What Is AWS And Why Is It Used?

AWS stands for Amazon Web Services, It is an expanded cloud

computing platform provided by Amazon Company. AWS
provides a wide range of services with a pay-as-per-use
pricing model over the Internet such as Storage, Computing
power, Databases, Machine Learning services, and much more.
AWS facilitates for both businesses and individual users with
effectively hosting the applications, storing the data securely,
and making use of a wide variety of tools and services
improving management flexibility for IT resources.

History Of AWS

Then providing Simple Storage Service (Amazon

S3) revolutionized with scalable management of Storage.
Coming up with effective compute and storage services and
providing them rental basis helped many startup companies and
users with the cost of manual Hardware Infrasture setup.
Introducing the concept of serverless computing with AWS
lambda services enhanced its business globally. It came up with
services like Elastic Beanstalk made the deployment of
applications much easier bringing large audiences. AWS
always came with diverse array of services offering with
technical innovations, updated services with current trends.
AWS has emerged as a powerhouse in the world of Cloud
Computing.

How AWS Works?

AWS comes up with its own network infrastructure on

establishing the datacenters in different regions mostly all over
the world. Its global Infrastructure acts as a backbone for
operations and services provided by AWS. It facilitates the
users on creating secure environments using Amazon VPCs (
Virtual Private Clouds ). Essential services like Amazon
EC2 and Amazon S3 for utilizing the compute and storage
service with elastic scaling. It supports the dynamic scaling of
the applications with the services such as Auto
Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing ( AWS ELB ). It provides
a good user-friendly AWS Management Console facilitating
seamless configuration and management of AWS services to
the Users. Its Architecture ensures high availability , fault
tolerance making AWS as a versatile powerful Cloud
Computing Platform.
AWS Fundamentals

In the Journey of AWS, understanding the key concepts such

as Regions, Availability Zones, Global Network Infrastructure,
etc is crucial. The fundamentals of AWS keep on maintaining
the applications reliable and scalable with services globally
with coming to a strategic deployment of resources for optimal
performance and resilience. The following are the some of the
main fundamentals of AWS:

 Regions: AWS provide the services with respective

division of regions. The regions are divided based on
geographical areas/locations and will establish data
centers. Based on need and traffic of users, the scale of
data centers is depended to facilitate users with low-
latencies of servcies.

 Availability Zones (AZ): To prevent the Data centers for

the Natural Calamities or any other disasters. The
Datacenters are established as sub sections with isolated
locations to enhance fault tolerance and disaster recovery
management.
  Global Network Infrastructure: AWS ensures the
reliability and scalability of services through setting up its
own AWS Network Infrastructure globally. It helps in
better management of data transmissions for optimized
performance and security reliance.

Top AWS Services

In the rapid revolution of Cloud Computing, AWS facilitates

with wide variety of services respect to the fields and needs.
The following are the top AWS services that are in wide usage:

 Amazon EC2(Elastic Compute Cloud) : It provides the

Scalable computing power via cloud allowing the users to
run applications and manage the workloads over their
remotely.

 Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service ): It offers scalable

object Storage as a Service with high durability for storing
and retrieving any amount of data.
  AWS Lambda: It is a service in Serverless Architecture
with Function as a Service facilitating serverless
computing i.e., running the code on response to the events,
the background environment management of servers is
handled by aws automatically. It helps the developers to
completely focus on the logic of code build.

 Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service): This is an

aws service that simplifies the management of database
providing high available relational databases in the cloud.

 Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud): It enables the

users to create isolated networks with option of public and
private expose within the AWS cloud, providing safe and
adaptable configurations of their resources.

Advantages Of Amazon Web Services

 AWS allows you to easily scale your resources up or

down as your needs change, helping you to save money
and ensure that your application always has the resources
it needs.
  AWS provides a highly reliable and secure infrastructure,
with multiple data centers and a commitment to 99.99%
availability for many of its services.

 AWS offers a wide range of services and tools that can be

easily combined to build and deploy a variety of
applications, making it highly flexible.

 AWS offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model, allowing you

to only pay for the resources you actually use and avoid
upfront costs and long-term commitments.

