Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Name: Soumik Hazra

Student Code: BSSE/UT/CS/18/021
Paper Name: Cloud Computing
Paper Code: PEC-CS701B
Selected Topic: Amazon Web Services

Introduction
AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a comprehensive, evolving cloud computing platform provided
by Amazon that includes a mixture of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a
service(PaaS), and packaged software as a service (SaaS) offerings. AWS services can offer an
organization tools such as compute power, database storage, and content delivery services. AWS
launched in 2006 from the internal infrastructure that Amazon.com built to handle its online
retail operations. AWS was one of the first companies to introduce a pay-as-you-go cloud
computing model that scales to provide users with computing, storage, or throughput as needed.
AWS offers many different tools and solutions for enterprises and software developers that can
be used in data centers in up to 190 countries. Groups such as government agencies, education
institutions, nonprofits, and private organizations can use AWS services.

How AWS works?

AWS is separated into different services; each can be configured in different ways based on the
user's needs. Users should be able to see configuration options and individual server maps for an
AWS service. More than 100 services comprise the Amazon Web Services portfolio, including
those for compute, databases, infrastructure management, application development, and
security. These services, by category, include:
 Compute
 Storage databases
 Data management
 Migration
 Hybrid cloud
 Networking
 Development tools
 Management
 Monitoring
 Security
 Governance
 Big data management
 Analytics
 Artificial intelligence
 (AI)
 Mobile development
 Messages and notification
Availability
Amazon Web Services provides services from dozens of data centers spread across availability
zones (AZs) in regions across the world. An AZ is a location that contains multiple physical data
centers. A region is a collection of AZs in geographic proximity connected by low-
latency network links.
A business will choose one or multiple availability zones for a variety of reasons, such as
compliance and proximity to end customers. For example, an AWS customer can spin up virtual
machines (VMs) and replicate data in different AZs to achieve a highly reliable infrastructure
that is resistant to failures of individual servers or an entire data center.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a service that provides virtual servers -- called EC2
instances -- for computing capacity. The EC2 service offers dozens of instance types with
varying capacities and sizes, tailored to specific workload types and applications, such as
memory-intensive and accelerated-computing jobs. AWS also provides an Auto Scaling tool to
dynamically scale capacity to maintain instance health and performance.

Storage
Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) provides scalable object storage for data backup,
collection, and analytics. An IT professional stores data and files as S3 objects -- which can
range up to 5 gigabytes (GB) -- inside S3 buckets to keep them organized. A business can save
money with S3 through its Infrequent Access storage tier or by using Amazon Glacier for long-
term cold storage.
Amazon Elastic Block Store provides block-level storage volumes for persistent data storage
when using EC2 instances. Amazon Elastic File System offers managed cloud-based file
storage.
A business can also migrate data to the cloud via storage transport devices, such as AWS
Snowball and Snowmobile, or use AWS Storage Gateway to enable on-premises apps to access
cloud data.

Databases, data management

The Amazon Relational Database Service -- which includes options for Oracle, SQL Server,
PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, and a proprietary high-performance database called Amazon
Aurora -- provides a relational database management system for AWS users. AWS also offers
managed NoSQL databases through Amazon DynamoDB.
An AWS customer can use Amazon ElastiCache and DynamoDB Accelerator as in-memory and
real-time data caches for applications. Amazon Redshift offers a data warehouse, which makes it
easier for data analysts to perform business intelligence (BI) tasks.

Migration, hybrid cloud

AWS includes various tools and services designed to help users migrate applications, databases,
servers, and data onto its public cloud. The AWS Migration Hub provides a location to monitor
and manage migrations from on-premises to the cloud. Once in the cloud, EC2 Systems
Manager helps an IT team configure on-premises servers and AWS instances.
Amazon also has partnerships with several technology vendors that ease hybrid cloud
deployments. VMware Cloud on AWS brings software-defined data center technology from
VMware to the AWS cloud. Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Amazon EC2 is the product of
another partnership, extending Red Hat's operating system to the AWS cloud.

