What is Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Service is a Cloud Computing Service. Cloud Computing is being used a lot in today's time. In Amazon Web Services, you get not only Cloud Computing but more than 100 Computing Services related to Cloud Computing. Amazon Web Services is such a Remote Computing Service that gives you Cloud Computing Service, that too with Unlimited Bandwidth and Customer Support, now you can use this Cloud Computing Service for your Website or Blog or for any Apps.
In 2006, Amazon Web Services began offering IT services in the market in the form of web services which is now known as cloud computing. With this cloud we do not need to plan for servers and other IT infrastructure which takes a lot of time in advance. Instead, these services can quickly spin up hundreds or thousands of servers within minutes and deliver results faster. We only pay for what we use with no up-front expenses and long-term commitments which makes AWS cost efficient.
Today, Amazon Web Services provides a highly reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that powers a multitude of businesses in 190 countries around the world.
What is Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing is an Internet-based computing service in which large clusters of remote servers are networked to allow centralized data storage, and online access to computer services or resources.
Using cloud computing, organizations can use shared computing and storage resources instead of building, operating and improving their own infrastructure.
- Cloud computing is a model that enables the following features.
- Users can access and release resources on demand.
- Resources can be scaled up or down automatically based on load.
- Resources are accessible over the network with proper security.
- Cloud service providers can enable a pay-as-you-go model where customers are charged based on the type of resources and per usage.
Types of Clouds
There are three types of Clouds Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud.
Public Cloud
In the public cloud, third-party service providers provide resources and services to their customers over the Internet. The customer's data and related security lies with the infrastructure owned by the service providers.
Private Cloud
A private cloud also provides almost the same features as a public cloud but the data and services are managed by the organization or by third parties only for the customer's organization. In this type of cloud, there is major control over the infrastructure so security related issues are minimized.
Hybrid Cloud
A hybrid cloud is a combination of both private and public clouds. The decision to move to private or public cloud generally depends on various parameters like sensitivity of data and applications, industry certifications and required standards, regulations etc.
Cloud Service Models
There are three types of service models in the cloud - IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
IaaS Model
IaaS stands for Infrastructure as a Service. It provides users with the ability to provision on-demand processing, storage and network connectivity. Using this services model, customers can develop their own applications on these resources.
PaaS Model
PaaS is located for Platform as a Service. Here the service provider provides various services like database, queue, workflow engine, e-mail etc. to its customers. The customer can use these components to build their own applications. The availability of services, resources and data backup is handled by the service provider which helps the customers to focus more on the functionality of their applications.
SaaS Model
SaaS is located for Software as a Service. As the name suggests, here third-party providers provide end-user applications to their customers with some administrative capability at the application level such as the ability to create and manage their own users. Also some level of customizability is possible such that customers can use their own corporate logo, colors etc.
Advantages of Cloud Computing
Here is a list of some of the most important advantages that Cloud Computing has to offer -
- Cost-Efficient
- Reliability
- Unlimited Storage
- Backup & Recovery
- Easy Access to Information
- Cost-Efficient
Building our own servers and equipment is time-consuming as well as expensive long before we need to order, pay to install, and configure expensive hardware. However using cloud computing we pay only the amount we use and when we use computing resources. Cloud computing is cost efficient in this manner.
Reliability
A cloud computing platform provides a much more managed, reliable and consistent service than an in-house IT infrastructure. It guarantees 24x7 and 365 days of service. If any one of the servers fails, the hosted applications and services can be easily moved to any of the available servers.
Unlimited Storage
Cloud computing provides almost unlimited storage capacity i.e. we do not have to worry about running out of storage space or increasing the availability of our existing storage space. We can use as per our requirement or as little as possible.
Backup & Recovery
Storing data in the cloud is relatively easier to back up and restore than to store it on a physical device. Cloud service providers also have enough technology to recover our data so there is facility to recover our data anytime.
Easy Access to Information
Once you have registered yourself in the cloud you can access your account from anywhere in the world, provided there is an internet connection at that point. There are various storage and security features that vary with the account type chosen.
