Services round-up for the AWS cloud platform

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May 19, 2015

Services round-up for the AWS cloud platform

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the leading cloud platform provider, offering over 250 applications and services to deploy, maintain, monitor and run applications in the cloud. However, before deciding whether AWS is the best cloud provider for you and your business, it’s essential to learn about its capabilities for computing, networking, storage and other components of cloud. So let’s take a closer look.

AWS compute

AWS offers a variety of compute instances that allow companies to quickly scale up or scale down based on need. Two of the most popular AWS computing services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Amazon Elastic Load Balancing.

Amazon EC2 targets system admins and developers. These IT experts use EC2 to quickly acquire and “boot” computing instances in the cloud. In terms of pricing, EC2 has a free service that includes up to 750 hours of Linux or Windows EC2 service hours per month for one year.
AWS’ Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) service automatically distributes applications across AWS EC2 instances for better fault tolerance and minimal human intervention. The ELB service includes a free package with up to 15GB of data processing and 750 hours of service monthly for a year.

AWS storage

AWS offers a variety of low cost storage choices, many of which have pay-as-you-go options for added flexibility. Among the most popular storage choices there are: Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Elastic Block Store (EBS) and Amazon CloudFront.

Amazon S3 is a fully redundant storage offering that can handle any amount of data at any moment from anywhere on the Web. It can be used for backup, archiving and disaster recovery, as well as content storage, distribution and data analysis storage.
AWS’ EBS service offers persistent block level storage for EC2 instances. With available encryption and automatic replication, Amazon presents EBS as a highly available, highly secure option to scale EC2 storage.
Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery service aimed at developers and businesses. It works with other AWS applications, including CloudWatch, to facilitate content delivery with low latency, high data transfer speeds and no commitments.

AWS networking

AWS offers a range of networking services, including private network connections to the cloud, scalable DNS and tools to create logistically isolated networks. Popular networking services include the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and Amazon Direct Connect.

Amazon VPC creates a private cloud within AWS, while offering built-in security, including security groups and network access control lists.
AWS’ Direct Connect service allows users to bypass the Internet and connect directly to AWS’ cloud.

AWS databases

AWS has relational and NoSQL databases, as well as in-memory caching and petabyte-scale data warehousing. Users can operate their own databases on AWS using EC2 and EBS. Two popular AWS database services are the Relational Database Service (RDS) and Redshift.

Amazon RDS creates, operates and scales MySQL, Oracle, SQLServer or PostgreSQL servers on AWS. Additionally, RDS handles software installation, backups and patches, as well as routine administrative tasks.
Amazon Redshift is a data warehouse service that works with many common business intelligence tools. It also offers columnar storage technology for databases that store data in columns rather than rows.

AWS application services

AWS offers a mix of managed services that work with applications on streaming, queuing, push notifications, email delivery and transcoding. Popular application services include the Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) and the Amazon Simple Workflow Service (SWS).

Amazon SQS automates workflow between different services by using SQS to host a queue for storing messages.
SWS is a task coordination and management service for the AWS cloud. Users receive 10,000 activity tasks, 30,000 workflow days and 1,000 initiated executions for a year.

AWS deployment and management

Amazon has a host of applications to help with deployment and management, including application monitoring and logging. Two popular services are AWS Elastic Beanstalk and AWS CloudFormation.

Elastic Beanstalk deploys and scales Web applications using Java, .Net, PHP, Node.js, Python and Ruby. Users can monitor application health and access log files.
AWS CloudFormation helps developers and businesses gather and provision key AWS resources.

AWS administration and security

Popular AWS administration and security products include:

AWS Directory Service – which links AWS clouds directly to on-premises Microsoft Active Directory
AWS CloudTrail – which records API calls for user AWS accounts that are delivered in log files for no charg
AWS CloudWatch – which monitors AWS cloud resources including EC2

AWS enterprise applications

Two popular AWS enterprise applications are Amazon WorkSpaces and Amazon WorkDocs.

WorkSpaces lets users access any data, documents or applications in the cloud on any device, including laptops, iPads and Android tablets.
Amazon WorkDocs is an enterprise secure storage and sharing service.

AWS mobile services

Two popular AWS mobile services are Amazon Cognito and Amazon Mobile Analytics.

Amazon Cognito – designed for mobile app developers, this service IDs users and syncs data across their mobile devices.
Mobile Analytics – delivers user usage data within 60 minutes, and tracks application usage at scale.

All you have to do now is evaluate your cloud computing needs and decide what you may need from your cloud platform in terms of security, deployment and management.

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