AWS Overview
The Cloud
- Internet-based solution
- Cloud operates on physical servers
- There’s limited knowledge of hardware location and their capabilities
- Clouds may be limited to a single organization (enterprise clouds), or be available to many organizations (public cloud)
Cloud Computing
- On-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user
- Processing on the Internet or a private network where the exact processor location is unknown
- The use of AWS can reduce hardware, operational and deployment costs;
AWS Benefits
 Hardware Cost |
Operational Cost |
Deployment Cost |
|
– upfront investment vs. usage-based cost – operational cost to manage physical vs. virtual infrastructure; – people can be freed to do other work; – faster turn around on deployment; – scale up and down as needed; | ||
| Resiliency |
Performance |
Capacity |
|
– resiliency refers to recoverability from a failure (health monitoring); – auto-scaling servers based on usage; – capacity in terms of storage, cup, memory etc. | ||
Cloud Computing Deployment Methods
- Full Cloud Deployment/ All-In Cloud Deployment
- All Components are in the cloud, including databases, processing, storage etc.
- Nothing is available on-premises
- Hybrid Deployment
- Some resources are internal, while others are in the cloud
- e.g. long-running processes on the cloud while others internally
- e.g. archiving on the cloud as data is not needed for fast retrieval
- Some resources are internal, while others are in the cloud
Cloud Service Models
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
- The entire infrastructure is in the cloud, servers, network services etc.
- Platforms and software run on other’s infrastructure
- You must manage it all
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)
- You don’t manage the infrastructure
- Applications are deployed onto the platform instead
- Typical web hosting model
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
- Someone else develops the software, and you use it from the cloud
- Early examples include email services (e.g. Gmail)
AWS Foundation Services
 Compute |  Storage |
 EC2 – Elastic Compute Cloud; the leading focus service of the exam; this is how to build an instance; manual setup & configuration. Elastic Beanstalk – application-based environments that can be easily spun up; auto-config based specs;  Lambda – serverless apps; run code without servers; ECS – Elastic Container Service; |  S3 – Simple Storage Service; primary object storage; objects in buckets; EFS – Elastic File System; in relation to EC2 volumes/ drives; Glacier – archives; the least expensive storage option;based on non-frequent access; Storage Gateway – how to access cloud storage locally; |
 Databases |  Migration |
 RDS – Relational Database Service; a fully managed service that makes it easier to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the AWS Cloud; DynamoDB – NoSQL; a key-value and document database that delivers single-digit millisecond performance at any scale; ElastiCache – a service that makes it easy to set up, manage, and scale a distributed in-memory data store or cache environment in the cloud; Amazon Redshift – a fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service in the cloud; |  Amazon Migration Hub – importing data/ VMs into AWS; a single place to discover your existing servers, plan migrations and track the status of each application migration; App Discovery Service – helps enterprise customers plan migration projects by gathering information about their on-premises data centers; Database Migration Service Server Migration Service Snowball – service that uses physical storage devices to transfer large amounts of data between S3 and onsite data storage location at faster-than-internet speeds; |
 Network & Content Delivery |  Mgmt & Governance |
 VPC – Virtual Private Cloud, a virtual network dedicated to an AWS account. It is logically isolated from other virtual networks in the AWS Cloud; CloudFront – a web service that speeds up distribution of your static and dynamic web content, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and image files, to your users; Route 53 – a highly available and scalable cloud Domain Name System (DNS) web service. API Gateway – management tool to create, configure, and deploy an APIs; Direct Connect – used to establish private connectivity between AWS and a private data center, office, or the collocated environment; |  CloudWatch – a monitoring and management service that provides data and actionable insights for AWS, hybrid, and on-premises applications and infrastructure resources; Auto Scaling – a service that lets you build scaling plans that automate how groups of different resources respond to changes in demand; Organizations – an account management service that enables you to consolidate multiple AWS accounts into an organization that you create and centrally manage; CloudFormation – a service that gives developers and businesses an easy way to create a collection of related AWS and third-party resources and provision them in an orderly and predictable fashion; CloudTrail – a service that enables governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing of an AWS account; Trusted Advisor – it helps to observe best practices for the use of AWS by inspecting environment to save money, improve system performance and reliability, and closing security gaps; Config – a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources; |
 Analytics |  Sec & Compliance |
 Kinesis – a service for processing big data in real-time. It is capable of processing hundreds of terabytes per hour from high volumes of streaming data from sources such as operating logs, financial transactions and social media feed; |  IAM – Identity and Access Management; It enables you to manage access to AWS services and resources securely. Cognito – a simple user identity and data synchronization service that helps you securely manage and synchronize app data for your users across their mobile devices. Inspector – an automated security assessment service that helps improve the security and compliance of applications deployed on AWS; CloudHSM – a cloud-based hardware security module (HSM) that enables you to easily generate and use your own encryption keys on the AWS Cloud; Directory Services – it lets you run Microsoft Active Directory (AD) as a managed service; WAF – Web Application Firewall; Shield – a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS; |
 App Integration |  Cost Mgmt |
 SNS – Simple Notification Service; a highly available, durable, secure, fully managed pub/sub messaging service that enables you to decouple microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications; SQS – Simple Queue Service; a fully managed message queuing service that enables you to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless application; |  AWS Cost Explorer – it lets you visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over time; AWS Budgets – give you the ability to set custom budgets that alert you when your costs or usage exceed (or are forecasted to exceed) your budgeted amount; |
 Media Services |  End User Computing |
 Elastic Transcoder – a media transcoding in the cloud; Kinesis Video Streams – a service that makes it easy to securely stream video from connected devices to AWS for analytics, machine learning (ML), playback, and other processing. |  WorkSpaces – a cloud-based virtual desktop that can act as a replacement for a traditional desktop; AppStreams 2.0 – a fully managed application streaming service. You centrally manage your desktop applications on AppStream 2.0 and securely deliver them to any computer; |
Shared Responsibility Model
AWS customer is responsible for the security of their data and client-side ops, while AWS is responsible for the security of its services and infrastructure.
Regions and Availability Zones
Regions – a physical location or a boundary within AWS that consists of two or more Availability Zones.
Availability Zone – one or more discrete data centers with redundant power and networks; housed in separate facilities;
Edge Areas – endpoints for AWS, which are used for caching content. They are typically consisting of CloudFront, Amazon’s Content Delivery Network (CDN).
