Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive, evolving cloud computing platform provided by Amazon. It provides a mix of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and packaged software as a service (SaaS) offerings. 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 “What is AWS” 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
Essential AWS Services
Amazon offers many services for application development and analytics. Here are some key building blocks in the AWS environment and a brief description of how they are leveraged against your needs.
EC2: Server configuration and hosting
Deploy your army of servers with Amazon EC2. In just minutes bring virtual machines–called instances–online. Select AMI’s with operating system of your choice (Linux or Windows) and start deploying your clusters.
Amazon S3: Data storage and movement
To build a powerful cloud application you need scalable storage. AWS Simple Storage Services(S3) provides all the needed tools to store and move data around the globe using ‘buckets.
Optional AWS Support Services
In addition to the essential cloud services, Amazon offers a host of optional products for enhancing and securing your cloud ecosystem. Here’s a look at some of the more popular helper services.
Lambda: Functions for optimized compute
Pay only for the actual milliseconds of compute time your code require to execute and avoid complexity and management overhead of configuring and managing underlying AWS infrastructure. AWS Lambda abstracts underlying AWS infrastructure and allows developers to focus on running their code.
AWS Config: Infrastructure management
Keep a bird’s eye view on your AWS infrastructure and stay secure and compliant with AWS Config. See up to date resource inventory and track any changes to your infrastructure from one convenient management panel.
Elastic Beanstalk: Build and scale great web apps
As the name implies, it’s impossible to grow faster than Elastic Beanstalk, the AWS tool for deploying and managing web applications designed in most of the top programming languages. The adjustable autoscale settings allow your apps to grow and contract as needed to avoid latency and wasted resource utilization.
CloudTrail: Monitor and audit activity
Application program interfaces calls (APIs) take place within your environment at a rate that can vary from a few transactions per minute to millions per second. AWS Cloudtrail captures key information about these transactions, including the source IP address, the event time, and more. The data from CloudTrail is especially critical for meeting security standards and complying with internal audits and standards or regulations such as PCI and HIPAA.
Amazon EFS: Manage your files
Quickly and easily create file systems through a simple web interface with Amazon Elastic File System (EFS). EFS grows and shrinks your file storage system as needed so you never run out of space. Mount one file system to multiple EC2 instances to share common data and workload sources, manage access control lists, and more with EFS. These services add massive flexibility, scalability, and monitoring features that will help your organization master your VPC environment in AWS.