An Introduction to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) – A Complete Guide

Today, a multitude of mature services are available for cloud computing that offers security, scalability, and reliability for business. What was once a gigantic task to install server racks, build a data center, and design storage collections have now given a whole new way to an entire marketplace of services that you can get just in a single click. Such an abundant cloud leader in that marketplace is AWS.

Table of Content

 

• What is AWS?
• Signing Up to AWS
• What Services Does AWS offer?
• What Is AWS Used For?
• What are the Benefits of AWS Services for Businesses?
• How Can You Build an Application?

What is AWS?

AWS refers to Amazon Web Services. It’s an international market leader in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) industry, presenting an array of remote cloud services. AWS offers around 175 products and services in a huge catalog that includes cloud storage, compute power, app deployment, user account management, data warehousing, management tools, and Internet of Things device control, and any tool that you can think a business would need.

AWS has gained immense popularity and capability over the last decade. One of the major reasons is that AWS is so secure and reliable. It is a Gold Standard Company and used by some of the most renowned brands in service like Netflix, Uber, and Airbnb, etc. AWS initiated as primarily a cloud infrastructure for computing power, and then storage progressed and scaled rapidly – now companies keep looking for more innovative products from AWS to help them do business.

Amazon Web Services on a beginner’s note, offers, database storage facilities, computing power, content delivery, and networking with additional functionalities to help your organizations grow.  It lets you pick up your desired solutions, while you expend on exactly the services you utilize only. AWS is cost-effective that helps you save your assets, which counts more value without cooperating with the performance of applications or user experience.

Signing Up to AWS

 

Follow these steps to sign up for AWS.

Step 1: Visit aws.amazon.com and then click on the ‘Create an AWS Account’ button.

Step 2: Select the option of ‘I am a new customer’, enter your email address and then press ‘Sign In’.

Step 3: Moving further to the next page- fill in all the relevant details and click on ‘Create Account’.

Step 4: Insert your personal details on the next page and then press on ‘Create Account and Continue.’

Step 5:  Enter your credit or debit card details on the next page. After you do that, proceed further by clicking on ‘Verify Card and Continue’.

Step 6: To verify your phone number, enter the desired details, and then click on ‘Call Me Now’.

Step 7: After you get a call from AWS and you will be asked to enter a pin, subsequently up have to select your plan for AWS, but prior to selection, click on ‘Continue to Select Your Support Plan’.

Step 8: Select a plan that fits your needs, whether you can go for a basic plan for learning purpose, or a developer or business plan. And then, click on ‘Continue’.

Step 9: Here You Go! Your AWS Account is ready for use! Just sign in and start deploying applications!

Once you have your own AWS account, you can start hosting your website with any of AWS Cloud products and services and experience the compute capacity in your existing infrastructure.

 

What Services Does AWS offer?

 

Well, there is a long list of services and products in the marketplace under AWS; here are some of the major products that serve businesses around the world:

AWS AMI: An AWS AMI (Amazon Machine Image) enables you to implement EC2 instances in the cloud. In simple words, it is similar to an element of a local server in a data center or a virtual machine that processes in the cloud. You cannot possibly exploit the complete benefits of cloud computing without an AMI.

AWS AppSync: AppSync is a cloud-based service that keeps mobile and web apps updated, only when required and scales according to your particular needs. It utilizes a cost structure that is built to preserve only critical data and let the data at rest untouched.

Amazon Athena: Amazon Athena is a boon for the companies that store their data in the cloud with Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service). It’s a query service that permits you to run SQL queries inside the cloud, which means you don’t need to access a local database.

Amazon Aurora: The users who need to install a relational database in the cloud; Amazon brings you one main option called Aurora. You can depend on a high-performance database that can hold on with the needs of your applications.

AWS Batch: One of the important benefits of a cloud is that the infrastructure can scale as your needs change. AWS Batch is a batch processing facility for Big Data assignments. As your projects rise in size, the associated cloud infrastructure can adapt.

AWS CLI: You can download the AWS CLI (Command Line Interface) application to control AWS functions. This command-line represents a new, potential way to form commands while making it simple for team members to execute them.

AWS CloudFormation: For the organizations that want to deploy and manage application stacks and resources, AWS CloudFormation is a method to “form the cloud” so that you can implement web and mobile apps effortlessly.

AWS CloudFront: A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is usually a challenging responsibility for companies to develop and deploy. AWS CloudFront is a CDN that works in the cloud and can expand as your media streaming, messaging, and file distribution requirements vary and grow.

AWS CodeDeploy: This service enables you to arrange apps in a cloud environment, such as Amazon EC2, AWS Fargate, AWS Lambda, etc. It means quicker, more effective deployment for companies that need to reach a market segment faster.