Networking
An Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) gives an administrator control over a virtual
network to use an isolated section of the AWS cloud. AWS automatically provisions new
resources within a VPC for extra protection.

Admins can balance network traffic with the Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) service, which
includes the Application Load Balancer and Network Load Balancer. AWS also provides a
domain name system called Amazon Route 53 that routes end users to applications.

An IT professional can establish a dedicated connection from an on-premises data center to the
AWS cloud via AWS Direct Connect.

Developer tools
A developer can take advantage of AWS command-line tools and software development kits
(SDKs) to deploy and manage applications and services. This includes:

 The AWS Command Line Interface, which is Amazon's proprietary code interface.

 A developer can use AWS Tools for Powershell to manage cloud services from
Windows environments.

 Developers can use AWS Serverless Application Model to simulate an AWS

environment to test Lambda functions.

AWS SDKs are available for a variety of platforms and programming languages, including Java,
PHP, Python, Node.js, Ruby, C++, Android, and iOS.

Amazon API Gateway enables a development team to create, manage and monitor custom
application program interfaces (APIs) that let applications access data or functionality from
back-end services. API Gateway manages thousands of concurrent API calls at once.

AWS also provides a packaged media transcoding service -- Amazon Elastic Transcoder -- and a
service that visualizes workflows for microservices-based applications -- AWS Step Functions.

A development team can also create continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines
with services like:

 AWS CodePipeline
  AWS CodeBuild
 AWS CodeDeploy
 AWS CodeStar
A developer can also store code in Git repositories with AWS CodeCommit and evaluate the
performance of microservices-based applications with AWS X-Ray.

Management and monitoring

An admin can manage and track cloud resource configuration via AWS Config and AWS
Config Rules. Those tools, along with AWS Trusted Advisor, can help an IT team avoid
improperly configured and needlessly expensive cloud resource deployments.
AWS provides several automation tools in its portfolio. An admin can automate infrastructure
provisioning via AWS CloudFormation templates, and also use AWS OpsWorks and Chef to
automate infrastructure and system configurations.
An AWS customer can monitor resource and application health with Amazon CloudWatch and
the AWS Personal Health Dashboard, as well as use AWS CloudTrail to retain user activity and
API calls for auditing.

Security and governance

AWS provides a range of services for cloud security, including AWS Identity and Access
Management, which allows admins to define and manage user access to resources. An admin
can also create a user directory with Amazon Cloud Directory, or connect cloud resources to an
existing Microsoft Active Directory with the AWS Directory Service. Additionally, the AWS
Organizations service enables a business to establish and manage policies for multiple AWS
accounts.
Amazon Web Services has also introduced tools that automatically assess potential security
risks. Amazon Inspector analyzes an AWS environment for vulnerabilities that might impact
security and compliance. Amazon Macie uses machine learning (ML) technology to protect
sensitive cloud data.
AWS also includes tools and services that provide software- and hardware-based encryption,
protect against DDoS attacks, provision Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer
Security (TLS) certificates, and filter potentially harmful traffic to web applications.
The AWS Management Console is a browser-based graphical user interface (GUI) for AWS.
The Management Console can be used to manage resources in cloud computing, cloud storage,
and security credentials. The AWS Console interfaces with all AWS resources.

Big data management and analytics

AWS includes a variety of big data analytics and application services. This includes:
 Amazon Elastic MapReduce, which offers a Hadoop framework to process large amounts
of data.
 Amazon Kinesis, which provides several tools to process and analyze streaming data.
 AWS Glue, which is a service that handles extract, transform, and load jobs.
 Amazon Elasticsearch Service enables a team to perform application monitoring, log
analysis, and other tasks with the open-source Elasticsearch tool.
  Amazon Athena for S3, which allows analysts to query data.
 Amazon QuickSight, which helps analysts visualize data.

