AWS (Amazon Web Services)

What is Cloud Computing

The term cloud refers to a network or the internet. It is a technology that uses remote servers on the internet to store, manage, and access data online rather than local drives. The data can be anything such as files, images, documents, audio, video, and more.

There are the following operations that we can do using cloud computing:

• Developing new applications and services
• Storage, back up, and recovery of data
• Hosting blogs and websites
• Delivery of software on demand
• Analysis of data
• Streaming videos and audios

Why Cloud Computing?

Small as well as large IT companies, follow the traditional methods to provide the IT infrastructure. That means for any IT company, we need a Server Room that is the basic need of IT companies.

In that server room, there should be a database server, mail server, networking, firewalls, routers, modem, switches, QPS (Query Per Second means how much queries or load will be handled by the server), configurable system, high net speed, and the maintenance engineers.

• To establish such IT infrastructure, we need to spend lots of money. To overcome all these problems and to reduce the IT infrastructure cost, Cloud Computing comes into existence.

Characteristics of Cloud Computing

The characteristics of cloud computing are given below:

1) Agility

The cloud works in a distributed computing environment. It shares resources among users and works very fast.

2) High availability and reliability

The availability of servers is high and more reliable because the chances of infrastructure failure are minimum.

3) High Scalability

Cloud offers "on-demand" provisioning of resources on a large scale, without having engineers for peak loads.

4) Multi-Sharing

With the help of cloud computing, multiple users and applications can work more efficiently with cost reductions by sharing common infrastructure.

5) Device and Location Independence

Cloud computing enables the users to access systems using a web browser regardless of their location or what device they use e.g. PC, mobile phone, etc. As infrastructure is off-site (typically provided by a third-party) and accessed via the Internet, users can connect from anywhere.

6) Maintenance

Maintenance of cloud computing applications is easier, since they do not need to be installed on each user's computer and can be accessed from different places. So, it reduces the cost also.

7) Low Cost

By using cloud computing, the cost will be reduced because to take the services of cloud computing, IT company need not to set its own infrastructure and pay-as-per usage of resources.

8) Services in the pay-per-use mode

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are provided to the users so that they can access services on the cloud by using these APIs and pay the charges as per the usage of services.

Cloud Computing Architecture

As we know, cloud computing technology is used by both small and large organizations to store the information in cloud and access it from anywhere at anytime using the internet connection.

Cloud computing architecture is a combination of service-oriented architecture and event-driven architecture.

Cloud computing architecture is divided into the following two parts -

• Front End
• Back End

Front End

The front end is used by the client. It contains client-side interfaces and applications that are required to access the cloud computing platforms. The front end includes web servers (including Chrome, Firefox, internet explorer, etc.), thin & fat clients, tablets, and mobile devices.

Back End

The back end is used by the service provider. It manages all the resources that are required to provide cloud computing services. It includes a huge amount of data storage, security mechanism, virtual machines, deploying models, servers, traffic control mechanisms, etc.

Types of Cloud

There are the following 4 types of cloud that you can deploy according to the organization's needs-

 Public Cloud

Public cloud is open to all to store and access information via the Internet using the pay-per-usage method.

In public cloud, computing resources are managed and operated by the Cloud Service Provider (CSP).

Example: Amazon elastic compute cloud (EC2), IBM SmartCloud Enterprise, Microsoft, Google App Engine, Windows Azure Services Platform.

Private Cloud

Private cloud is also known as an internal cloud or corporate cloud. It is used by organizations to build and manage their own data centers internally or by the third party. It can be deployed using Opensource tools such as Openstack and Eucalyptus.

Based on the location and management, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) divide private cloud into the following two parts-

• On-premise private cloud
• Outsourced private cloud

Hybrid Cloud

Hybrid Cloud is a combination of the public cloud and the private cloud. we can say:

Hybrid Cloud = Public Cloud + Private Cloud

Hybrid cloud is partially secure because the services which are running on the public cloud can be accessed by anyone, while the services which are running on a private cloud can be accessed only by the organization's users.

Example: Google Application Suite (Gmail, Google Apps, and Google Drive), Office 365 (MS Office on the Web and One Drive), Amazon Web Services.

