Top 10 AWS Amazon Web Services Explained
- What can you acheive with AWS Amazon Web Services Cloud Computing?
- Translate AWS product names into easy to understand cloud computing concepts.
- Gain your cloud computing business benefits sooner.
| AWS Name | Service Type | Amazon Web Services Definition |
|---|---|---|
| EC2 | Virtual Machine | This is a computing resource. There are over 40 types to choose from. The differences are in processor quantity, memory size, storage size, storage type and networking. e.g. t2.nano | t2.micro | t2.small | t2.medium | t2.large | t2.xlarge | t2.2xlarge. One you have a virtual machine you can pick the operating system to use (Amazon Machine Image AMI). You can pick a pre configured AMI, install your own operating system or buy one from the AWS Marketplace. You pay for the EC2 virtual machine by the hour of use. There is a discount if you buy in advance. |
| S3 | Redundant File Storage | This is triple redundant storage. Your data is held in 3 data centres in one region. Files are held in folders called Buckets. Buckets can be public or private. Buckets can be set up to display static web pages. You can associate a domain name to a bucket. S3 is paid for by GB of storage per month (a few cents per GB) plus outbound traffic volume. |
| RDS | Relational Database Service | This is a database service with maintenance tasks taken care of. e.g. Updates, backups, patches, replicas. Database choices include: MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and the new, MySQL-compatible Amazon Aurora DB engine. Databases can be run on magnetic (general) or solid state storage (SSD). Databases can provisioned from 5 GB to 6 TB in size. You are billed by the hours in use, database size and request count. |
| VPC | Virtual Private Cloud | This is a logical grouping of AWS cloud services. It is configured with its own private network address range. Your network can split into subnets if desired. You can add a public IP address (Internet gateway) if desired. VPN connections to a corporate network are possible. There is a Default VPC or you can configure your own. The VPC itself is free. |
| Elastic Beanstalk | Auto Scaling Solution | This is a system to provide for an application using EC2 computing and S3 storage. New software versions can be updated to S3. The new version is then automatically installed on EC2. If the application is overloaded then more EC2 instances can start up automatically. Load balancing across multiple availability zones (data centres) is possible. Elastic Beanstalk itself is free. |
| Cloudwatch | Trigger, Actions and Statistics | This can check for triggers e.g. messages in queue, EC2 over 80% utlisation etc, EC2 network offline. Once a trigger is detected then an action can be performed. e.g. Run a process to handle messages, start a new EC2, send an alarm email etc. Cloudwatch can be used to collect statistics on the performance of your cloud computing resources. e.g. Performance per minute, 5 minutes or per hour. |
| SQS | Simple Queue Service | This is used for messaging between computers. Up to 256 kB of text per message. Messaging can be queued an processed when possible. Messages are help up to 4 days by default. Each queue has its own unique URL. Each message has a unique message ID. There can be up to 120,000 messages in a queue. CloudTrail logs are kept on queue activities. Queue costs relate to the number of requests of the queue. |
| SNS | Simple Notification Service | This can be used to send email, sms, SQS or HTML endpoint messages as a service. You need to define the publisher and subscriber. SNS can operate as a email server. |
| Route 53 | Domain Names and DNS | This routes Internet traffic to domain names within AWS, load balancers or to Internet Gateways in your solutions. Advanced features include routing globally to the closest data centre from the one domain name. Domain names can be bought and allocated your AWS services as required. |
| IAM | Identity and Access Management | Control who can access and control your AWS resources. This can work with your corporate identity federation. Group policies are possible. Multi factor authentication is possible. |
| Other AWS Services | Type | Description |
| Lightsail | Web Server | Virtual Private Server with web server and content managment system. Solid State drive are used. Five levels of hosting based on memory, processor, storage and traffic. |
| Cloudfront | Web site file delivery network | Provide website static files from multiple data centres around the world. Improve web page load speed and user satisfaction. |
| Lambda | Serverless Functions | Run code functions and pay per run. No EC2 server required. |
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