Disadvantages Of Amazon Web Services

 AWS can be complex, with a wide range of services and

features that may be difficult to understand and use,
especially for new users.

 AWS can be expensive, especially if you have a high-

traffic application or need to run multiple services.
 Additionally, the cost of services can increase over time,
so you need to regularly monitor your spending.

 While AWS provides many security features and tools,

securing your resources on AWS can still be challenging,
and you may need to implement additional security
measures to meet your specific requirements.

 AWS manages many aspects of the infrastructure, which

can limit your control over certain parts of your
application and environment.

Applications Of AWS

The AWS services are using by both startup and MNC

companies as per their usecase. The startup companies are
using overcome hardware infrasture cost and applications
deployments effectively with cost and performance. Whereas
large scale companies are using AWS cloud services for the
management of their Infrastructure to completely focus on the
development of products widely. The following the Real-world
industrial use-cases of AWS services:
 Netflix: The Large streaming gaint using AWS for the
storage and scaing of the applications for ensuring
seamless content delivery with low latency without
interruptions to millions of users globally.

 Airbnb: By utilizing AWS, Airbnb manages the various

workloads and provides insurable and expandable
infrastructure for its virtual marketplace and lodging
offerings.

 NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory: It takes the help of

AWS services to handle and analyze large-scale volumes
of data related to vital scientific research missions and
space exploration.

 Capital One: A financial Company that is utilizing AWS

for its security and compliance while delivering
innovative banking services to its customers.
AWS Global Infrastructure

The AWS global infrastructure is massive and is divided into

geographical regions. The geographical regions are then
divided into separate availability zones. While selecting the
geographical regions for AWS, three factors come into play

 Optimizing Latency

 Reducing cost

 Government regulations (Some services are not available

for some regions)

Each region is divided into at least two availability zones that

are physically isolated from each other, which provides
business continuity for the infrastructure as in a distributed
system. If one zone fails to function, the infrastructure in other
availability zones remains operational. The largest region
North Virginia (US-East), has six availability zones. These
availability zones are connected by high-speed fiber-optic
networking.
There are over 100 edge locations distributed all over the globe
that are used for the CloudFront (content delivery
network). CloudFront can cache frequently used content such
as images and videos(live streaming videos also) at edge
locations and distribute it to edge locations across the globe for
high-speed delivery and low latency for end-users. It also
protects from DDOS attacks.

AWS Management Console

The AWS management console is a web-based interface to

access AWS. It requires an AWS account and also has a
smartphone application for the same purpose. So When
you sign in for first time, you see the console home page where
you see all the services provided by AWS. Cost monitoring is
also done through the console.

AWS resources can also be accessed through various Software

Development Kits (SDKs), which allows the developers to
create applications as AWS as its backend. There are SDKs for
all the major
languages(e.g., JavaScript, Python, Node.js, .Net, PHP, Ruby,
Go, C++). There are mobile SDKs for Android, iOS, React
Native, Unity, and Xamarin. AWS can also be accessed by
making HTTP calls using the AWS-API. AWS also provides
a AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) for remotely accessing
the AWS and can implement scripts to automate many
processes. This Console is also available as an app for Android
and iOS. For mobile apps, you can simply download AWS
console app.

AWS Cloud Computing Models

There are three cloud computing models available on AWS.

1. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): It is the basic

building block of cloud IT. It generally provides access to
data storage space, networking features, and computer
hardware(virtual or dedicated hardware). It is highly
flexible and gives management controls over the IT
resources to the developer. For example, VPC, EC2, EBS

2. Platform as a Service (PaaS): This is a type of service

where AWS manages the underlying infrastructure
(usually operating system and hardware). This helps the
 developer to be more efficient as they do not have to worry
about undifferentiated heavy lifting required for running
the applications such as capacity planning, software
maintenance, resource procurement, patching, etc., and
focus more on deployment and management of the
applications. For example, RDS, EMR, ElasticSearch.

3. Software as a Service(SaaS): It is a complete product that

usually runs on a browser. It primarily refers to end-user
applications. It is run and managed by the service
provider. The end-user only has to worry about the
application of the software suitable to its needs. For
example, Saleforce.com, Web-based email, Office 365 .