Community Cloud

Community cloud allows systems and services to be accessible by a group of several organizations to share the information between the organization and a specific community. It is owned, managed, and operated by one or more organizations in the community, a third party, or a combination of them.

Example: Health Care community cloud

Cloud Service Models

There are the following three types of cloud service models -

   Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

   Platform as a Service (PaaS)

   Software as a Service (SaaS)

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

IaaS is also known as Hardware as a Service (HaaS). It is a computing infrastructure managed over the internet. The main advantage of using IaaS is that it helps users to avoid the cost and complexity of purchasing and managing the physical servers.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

PaaS cloud computing platform is created for the programmer to develop, test, run, and manage the applications.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

SaaS is also known as "on-demand software". It is a software in which the applications are hosted by a cloud service provider. Users can access these applications with the help of internet connection and web browser.

AWS (Amazon Web Services)

AWS stands for Amazon Web Services which uses distributed IT infrastructure to provide different IT resources on demand.

Our AWS tutorial includes all the topics such as introduction, history of aws, global infrastructure, features of aws, IAM, Storage services, Database services, etc.

What is AWS?

• AWS stands for Amazon Web Services.
• The AWS service is provided by the Amazon that uses distributed IT infrastructure to provide different IT resources available on demand. It provides different services such as infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and packaged software as a service (SaaS).
• Amazon launched AWS, a cloud computing platform to allow the different organizations to take advantage of reliable IT infrastructure.

Uses of AWS

• A small manufacturing organization uses their expertise to expand their business by leaving their IT management to the AWS.
• A large enterprise spread across the globe can utilize the AWS to deliver the training to the distributed workforce.
• An architecture consulting company can use AWS to get the high-compute rendering of construction prototype.
• A media company can use the AWS to provide different types of content such as ebox or audio files to the worldwide files.

Features of AWS

The following are the features of AWS:

• Flexibility
• Cost-effective
• Scalable and elastic
• Secure
• Experienced

AWS Global Infrastructure

• AWS is a cloud computing platform which is globally available.
• Global infrastructure is a region around the world in which AWS is based. Global infrastructure is a bunch of high-level IT services which is shown below:
• AWS is available in 19 regions, and 57 availability zones in December 2018 and 5 more regions 15 more availability zones for 2019.

The following are the components that make up the AWS infrastructure:

• Availability Zones
• Region
• Edge locations
• Regional Edge Caches

Availability zone as a Data Center

• An availability zone is a facility that can be somewhere in a country or in a city. Inside this facility, i.e., Data Centre, we can have multiple servers, switches, load balancing, firewalls. The things which interact with the cloud sits inside the data centers.
• An availability zone can be a several data centers, but if they are close together, they are counted as 1 availability zone.

Region

• A region is a geographical area. Each region consists of 2 more availability zones.
• A region is a collection of data centers which are completely isolated from other regions.
• A region consists of more than two availability zones connected to each other through links.
• Availability zones are connected through redundant and isolated metro fibers.

Edge Locations

• Edge locations are the endpoints for AWS used for caching content.
• Edge locations consist of CloudFront, Amazon's Content Delivery Network (CDN).
• Edge locations are more than regions. Currently, there are over 150 edge locations.
• Edge location is not a region but a small location that AWS have. It is used for caching the content.
• Edge locations are mainly located in most of the major cities to distribute the content to end users with reduced latency.
• For example, some user accesses your website from Singapore; then this request would be redirected to the edge location closest to Singapore where cached data can be read.

Regional Edge Cache

• AWS announced a new type of edge location in November 2016, known as a Regional Edge Cache.
• Regional Edge cache lies between CloudFront Origin servers and the edge locations.
• A regional edge cache has a large cache than an individual edge location.
• Data is removed from the cache at the edge location while the data is retained at the Regional Edge Caches.
• When the user requests the data, then data is no longer available at the edge location. Therefore, the edge location retrieves the cached data from the Regional edge cache instead of the Origin servers that have high latency.

Who's Using Amazon Web Services? [2020 Update]

Who's using AWS? Who are the biggest AWS users, and what kind of workloads are they using AWS for?

Here's a spoiler: If you're looking at AWS for enterprise-level deployment, you have plenty of company, and if your enterprise is already using AWS, you're in very good company indeed.

