What Is AWS (Amazon Web Services) and How It Works?

This blog is intended to cover What Is AWS (Amazon Web Services), along with what is cloud computing and the below key points in order to understand why it’s so popular and the best.

  • Why AWS is the best?
  • History of Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • Features of Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • Importance of AWS service
  • Benefits of AWS
  • Applications of AWS services
  • Companies using AWS
  • Security services in AWS
  • Database services in AWS
  • Computing services in AWS

Amazon Web Services is one of the most important cloud service providers these days. AWS cloud has many management tools, that make it even more robust. Now they are providing us with the best quality cloud solutions with more than 200 cloud services.

AWS is more secure and reliable. AWS is the most demanded cloud service provider because they provide the best infrastructure and have many applications, its secure and cost-effective services. Let’s discuss this more in detail.

What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing is a data storage service or computing service provider that we can run from anywhere on the Internet instead of hosting those in the local servers. Cloud computing is not static in one place.

Cloud computing is adopted worldwide nowadays. The most important benefit is the reduction of liabilities as everything is managed by the service provider. Cloud computing is not just for storing data, it has hosts of other services and options.

We have even the option of scaling up and down the service and storage as per our demand in the cloud with minimal time and price within minutes as compared to local servers which take a lot of time and effort to scale up and waste money when we scale down.

What is AWS Cloud Computing
What is AWS Cloud Computing

In cloud computing, we have flexibility in accessing data anywhere throughout the globe where we have internet facilities.

Cloud computing allows us to use applications as per our requirements along with ample storage space, we have also great security in the cloud as well to safeguard sensitive data stored.

We can also handle TB and PB of data in the cloud as we have no limit on storage space and processing capabilities.

With Cloud, the prices are very cheap as compared to on-premises setup which needs a lot of planning and budget allocation.

That’s the reason many big-shot companies are opting to move to the cloud. Along with all this data security and privacy are also well maintained in the cloud. So now the question that arises is How much does AWS Cost?

What is AWS?

AWS is Amazon Web Services. AWS is a key player in providing cloud solutions to major clients across the globe. AWS provides us with a host of services. AWS is very secure, it keeps our data safe. AWS provides us with flexibility, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and security.

With the flexibility of AWS, we can choose as per our wish.

  • Which operating system do we want
  • What languages to use?
  • How many instances do we need to create?
  • How much storage is required?

AWS provides services and charges as per usage. It’s scalable. We can choose the instances as per our requirement, increase or decrease the number of instances as per the demand on the go and we pay only as per our usage.

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So that means we can scale up and scale down as well. Scaling horizontally and vertically is also an option we get in AWS.

Why AWS is the best?

In the absence of AWS in order to increase the capacity, we had to buy servers and set up infrastructure which demands time and a lot of money and manpower. Then comes maintenance which also needs money and manpower.

When the demand goes up again then we have to go through the same cycle again, don’t you think it’s too much time taking and hectic?

Let’s think about a situation where suddenly the demand goes down drastically, so it’s the ultimate waste of money and resources.

Think about the scenario when we have a sale on an eCommerce site, the demand goes up drastically with the users increasing instantly and suddenly it goes down once the sale ends.

The answer to all the above questions is AWS, with AWS in place we can handle all these with just a click of buttons, that’s true!! AWS has that flexibility and pricing with which we just have to pay for what we use the AWS resources for that span of time only, of course, it’s very secure. Isn’t it wonderful!!

History of Amazon Web Services (AWS)

  • 2006–Amazon web service (AWS) Launched.
  • 2007– 180,00 Developers signed AWS.
  • 2010– Amazon.com services moved to AWS.
  • 2011-Problem occurred in the EBS book, but they resolved within two days.
  • 2012-First Reinvent conference occurred.
  • 2013– Certification Launched.
  • 2014– Committed to achieving 100% renewable energy.
  • 2016– AWS revenue was

Importance of AWS service

Amazon Web Services can be used for all kinds of business purposes. Amazon Web Services has the capability to store data, provide analytical service, compute service, and many other applications, including storage, enterprise applications, Migration, and messaging.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) give us the opportunity to choose a programming language as per our comfort level, an operating system as per our preference, and a storage service that suits our budget.

Key Benefits Of Using Amazon Web Services(AWS)

1. Flexibility- With the flexibility of AWS, we can choose which operating system we want as per our requirement, the language we prefer to code, the number of instances, and the storage class.

2. Cost-effective – AWS bills us for the number of hours we work, based on CPU and memory, data transfer, and time all combined together.

3. Scalability- With scalability we can increase or decrease the instances as per our requirement. We can scale horizontally as well as vertically.

4. Security- AWS is providing high security to keep our data safe. Data is stored encrypted as well it’s encrypted even when in transit making it highly secure. It has end-to-end encryption. It has features like AWS WAF and AWS Shield to safeguard web applications.

  • Best Pay Structure
  • Easily Scale up and down
  • Easy to use
  • Available Worldwide
  • Flexibility
  • Cost-Effective
  • Secure
  • Experienced Support
  • High performance
  • Reliable

Implementation of AWS services

  • Media sharing(Image / videos)
  • Application hosting
  • Website Hosting
  • Mobile and social applications
  • Storage and backup
  • Academic computing
  • Search Engine
  • Content delivery
  • Cache
  • Social networking

Companies using AWS

  • Netflix
  • Adobe
  • Samsung
  • Unilever
  • Autodesk
  • Apple
  • Slack
  • Amazon
  • Adroll
  • Instagram
  • Facebook

Security services in AWS

1. WAF (Web application firewall) – For protecting web applications the best option is to use WAF.

It allows you to control access to your content by using an IP address from where the request originated or request query string values.

