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What is Amazon Web Services – AWS?

The AWS cloud is a distributed PaaS system available in 190 countries, divided into geographic areas called regions. Currently, there are 14 active regions, but 4 more are planned for next year.

Each region consists of multiple Availability Zones (AZs): these are effectively distributed data centers that allow applications to replicate, ensuring scalability and availability in the event of a failure in a specific zone.

The choice of the region to deliver your services and applications should depend on the origin of most of your users.

AWS Components: Understanding Acronyms

Almost every component or service in the AWS ecosystem is identified—or better yet, recognized—by an acronym. Let’s shed light on some of the main ones.

S3 – Simple Storage Service

S3 was the first component introduced by Amazon. It is a storage service for accessible and shareable resources, ideal for storing static assets (e.g., storage, backups, media, or software components for EC2 boot delivery).

Key features:

  • Resources are stored in buckets, logical containers where access permissions can be defined.
  • Each saved resource is assigned a key within the bucket.
  • Resources are accessible via HTTP, by pointing to the service’s URL and the object key, and through REST/SOAP APIs over HTTPS.
  • Unlimited storage.
  • Scalable, durable, and reliable service.
  • Supports versioning and resource lifetime management.
  • All S3 calls are encrypted using a service-generated key.
  • Access logging can be enabled for resources.
  • Events can be configured (e.g., on resource GET/PUT).
  • Pay-as-you-use storage space.

More information: AWS S3

EC2 – Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

EC2 is an infrastructure service that allows on-demand provisioning of virtual machine instances, configurable to suit specific needs.

Instances can be resized, powered on or off depending on the required compute power, ensuring scalability to handle varying workloads.

Features:

  • Launch instances using an image (AMI – Amazon Machine Image) or a pre-saved template, which serves as a “machine model.”
  • Choose the OS (Linux/Windows), availability zone, machine family (e.g., T2, M3, M4), and configure resources like RAM, CPU, storage, and network.
  • Define shutdown rules, monitoring, access permissions, and other settings.

Self-configuration tools:

  • Metadata: Information linked to the instance. You can check the status anytime.
  • User Data: Allows scripts to be executed during the instance boot process.

Key advantages:

  • High scalability.
  • Auto-Scaling service for automatic instance scaling based on defined metrics or schedules.
  • Root access via SSH.
  • Maximum resource control (hardware/software).
  • Tags for resource identification.
  • Configurable security groups.
  • Traffic load balancing through Elastic Load Balancing.
  • Utilizes up-to-date Intel Xeon hardware.
  • Pay only for the resources used.

More information: AWS EC2

EBS – Elastic Block Storage

EBS provides storage volumes (disks) attached to EC2 instances. Located in the same availability zone as the instance, EBS is ideal for persistent data storage (regardless of the instance’s state).

Features:

  • Multiple EBS volumes can be attached to one EC2 instance, but a single EBS volume can only serve one instance at a time.
  • For high I/O workloads, Provisioned IOPS SSD can be selected for better disk performance.
  • Use Amazon EBS Snapshot for disk backups and maintain persistent IP addresses during stop/start actions on EC2 instances.

More information: AWS EBS

VPC – Amazon Virtual Private Cloud

VPC provides a virtual private environment logically isolated within AWS for hosting EC2 instances.

Features:

  • Default VPC creation upon account setup, with customizable configurations.
  • Define IP address ranges, create hardware VPNs, and set access permissions.
  • Create subnets, which are linked to specific availability zones.

Security levels:

  • Security Groups: Work as instance-level firewalls, controlling inbound/outbound traffic (stateful).
  • ACLs: Filter subnet-level traffic (stateless).

More information: AWS VPC

Databases and Cache

AWS offers services for managing databases, caching systems, and database migration to the cloud:

  • Amazon DynamoDB: Fully managed NoSQL database with scalable read/write capacity.
  • Amazon RDS: Relational database manager (supports MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle).
  • Amazon Aurora: High-performance MySQL-compatible relational database.
  • Amazon ElastiCache: Caching service supporting Redis and Memcached.

More information: AWS Database

Amazon CloudWatch

CloudWatch is Amazon’s monitoring system, offering metrics (e.g., CPU usage of an instance or instance group) to monitor AWS resources within a VPC.

Features:

  • Trigger actions (e.g., email notifications) based on metrics.
  • Custom metrics can be created in addition to default metrics.
  • Provides graphical reports and operational statistics.

More information: AWS CloudWatch

AWS Console

AWS provides a web service and app to manage AWS resources via its console.

Key features:

  • Account setup requires a credit card, with the first year offering free-tier services.
  • Configure, start/stop, and monitor resources.
  • Manage networking (VPC, ACL, Security Groups) and security rules (IAM users, groups, roles).

More information: AWS Console

Pricing Policies

AWS Free Tier offers a free one-year plan to explore AWS without initial costs. Beyond the free tier, resources are billed according to pricing policies detailed here.

Conclusion

AWS offers a broad range of services and products, making it impossible to cover everything in one article. Visit the official website for detailed documentation and tutorials. Sign up to explore AWS with its free one-year plan, including most services.


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