A Look at AWS Users

According to Amazon, the number of active AWS users exceeds 1,000,000.

While small and mid-size companies make up the majority of that user base, recent polls by private consulting firms suggest that enterprise-scale users make up at least 10% of that total.

AWS Customers: The Ultimate List

Whether it’s technology giants, television networks, banks, food manufacturers or governments, many different organisations are using AWS to develop, deploy and host applications.

Here are the names that are on record publicly as using AWS:

Aon, Adobe, Airbnb, Alcatel-Lucent, AOL, Acquia, AdRoll, AEG, Alert Logic, Autodesk, Bitdefender, BMW, British Gas, Baidu, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Canon, Capital One, Channel 4, Chef, Citrix, Coinbase, Comcast, Coursera, Disney, Docker, Dow Jones, European Space Agency, ESPN, Expedia, Financial Times, FINRA, General Electric, GoSquared, Guardian News & Media, Harvard Medical School, Hearst Corporation, Hitachi, HTC, IMDb, International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, International Civil Aviation Organization, ITV, iZettle, Johnson & Johnson, JustGiving, JWT, Kaplan, Kellogg’s, Lamborghini, Lonely Planet, Lyft, Made.com, McDonalds, NASA, NASDAQ OMX, National Rail Enquiries, National Trust, Netflix, News International, News UK, Nokia, Nordstrom, Novartis, Pfizer, Philips, Pinterest, Quantas, Reddit, Sage, Samsung, SAP, Schneider Electric, Scribd, Securitas Direct, Siemens, Slack, Sony, SoundCloud, Spotify, Square Enix, Tata Motors, The Weather Company, Twitch, Turner Broadcasting,Ticketmaster, Time Inc., Trainline, Ubisoft, UCAS, Unilever, US Department of State, USDA Food and Nutrition Service, UK Ministry of Justice, Vodafone Italy, WeTransfer, WIX, Xiaomi, Yelp, Zynga and Zillow.

The Big Spenders

Clearly, AWS is the cloud computing platform of choice for businesses across a range of industries. But who are the biggest, and how much money are they spending on these services?

Tthe top ten AWS users based on EC2 monthly spend are:

1. Netflix: $19 million
2. Twitch: $15 million
3. LinkedIn: $13 million
4. Facebook: $11 million
5. Turner Broadcasting: $10 million
6. BBC: $9 million
7. Baidu: $9 million
8. ESPN: $8 million
9. Adobe: $8 million
10. Twitter: $7 million

Putting AWS to Use

Now that you have a better understanding of the different types of AWS customers, you’re probably wondering how they actually use the platform? Here are a few examples:

Netflix Pushes AWS to its Limits

Among enterprises, Netflix was the most prominent early user of AWS, adopting it in 2009.

According to an article in Business Insider from January 2016, Netflix placed enormous demands on the resources available to AWS at the time, often pushing the service to its limits and beyond. The ongoing pressure from Netflix, combined with Amazon's willingness to improve its service and meet its customers' requirements, pushed AWS to develop into the full, enterprise-scale integrated set of services that it is today.

A Few AWS Case Studies

Let's have a closer look at some of AWS's biggest clients:

Unilever

Unilever North America, the U.S. branch of the venerable global-scale manufacturer of food, household, and other consumer products, found that its time-to-market (crucial in the consumer goods industry) was being held back by the lack of standardised technology among its on-premises IT facilities and websites.

Unilever conducted an exhaustive review of the available cloud-based options, and finally chose to migrate to AWS, using a full range of AWS services to support 1,700 digital marketing web properties on a worldwide basis.

For Unilever, the advantages include increased speed of rollout for a website (now two days, rather than the pre-AWS average of two weeks), and the increased speed at which changes to a site or a marketing campaign can be made. Unilever also uses AWS for comprehensive backup and disaster recovery, and for rapid deployment of standardised infrastructure.

GE Oil & Gas

The oil and gas division of General Electric has migrated 350+ applications to AWS, cutting the average cost of ownership by over 50%, according to their own estimate. For GE, the migration process is ongoing, with constant review of on-premises applications and services to see which ones are the best candidates for transfer to the cloud.

