Overview of Amazon Web Service

Nanduri Balajee
5 min readMay 20, 2020

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a safe cloud service platform. Launched in 2006, it’s a subsidiary of Amazon, that offers computer power, database storage and content delivery. AWS allows us to run web and application servers in the cloud to host dynamic websites, to securely store all the files on the cloud so that they can be accessed from anywhere, to use managed databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, to send bulk email to customers and also to deliver static and dynamic files quickly around the world using Content Delivery Network (CDN).This platform has been developed with a combination of ‘infrastructure as a service’ (IaaS), ‘platform as a service’ (PaaS) and ‘packaged software as a service’ (SaaS) offerings.

Get hands -on experience on AWS Cloud Services from live experts at AWS Online Training

AWS has a version of virtual computers that mostly match up to the attributes of a real computer, including central processing units (CPUs), graphic processing units (GPUs), local memory, hard disk, networking and pre-loading application software such as database and web-servers.

Presently, AWS has 76 available zones in which the servers are located. Due to this division of zones, the users of AWS can set geographical limits on their services. AWS is used in 245 countries and territories worldwide.

Amazon web services provide software licensing and delivery model of cloud computing platforms. This provision is called ’on-demand’ software. Here, the software is licensed on a subscription basis and is then centrally hosted. AWS also provides API (Application Programming Interface) to their clients such as companies, governments where they have unlimited resource access and only pay for what they use. API is an interface where interactions take place between various softwares.

In addition to the above mentioned services, the cloud computing web services also provide a set of primitive technical infrastructure and distributing computing building blocks and tools. The two major services of AWS are Cloud Compute services and Storage Services.

Cloud Compute Services:

  1. Elastic Compute Cloud(EC2):

‘Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud’ (Amazon EC2) is available all the time through the internet and it allows the users to have a virtual cluster of computers at their disposal. Cluster of computers can be defined as a set of loosely or tightly connected computers that work together and hence, provide an output with an improved level of performance. The user of Amazon EC2 is provided with a web service through which the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) can be booted. AMI is the basic unit of deployment for services delivered using Amazon EC2. The booted AMI is configured to a virtual machine, which Amazon calls as an ‘instance’, which has any desired software.

LightSail:

It is an easy to use cloud platform that offers everything needed to build an application or a website, which is a cost effective monthly plan.

Elastic Beanstalk:

It is a service that abstracts away some hardware resources and details, while still allowing the developer a range of choices to OS and programming language. It can take up a lot of set up work out of development and can save developers and companies’ time. It supports multiple languages and also creates a formidable and reliable infrastructure for deployment of cloud applications.

AWS Lambda:

It is a serverless computing service provided by AWS. It runs the code in response to events and automatically manages the computer resources. The main purpose of its creation is to simplify building smaller, on-demand applications. These services can be run in any language.

Elastic Container service for Kubernets (EKS):

It’s a fully managed Kubernetes service and is known for its security, reliability and scalability. First, an EKS cluster has to be chosen which is a serverless computer for containers. Payment for the resources of the application is to be done and the security is improved through application isolation by design.

Know more AWS Cloud Computing Services at AWS Online Course

Storage Services:

1. Amazon Glacier:

It is an online file storage web service that has been designed for long term storage of data. It provides storage for data archiving and back-up. It is an example of a cold data cloud service that is used by the developer to move infrequently accessed data to archival storage so that the storage costs can be saved.

2. Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS):

It is a block storage system that is used to store persistent data. It is suitable for EC2 instances by providing highly available block level storage volumes, namely General purpose (SSD), Provisioned IOPS (SSD) and Magnetic.

3. Amazon Storage Gateway:

In this service, the software and the cloud based storage are connected so that a safe consolidation is provided between the company’s own environment and AWS infrastructure. It also allows to securely store the data in AWS cloud with unscalable and cost-effective storage manner.

4. Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3):

‘Amazon Simple Storage Service’ (Amazon S3) provides object storage through a web service interface, which allows various uses like Storage for internet applications, backup and recovery, disaster recovery, data archives, data lakes for analytics and hybrid cloud storage. Amazon S3 does not provide its technical design in a public manner, but the data is managed with architecture of the object storage, which aims to provide scalability, high availability and low latency, with maximum possible durability. The basic storage units of Amazon S3 are termed as ‘buckets’ which are the organized objects. They can be managed by the console provided by the Amazon S3.

The other services of AWS are Migration, Security, Database services, Management services, Analytics,Messaging services ,Networking

Advantages of Amazon Web Services:

● AWS allows various organizations to use the already familiar programming modes, architecture and databases.

● Requires less amount of money to maintain data centers.

● Capacity can be added and removed easily.

● Hybrid capabilities are offered.

● Centralized billing and management is offered.

● The application can be allowed to deploy in multiple region around the world just upon a click.

● Cloud access is allowed quickly with unlimited capacity.

● It’s a cost effective service where payment is done for only what is used.

● Fast deployments are offered.

● The total cost of ownership is very low when compared to any private service.

Disadvantages of Amazon Web Services:

● General security concerns.

● Downtime, limited control and back-up protection are few cloud computing issues that are common.

● For intensive assistance, paid support packages are to be opted.

● AWS sets default limits (eg: images, snapshots, volumes) as resources which differ from region to region.

Applications of Amazon Web Services:

● Website hosting

● Content delivery

● Media Distribution

● Mobile and social applications

● Social networking

● Academic computing

● Storage, backup, disaster recovery

Instagram, Dropbox, Playfish, Pinterest, Netflix are few companies that use Amazon Web Services.

To conclude, Amazon Web Services humongously rose as a requirement for most of the companies as it is highly secure and efficient. Its services play as a solution to most of the problems that are encountered during cloud computing. Hence, pursuing a course on this platform would help to have a great career.

Become a AWS Cloud Architect from live experts at AWS Cloud Architect Training

--

--

Nanduri Balajee

Iam a Technical Content writer having 4years of Industry experience. Till now, I have written 300+ articles and 6 tutorials