Artificial intelligence
AWS offers a range of AI model development and delivery platforms, as well as packaged AI-
based applications. The Amazon AI suite of tools includes:
 Amazon Lex for voice and text chatbot technology;
 Amazon Polly for text-to-speech translation; and
 Amazon Rekognition for image and facial analysis.
AWS also provides technology for developers to build smart apps that rely on machine learning
technology and complex algorithms.
With AWS Deep Learning Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), developers can create and train
custom AI models with clusters of graphics processing units (GPUs) or compute-optimized
instances. AWS also includes deep learning development frameworks for MXNet and
TensorFlow.
On the consumer side, AWS technologies power the Alexa Voice Services, and a developer can
use the Alexa Skills Kit to build voice-based apps for Echo devices.

Mobile development
The AWS Mobile Hub offers a collection of tools and services for mobile app developers,
including the AWS Mobile SDK, which provides code samples and libraries.
A mobile app developer can also use Amazon Cognito to manage user access to mobile apps, as
well as Amazon Pinpoint to send push notifications to application end users and then analyze the
effectiveness of those communications.

Messages and notifications

AWS messaging services provide core communication for users and applications. Amazon
Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a managed message queue that sends, stores, and receives
messages between components of distributed applications to ensure that the parts of an
application work as intended.

Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) enables a business to send publish/subscribe

messages to endpoints, such as end-users or services. SNS includes a mobile messaging feature
that enables push messaging to mobile devices. Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) provides a
platform for IT professionals and marketers to send and receive emails.

AR & VR (Augmented reality and virtual reality)

AWS offers augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) development tools through
the Amazon Sumerian service. Amazon Sumerian allows users to create AR and VR
applications without needing to know to program or create 3D graphics. The service also
enables users to test and publish applications in-browser. Amazon Sumerian can be used in:
  3D web applications
 E-commerce & sales applications
 Marketing
 Online education
 Manufacturing
 Training simulations
 Gaming

Game development
AWS can also be used for game development. Large game developing companies, such as
Ubisoft, will use AWS services for their games, like For Honor. AWS can provide services for
each part of a game's lifecycle.
For example, AWS will provide a developer with back-end services, analytics, and developer
tools. Developer tools should help aid developers in making their game, while back-end services
might be able to help with building, deploying, or scaling a developer's platform. Analytics
might help developers better know their customers and how they play the game. Developers can
also store data, or host game data on AWS servers.

Internet of Things
AWS also has a variety of services that enable the internet of things (IoT) deployments.
The AWS IoT service provides a back-end platform to manage IoT devices and data ingestion to
other AWS storage and database services. The AWS IoT Button provides hardware for limited
IoT functionality and AWS Greengrass brings AWS to compute capabilities to IoT devices.

Other services
Amazon Web Services has a range of business productivity SaaS options, including:

 The Amazon Chime service enables online video meetings, calls, and text-based chats
across devices.

 Amazon WorkDocs, which is a file storage and sharing service

 Amazon WorkMail, which is a business email service with calendaring features.

Desktop and streaming application services include Amazon WorkSpaces, a remote desktop-as-
a-service platform (DaaS), and Amazon AppStream, a service that lets a developer stream a
desktop application from AWS to an end user's web browser.

AWS pricing models and competition

AWS offers a pay-as-you-go model for its cloud services, either on a per-hour or per-second
basis. There is also an option to reserve a set amount of computing capacity at a discounted
price for customers who prepay in whole, or who sign up for one- or three-year usage
commitments.
If potential customers can’t afford the costs, then AWS Free Tier is another possible avenue for
using AWS services. AWS Free Tier allows users to gain first-hand experience with AWS
services for free; they can access up to 60 products and start building on the AWS platform.
Free Tier is offered in three different options: always free, 12 months free, and trials.

AWS competes primarily with Microsoft Azure, Google, and IBM in the public IaaS market.