The ability to monitor the use of cloud-based applications is important to GE's IT team, since it allows them to accurately gauge expenses and savings, to determine when services should be active (and thus billable), and when they should be turned off.

AWS' capacity for handling large amounts of data is important to GE as well. The oil and gas division needs to be able to process enormous volumes of mission-critical automated pipeline inspection data. It is using AWS technology to store and transport the data, and for data analysis and processing, saving time and improving the quality of the results.

Kellogg’s

The Kellogg Company, or Kellogg’s, a familiar breakfast-table name, is a company with a long history (founded in 1888), with worldwide operations. For Kellogg’s (as is the case throughout the breakfast-cereal industry), product promotions are all-important.

The Kellogg company had been relying on an on-premises database for modelling marketing campaigns and analysing promotion and sales data, but the system, which could run no more than a single simulation per day, was no longer able to keep up with the company's needs.

As a replacement, Kellogg’s chose a SAP promotion planning and simulation application. At the same time, they chose to run the SAP application on AWS, rather than on-premises. The decision to go with AWS was motivated by a number of factors, including speed and overall capacity. (The system handles 16 TB of weekly sales data, with several dozen marketing simulations on a weekly basis.) AWS also offered high availability, reduced cost, and flexibility in IT planning. The combination of SAP and AWS (with its support for SAP software) has given Kellogg’s a significant advantage in a very competitive market.

Shell

Like many other large businesses operating on a global scale, energy giant Shell has taken steps to protect itself from the rising threat of cyber attacks. In particular, the Netherlands-headquartered firm decided to look at ways it could improve its security information and event management solution.

To stay ahead of cyber criminals, Shell required the ability to run detailed analysis of trends over time and continually spot vulnerabilities through a cyberthreat hunting function. The challenge? Its SIEM solution just didn’t have the capacity to perform these critical functionalities.

Using around 100 EC2 instances and Splunk Enterprise Security applications, the firm has implemented a much more powerful cyber security solution for analysing real-time and historical data. This means Shell can protect itself from current and emerging cyber threats. According to Shell CyberDefence manager Oskar Brink, the firm is “finding more than twice as many events that could have resulted in security incidents and breaches”.

Expedia

As cloud and mobile technologies continue to dominate the business landscape, lots of firms are moving away from physical data centres in search for more sustainable and efficient alternatives.

Travel comparison website Expedia is an excellent example, having unveiled plans to move 80% of mission-critical applications to the cloud through AWS. The firm decided to do this after discovering that the main reason for people leaving its website was due to error pages. Expedia wanted customers to get around its websites quickly and without running into any issues.

Using a range of AWS solutions, Expedia claims that it has become more resilient, has the ability to develop new applications faster and can save millions in the process. Magesh Chandramouli, Principal Architect, said: “By using AWS, I’m not bound by throughput limitations or CPU capacity. When I think of AWS, freedom is the first word that comes to mind”.

Airbnb

It’s not just long established companies using AWS to run their compute estate. Airbnb, a community rental marketplace for property owners and travellers, lists more than 7 million accommodations and is a long-time user of AWS.

Catering for millions of customers globally, the firm has continued to invest in AWS solutions as it has grown rapidly in the past few years. Currently, it has 200 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instances to manage its core application, memcache and search servers; Elastic Load Balancing for handling incoming traffic between these servers; Amazon Elastic MapReduce for processing and disseminating data; Amazon Simple Storage Service for backups and static files; and Amazon CloudWatch.

Since implementing these solutions, Airbnb takes the view that it’s better equipped for future growth and can save money across its operations. Tobi Knaup, an engineer at Airbnb, said: “Because of AWS, there has always been an easy answer (in terms of time required and cost) to scale our site.”

Apple

When it comes to any aspect of its business, Apple is pretty secretive. But according to a 2019 report by CNBC, it happens to be one of the biggest spenders on AWS services. People familiar with the setup told the American broadcaster that the Cupertino-based firm spends over $30 million per month on Amazon cloud computing services.

The iPhone maker hasn’t confirmed these claims, but with growing demand for internet services such as iCloud and Apple Music, it makes sense that the firm would need a comprehensive cloud solution. CNBC points out that Apple has worked with other cloud providers, including Google and Microsoft, in the past.

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