Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers software, platform and infrastructure services on a cloud computing platform. Its data centers are spread across dozens of Availability Zones (AZs) in various regions across the globe. With a pay-as-you-go model, AWS makes it easy to scale your services with your business. The service is also backed up by excellent security features that protect your information while it travels over the Internet. What is AWS? Using the cloud to host websites and services is what AWS does best. For example, gaming requires a large amount of processing power and online connectivity and AWS is an ideal platform for it. AWS has one of the largest global network infrastructure footprints that offers high availability and low latency to users. It also offers scalability for applications running on it. A user can create autoscaling groups for different services such as EC2. These groups will expand CPU performance beyond the default baseline until they run out of CPU credits. Similarly, AWS has multiple availability zones for each region. These zones are geographically separated to reduce the chance of a local disaster affecting all computers within a region. AWS has pioneered serverless computing through Amazon Lambda, which enables developers and IT professionals to execute code without the need for physical servers. The AWS platform also includes a variety of other services such as Elastic Beanstalk, CodeStar and Amazon SageMaker that offer different ways to develop, store, manage and monitor application infrastructure. AWS Overview AWS offers a wide range of cloud computing services. These are grouped into categories based on their use case, such as compute, data storage, and networking. Some of these are very general services, such as EC2 and S3, while others are designed for specific applications, like Amazon Lumberyard or GameLift. AWS is also a leader in emerging technologies, like serverless computing and Amazon SageMaker for machine learning. AWS operates dozens of data centers in 190 regions around the world, which are separated into separate geographical areas called ‘availability zones’ (AZs). This is meant to reduce the chance that a disaster in one region will take down the entire platform. It also helps ensure low latency and high network quality for businesses using AWS. All of this adds up to a secure, reliable and powerful cloud service that helps companies scale their operations quickly. This is a huge benefit for businesses that want to grow, but are worried about spending too much on hardware or software infrastructure. AWS Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) As its name implies, PaaS provides developers with a platform that supports all the infrastructure required to build software and apps, so they can focus on the actual creation and deployment of these apps. The cloud vendor takes care of the servers, storage, networking and other such infrastructure, providing security and availability as a service. While many of the same advantages of IaaS apply to PaaS, this model also comes with its own set of challenges. These include information security and data residency concerns, vendor lock-in fears and unscheduled outages. AWS offers a number of services that address various application needs, such as database support, serverless computing (AWS Lambda), and integration tools. The company has a pay-as-you-go billing model, with most services charged per-second or on-demand, and customers can receive volume-based discounts as they scale up their usage. The company also has a free tier that gives users access to a broad range of products and allows them to try out the service before making any commitments. AWS Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) IaaS offers the infrastructure components that support an organization’s applications, including virtual machines, storage and networking solutions. These services allow organizations to quickly deploy and scale applications based on demand. Reputable IaaS providers offer a wide range of tools and features that provide robust security controls to help safeguard infrastructure resources. These include options for managing and tracking cloud resource configuration, as well as a variety of security monitoring and vulnerability scanning tools. Using IaaS, DevOps teams can create and tear down test and development environments rapidly and at low cost. This enables developers to work faster and helps them get new applications to market sooner. Additionally, IaaS helps reduce IT costs by reducing the need for on-premises hardware and software. This frees IT teams to focus on more strategic projects.
Amazon Web Services – Software, Platform, and Infrastructure Services on a Cloud Computing Platform