Amazon Web Services Basic Architecture
This is the core of Amazon Web Services EC2, where EC2 has its Elastic Compute Cloud. EC2 allows users to use virtual machines of various configurations as per their requirement. It allows for various configuration options, mapping of individual servers, various pricing options, etc.
Load Balancing
Load balancing refers to the hardware or software load on the web server which affects the performance of the server as well as the application. The following is a graphical representation of the Amazon Web Services architecture with load balancing.
Hardware load balancer is a very common network tool used in traditional web application architecture.
Amazon Web Services provides the Elastic Load Balancing service that distributes traffic to EC2 instances across multiple available sources and performs the removal and addition of Amazon EC2 hosts from the load-balancing rotation.
Elastic load balancing can dynamically increase and shrink load-balancing capacity to accommodate traffic demands and can also support sticky sessions to meet more advanced routing needs.
Amazon Cloud Front
It is responsible for content delivery i.e. used to distribute the website. It can contain dynamic, static and streaming content using a global network of torrent locations. Content requests on the user's end are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, which improves performance.
Amazon Cloud-Front is optimized to work with other Amazon Web services such as Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2. It also works fine with any non-Amazon Web Services origin server and stores native files in a similar way.
Amazon Web Services has no contracts or monthly commitments. We only pay for as much or less content as we do through the Service
Elastic Load Balancer
It is used to spread the traffic to the web server which improves the performance. Amazon Web Services provides an elastic load balancing service in which traffic is distributed to EC2 instances across multiple available zones and the dynamic addition and removal of Amazon EC2 hosts from load-balancing rotations.
Elastic load balancing can dynamically increase and shrink load-balancing capacity according to traffic conditions.
Security Management
Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) provides a feature called Security Groups which is similar to an inbound network firewall in that we have to specify the protocols, ports and source IP ranges that your EC2 instances are allowed to access
Each EC2 instance can be assigned to one or more security groups, each of which routes the appropriate traffic to each instance. Security groups can be configured using specific subnets or IP addresses that limit access to EC2 instances.
Elastic Caches
Amazon Elastic Cache is a web service that manages the in-memory cache in the cloud. Cache plays a very important role in memory management and helps to reduce the load on services, improving performance and scalability at the database tier by caching frequently used information.
Amazon RDS
Amazon Relational Database Service provides similar access to the MySQL, Oracle, or Microsoft SQL Server database engines. Similar queries, applications and tools can be used with Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service).
It automatically patches the database software and manages the backup as per the instructions of the user. It also supports point-in-time recovery. No up-front investment is required, and we only pay for the resources we use.
Hosting RDMS on EC2 Instances
Amazon RDS allows users to install relational database management system of their choice like MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, DB2 etc on EC2 instance and manage as required
Amazon EC2 uses Amazon Elastic Block Storage similar to Network Attached Storage. All data and logs running on EC2 instances must be kept on an Amazon EBS volume that will be available even if the database host fails.
Amazon EBS volumes automatically provide redundancy within the availability zone thereby increasing the availability of simple disks. In addition, if the volume is not sufficient for the needs of our database, volumes can be added to increase the performance of our database.
Amazon manages the service provider storage using RDS and we only focus on managing the data.
Storage & Backups
The Amazon Web Services cloud provides a variety of options for storing, accessing, and backing up web application data and assets. Amazon Simple Storage Service provides a simple web service interface that can be used to store and retrieve data from anywhere, anytime, anywhere on the web.
Amazon Simple Storage Service resources are called as Buckets. The user can store as many objects as required within the buckets and can read, write and delete objects from the buckets.
Amazon EBS is effective for data that needs to be accessed as block storage and requires persistence beyond the life of the running instance, such as database partitions and application logs.
Auto Scaling
The difference between the Amazon Web Services cloud architecture and the traditional hosting model is that Amazon Web Services can dynamically scale the web application fleet on demand to handle changes in traffic.
The traffic forecasting model is used to arrange the hosts ahead of the forecast predicted in the traditional hosting model. In Amazon Web Services, instances can be provisioned on the fly according to a set of triggers for scaling back and forth across the fleet. Amazon auto scaling can create capacity clusters of servers that can grow or shrink on demand.
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