Starting with AWS can feel overwhelming at first, but by breaking it down into manageable steps, you’ll find it much more approachable. AWS provides a wide array of cloud computing services, including storage, computing power, machine learning, and database management. This beginner’s guide will walk you through the essentials to help you get started with AWS.
Start with the Free Tier.
AWS offers a Free Tier for new users, providing limited access to many services for free, up to a certain usage limit, for the first 12 months. This is a great way to explore AWS without incurring charges.
RDS: 750 hours/month of db.t2.micro instances for MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server.
Key Free Tier services include:
EC2: 750 hours/month of t2.micro instances (sufficient for running small applications or websites).
S3: 5GB of Standard Storage.
Lambda: 1 million requests per month.
Overview of AWS ecosystem.
AWS is primarily centered around delivering cloud computing services and infrastructure. It provides a comprehensive suite of solutions, including services for computing, storage, databases, networking, machine learning, and analytics.
Create an AWS Account.
- Visit the AWS homepage https://aws.amazon.com
- Click on the “Create an AWS Account” button.
- Fill in your personal details, including an email address, password, and account name.
- Add billing information. AWS offers a free tier that lets you use many of its services for free within specific usage limits, so you won’t be charged unless you exceed these limits.
- Verify your identity (via phone number or credit card).
- Choose a support plan. For beginners, the Basic plan (free) is usually sufficient.
- Agree to the terms and conditions.
Core Components of the AWS Ecosystem:
- Compute Services.
- Storage Services.
- Networking Services.
- Databases.
- Machine Learning and AI.
- Analytics.
- Security, Identity, and Compliance.
- Developer Tools.
- Internet of Things (IoT)
Compute Services.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) compute services are scalable computing resources that help users build, deploy, and manage applications. These services are designed to meet the needs of a variety of applications, from small-scale projects to enterprise-grade solutions. These services allow users to run applications and workloads on the cloud. They provide virtual machines, container management, and serverless compute options.
EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud): Scalable virtual servers for running applications.
Lambda: Serverless computing for running code without provisioning servers.
Elastic Beanstalk: Platform as a Service (PaaS) for deploying and managing applications.
ECS (Elastic Container Service): Container management service for Docker containers.
EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service): Managed Kubernetes service for containerized applications.
Storage Services.
The AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid storage service that enables seamless integration between your on-premises applications and AWS cloud storage. It can be utilized for purposes such as backup and archiving, disaster recovery, cloud data processing, storage tiering, and migration. AWS provides a variety of storage options to meet different needs, such as object storage, file systems, and block storage.
S3 (Simple Storage Service): Object storage with virtually unlimited scalability.
EBS (Elastic Block Store): Persistent block storage for EC2 instances.
EFS (Elastic File System): Managed file storage for EC2 instances, ideal for shared access.
Glacier: Low-cost archival storage for infrequently accessed data.
FSx: Managed file storage options, including Windows File Server and Lustre.
Networking Services.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a variety of networking services to help businesses create secure, reliable, and fast networks. AWS offers networking services that help manage virtual networks, load balancing, and content delivery. AWS Networking allows creating a fast, reliable, and secure network. AWS offers various cloud services that are on-demand, available, and highly scalable. Various AWS services make an AWS network complete, like Amazon VPC, Amazon EC2, Amazon Route 53, Load Balancers, Amazon Gateway, and more.
VPC (Virtual Private Cloud): Allows users to define isolated networks within AWS.
Route 53: Scalable DNS service to route end-user requests to appropriate resources.
CloudFront: Content delivery network (CDN) for fast delivery of websites, applications, and media.
Elastic Load Balancing (ELB): Automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets.
Databases.
AWS databases handle all essential database management tasks, including server provisioning, patching, configuration, and backups. This allows you to focus on developing your applications while AWS takes care of continuous monitoring and automated scaling. AWS provides fully managed databases that scale automatically and support a wide range of data models.