AWS CodePipeline: AWS CodePipeline lets companies arrange all of the steps included, from building, testing, and production in modern application development. It’s an efficient method because of a single point of management and control.

AWS Cognito: User account control is easy when you have only a few dozen users. AWS Cognito can support when you begin scaling up to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of users, assisting in the management and authentication processes.

Amazon Connect: Amazon Connect is a crucial approach to advance customer service, particularly for small businesses. It uses the cloud to save storage; it is pay-as-you-go, and proficient and easy to access.

AWS Console: AWS Console works as a primary source of controlling the services you use, expanding your cloud environment, and even deploying fresh services. It is a one-stop-shop for all of your cloud computing needs. AWS Console is exceptionally fast, easy to use, and offers support assistance if any of your services aren’t working correctly.

Amazon Corretto: As a production-ready allocation of OpenJDK, Amazon Corretto helps you to create, run, and deploy Java applications in the cloud environment. It is built to make this process more capable and scalable so that you don’t have to renovate your infrastructure.

AWS Data Pipeline: Data transformation becomes a complicated task, especially when you are managing the complete migration. AWS Data Pipeline makes this process more seamless and efficient, even if you are migrating and transferring data in a multifaceted environment.

AWS Direct Connect: AWS Direct Connect is a bridge that connects the old legacy and non-critical data to data stores that are currently in use for your applications and infrastructure.

Amazon DynamoDB: Amazon DynamoDB is a high-performance database that exists in the cloud, has all of the advantages to scale, and you can rely on it for transforming your modern age complex apps for the web and modern devices.

AWS EBS: AWS EBS (Elastic Block Store) is a cloud service that allows you to save data in the conventional block storage format that is beneficial for legacy apps, Big Data projects, or archiving functions.

Amazon EC2: Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) gives you an IT infrastructure that works in the cloud. It provides power, scalability, and performance, everything at the same time. The greatest benefit of EC2 is that it presents fast, efficient flexibility for users.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk: Elastic Beanstalk provides a flexible approach to scale applications without the standard setup, configuration, and management of the server infrastructure. It’s flexible in the sense that it can familiarize and scale according to your business needs.

Amazon EMR: Amazon Elastic MapReduce is a service to deploy various frameworks required to do Big Data analytics in the cloud. It is generally used for genomic research, drug detection, analyzing materials used for new products, and other sorts of tests that need immense data analysis.

AWS Fargate: AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine by Amazon that makes it simpler than ever to upgrade or develop an application without worrying for a data breach so that you’re continuously holding up with new infrastructure requirements.

AWS Glue: With AWS Glue, you don’t require any advanced technology for storing all of your data at a single place. AWS Glue is the “bond” that binds together different types of data, making it always available for queries in real-time.

Amazon Kinesis: Amazon Kinesis offers real-time analytics for data as it runs in your cloud infrastructure. The service focuses on analytics and reporting functionalities, to provide the real power to deal with your apps and scale consequently.

AWS Lambda: AWS Lambda is a computing service, which runs code and automatically operates computing resources as required. As it is a cloud-based service, you don’t need to worry about power or storage.

Amazon Lightsail: Amazon Lightsail is a framework developer can use to run applications on virtual servers in the cloud. Because of its secure environment, it has a significant use case and can be used as a complement to other Amazon services like Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

AWS Outposts: What if you could access a copy of any of the cloud services that Amazon offers, but only in your own data center? That’s the exact initiative behind AWS Outposts, a service that gives you all the features and functionalities of cloud services in your local infrastructure.

Amazon RDS: Amazon RDS supports companies to save relational databases in the cloud. You can use it for analytics, web applications, business dashboards, or any other app that uses a relational database. This service also provides added flexibility and a facility to scale to your needs.

Amazon Redshift: Amazon Redshift is an online data warehouse that offers great flexibility, ease of navigation, automatic updates, and security to its users. It is just as efficient for large organizations as it is for small ones.

Amazon S3: Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is a well-recognized object storage service. It is a flexible, powerful, and reliable service that fulfills the needs of even the most complicated enterprise-level apps for the largest organizations and institutions.

Amazon SES: Amazon SES (Simple Email Service) is the most excellent way to improve messaging. It is available with pay-as-you-go pricing, and it is built to fit perfectly into the existing IT infrastructure that your business has. It has the capability to send several thousand messages, and you don’t need to bother about security or performance.

AWS Snowball: AWS Snowball is a service for data transfer that helps businesses to conduct a more safe and sound data migration. The data under the migration will not go through the Internet; that’s why the migration is faster, safer, and more reliable. Snowball is exceptionally scalable, enabling businesses to transfer huge amounts of data they need.