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There are three things that make the WAF secure they are access control lists (ACL), rules, and rule groups.

2. Amazon Macie- The best way to protect sensitive data and a fully managed data discovery service is to use Amazon Macie.

It automatically and continuously monitors and detects new data in S3. Using Ml/AI, Macie has the ability to familiarize data access patterns over time. It uses a technique called NLP for data interpretation and classification.

It has the capacity to even apply risk scores depending on the data business values based on which alerts can be configured. Maintain compliance requirements for various regulations.

3. Amazon guard duty- AWS has also a tool that protects your account and workload and that’s done by GuardDuty.

4. AWS config- Helps with auditing and compliance of your AWS resources. Help records configurations and change over time.

Athena can query the possibility of storing AWS config data into AWS S3). Can configure alerts(SNS notifications) for any changes, and can also configure to aggregate data for multiple regions and accounts.

Configuration rules

  • We have over 75 AWS Config rules which can be used as per our requirements. Options to make custom config rules is also available which can be defined for Lambda and EC2.
  • Configure to evaluate the rules either for any change or at pre-defined intervals.
  • Pricing: No free tier

5. AWS certificate manager (ACM)- AWS certificate manager is providing you a private certificate to manage CA service. It is help you to securely managed your private certificates.

Database services in AWS

1. Amazon Aurora-It’s HA native. Aurora costs more than RDS (20% more) but is way more efficient than traditional RDS.

2. Amazon elastic cache- When we need fast data retrieval which a native disk storage device cannot give, in that case, ElastiCache is the solution as it provides an in-memory data store and cache mainly used in web applications where performance is the key.

3. Data encryption: To protect data when it’s being transmitted and also when at rest.

4. Amazon DynamoDB–Don’t have a data of specific structure then Amazon DynamoDB is there, it’s a fast and flexible NoSQL solution from AWS.

5. Amazon Neptune- Neptune is very fast, it is a fully-managed graph database. It is very easy to run. They work only with highly connected datasets.

6. Amazon time stream- Amazon time stream is a serverless time series database service that can scale to handle trillions of events per day for as low as 1/10th the cost of a relational database and up to 1000X faster.

Computing services in AWS

1. Amazon EC2- AWS EC2 belongs to compute domain. It provides secure, resizable computing capacity in the cloud. This feature can very helpful to developers.

Some features of Amazon EC2:-

  • Scaling (Instances can be scaled up and down)
  • Integrated with other services, for example, S3, and RDS.
  • Only pay what you use no commitments.
  • Flexibility to launch instances in one or more regions.
  • It supports many operating systems.
  • Working with Amazon VPC provides a secure network of resources.

2. AWS batch:- Batch processing solves the time-consuming and challenging work where you trigger to manage job scheduling/running and provision the optimal computer capacity to process your jobs. Parameters are CPU, GPU, and Memory requirements.

3. AWS Wavelength:- AWS Wavelength is a computing service. Wavelength use in healthcare, connected vehicles, smart factories, real-time gaming, AR/VR/XR, and interactive live streams.

4. AWS App runner- Specify CPU, and memory to run your container, exposed with ALB. Its works with private ECR. It is a scale based on incoming connections. AMAZON APP runner creates code pipelines for you. It does not work with EFS.

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5. AWS Elastic Beanstalk- Want to launch a web application that has the capacity to scale as per requirement then Beanstalk is the easy solution for the same. They developed with java, .NET, PHP, Nodes.js, Python, and Ruby.

One container per EC2, exposed with ALB. Its works with private ECR. No serverless (Fargate)option. Auto-scale based on ALB connection, and EC2 metrics. Its works with EFS. It can be cost-ineffective. An important thing is super to run your container.

6. Amazon light sail-One container per pseudo-EC2, exposed with ALB. Its works with public ECR. No serverless (Fargate) option. You specify the number of pseudo-EC2, with no auto-scaling. Need to peer light sail VPC to regular VPC for EFS. Fixed cost per month.

7. AWS Fargate- Fargate still belongs to either ECS or EKS. It’s maxed 4vCPU, 30 GB RAM. No GPU. No windows container (Convert to. Net core to run in Linux). No daemon set, no privileged mode. Cost is based on CPU and memory.

FAQ On What is AWS

Q1: How flexible is Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

Ans: Totally Flexible based on the customer requirements. Option to select the size of the device as per your budget, flexible with choosing an operating system, programming language, databases, the option of NoSQL database as well and many more services and many services are pay as per the usage.

Q2: Which language is best for AWS?

Ans: Python, Java, Go, and Javascript have loads of options and all are the best languages for Amazon web service.

All are supported by AWS and it all depends on the preference of the customer in Lambda.

Q3: Why AWS is the best cloud?

Ans: One of the important AWS advantages is its pricing model. Pay as you use, with no charges when the code is sitting idle doing nothing. AWS is cloud computing affordable for you.

Have a look at the below articles for gaining more knowledge in AWS:

Conclusion:

In this article What is AWS, we saw loads of services offered by AWS, and believe me there are many more services (which will be covered in Subsequent Articles) that can be chosen by any customer based on the requirement and usage.

In case anything is extra that the customer feels is not required then it can be simply torn down and you pay just what is used as there are no commitments in AWS which tells us the most important thing about AWS that it’s flexible.

Resources in AWS can be increased and decreased based on the demand which tells us it’s scalable both up and down in minutes.

Happy Reading!!

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