RDS (Relational Database Service): Managed relational databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and Oracle.
DynamoDB: Managed NoSQL database for low-latency, high-throughput workloads.
Redshift: Data warehousing service for large-scale data analysis.
Aurora: High-performance, fully managed relational database compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL.
DocumentDB: Managed document database for MongoDB workloads.
Neptune: Managed graph database service.
Machine Learning and AI.
AWS provides an extensive array of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) services designed to assist in building, running, and integrating solutions. AWS offers a variety of tools for building, training, and deploying machine learning models.
Translate: Real-time language translation.
SageMaker: Comprehensive service for building, training, and deploying machine learning models.
Rekognition: Image and video analysis powered by machine learning.
Polly: Text-to-speech service that converts text into lifelike speech.
Lex: Build conversational interfaces (chatbots) using natural language processing.
Comprehend: Natural language processing service for text analysis.
Analytics.
Amazon Brand Analytics, formerly known as Amazon Retail Analytics, is a suite of e-commerce reports accessible to approved members of the Amazon Brand Registry. This feature provides brand owners with valuable insights into customer behavior, popular search terms, competitor performance, and advertising campaigns.
AWS provides powerful analytics services to process and analyze large volumes of data.
Athena: Query data stored in Amazon S3 using SQL.
EMR (Elastic MapReduce): Managed Hadoop framework for big data processing.
Kinesis: Real-time data streaming and processing.
QuickSight: Business intelligence service for data visualization.
Glue: Managed ETL (extract, transform, load) service for preparing data for analytics.
Security, Identity, and Compliance.
AWS responsibility “Security of the Cloud” – AWS is responsible for protecting the infrastructure that runs all of the services offered in the AWS Cloud. This infrastructure is composed of the hardware, software, networking, and facilities that run AWS Cloud services. It’s important to understand that cloud security encompasses the entire ecosystem of people, processes, policies, and technology designed to protect data and applications in the cloud. This responsibility is shared among the organization, the cloud provider, and all users.
IAM (Identity and Access Management): Manage user access to AWS resources.
Cognito: User authentication and identity management for web and mobile apps.
Secrets Manager: Securely store and manage secrets such as API keys and credentials.
GuardDuty: Intelligent threat detection to identify malicious activity in your AWS environment.Shield: DDoS protection.
KMS (Key Management Service): Managed encryption service to safeguard data.
Inspector: Automated security assessment service.
Developer Tools.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a range of developer tools that enable developers to efficiently code, build, test, and deploy applications in the cloud. With code editors, SDKs, CI/CD services, and other resources provided by AWS, you can streamline development in your preferred programming languages. AWS provides a set of services to improve the development and deployment workflow.
CodeCommit: Managed Git repositories for source control.
CodeBuild: Continuous integration service for compiling code, running tests, and producing artifacts.
CodeDeploy: Automated deployment service for applications.
CodePipeline: Continuous delivery service to automate build, test, and deploy phases.
Internet of Things (IoT)
AWS provides Internet of Things (IoT) services and solutions to connect and manage billions of devices. You can collect, store, and analyze IoT data for a wide range of applications, including industrial, consumer, commercial, and automotive workloads. The term IoT, or Internet of Things, refers to the collective network of connected devices and the technology that facilitates communication between devices and the cloud, as well as between the devices themselves. AWS provides services to connect, manage, and process data from IoT devices.
IoT Analytics: Managed analytics service to process IoT device data.
AWS IoT Core: Managed cloud service to securely connect devices to the cloud.
IoT Greengrass: Edge computing service for IoT devices to run local compute, messaging, and data caching.
Conclusion.
Starting with AWS may feel complex, but by following these simple steps, you can gradually build your skills and become proficient. Whether you’re hosting a website, managing a database, or building a machine learning model, AWS provides the tools and scalability to grow your ideas. The key is to start small, experiment, and take advantage of the free resources and learning materials AWS offers.
Happy cloud computing!
