending limits that align with their goals. You can also analyze past budgets to compare spending habits.

Conclusion

Cloud computing is a practice that involves deploying and managing applications virtually. There are several service models, all of which can be implemented using AWS. Compared to other cloud computing services, AWS is cost-effective, offers speed and agility, and is widely used for its secure, reliable, and safe global computing infrastructure. Applications can be built easily, and existing ones can be moved to the cloud in a seamless manner. Amazon Web Services is an ideal platform for cloud computing and virtual IT infrastructure because of its unique offerings for businesses of all sizes. Get started with AWS today.