Amazon SNS: Modern applications continuously communicate with servers and each other. Even some simple changes, such as a new high-score in the gaming app, have to be conveyed. Hence, Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service) tracks, controls, and manages these messages.

Amazon SQS: Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service) is a service for queuing messages. It works independently of the current infrastructure you are using and ensures that the messages between servers and apps run resourcefully, securely, and consistently.

AWS Step Functions: Developers can use Step Functions to build apps that use numerous transactional services. Before cloud computing services such as Step Functions; connecting multiple sources was much more complicated, and this evolved the issues for reliability.

AWS Storage Gateway: AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid storage choice for companies that have legacy data stores and also want to take benefits of cloud storage. This service connects the difference between the two and provides one console to control and manage both data stores.

AWS VPC: AWS VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) a safe virtual cloud that can assist business owners in launching a new website, app, or other services by providing them knowledgeable insights about the new service. AWS VPC is a separate portion of the Amazon cloud that also presents a lot of flexibility and scalability.

AWS WAF: Not all firewalls serve as a hardware tool in a data center. AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) is a cloud-based firewall you install to guard apps and data in the cloud. Using this, companies can add or eliminate any cloud security feature based on their needs.

AWS X-Ray: It is one of the most unusually named products by Amazon. It’s a cloud service that tracks and manages all of the messaging that is conveyed between cloud-based apps.

What Is AWS Used For?

 

Based on the usage of the above-stated Amazon services and products, their application can be widely categorized into:

•       Compute
•       Storage
•       Data management
•       Migration
•       Networking
•       Development tools and application services
•       Management and monitoring
•       Security
•       Analytics
•       Artificial intelligence
•       Mobile development
•       Notifications
•       Productivity SaaS business Products

How Can You Build an Application?

 

Firstly, you need to understand what your application is. Does it require any primary infrastructure or database? So, when you are aware of all the requirements about your application, you can decide on the domain, and then select a service.

If you want to deploy an application in AWS, you don’t need you to worry about the basic architecture; so you can pick any one service you like.

For computing purposes, Elastic Beanstalk can help you build applications without any typical setup, arrangement, and management of the server infrastructure. Just upload your applications, and AWS will do the rest for you.

If you are not familiar with any of these services, AWS presents an amazing free tier option to help you learn using them. When you register to AWS, you get a free tier option that is eligible for one year from the date of registration. You can use every application on AWS for free and learn how to use them.

What are the Benefits of AWS Services for Businesses?

 

AWS is the leading name in the market of cloud solutions because it has a variety of products that you can pick according to your particular needs. However, more than that, these are the top five benefits of AWS:

1. Scalability

There is no doubt that AWS services are affordable for businesses of all sizes. It doesn’t matter whether you have started your business today or you are a well established online business with heavy traffic. One of the major benefits of AWS is that it lets you scale your business efficiently by presenting flexibility and storage solutions.

2. Commitment Free

Another benefit of using AWS cloud services is that you don’t require going under any commitment or contract. Moreover, there is not any definite minimum spend to use its service. You get a per hour charge for all server-based services. You can terminate the services any time without harming your pocket any more. This feature is really supportive for businesses that don’t want to overpay for storage or services they don’t use.

3. Security

Since data storage and security are significant components of a business when an organization migrates to a cloud platform. Therefore, it makes sense that they expect high-level security for migration purposes. The AWS services make sure to provide the most powerful security for businesses of all sizes.

• AWS provides enhanced security features like:
• 24/7 technical assistance by the data experts
• The built-in firewall that allows exceptionally precise access from highly restrictive to the public domain
• IAM services to track user access
• Multi-factor authentication and encrypted data storage capacity

4. Reliability

Amazon has a vast reach and a huge team of professional experts. They’ll help you to build a solid system that is reliable and consistent. Several businesses like to have secure and dependable connections to data, which allows them to sustain and create their data infrastructures. That’s why AWS cloud service is a leading choice for many businesses.

5. Flexible and Customizable

AWS lets you choose the programming language, operating system, and database that you like, which enables you to build a solution that’s best for your organization and your team.

The combination of customization with simplicity and user-friendly AWS encourages many businesses across the world to pick up AWS services.

To Sum Up

 

AWS cloud computing services are secure, reliable, and affordable. Therefore, choosing any of the AWS cloud services will prove advantageous for your business and will allow you to scale your business on a leading cloud infrastructure exponentially.

Hopefully, this guide is enough to help you get a complete overview of AWS Cloud services. But in case you have any doubts about its effective services that fit good to your needs, you can contact leading AWS Cloud Consultant today!