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Basics - Course Supplement

8 min read

Terminology and acronyms

  • DNS
    • This is a service that routes internet traffic to websites by translating human-readable domain names, such as www.example.com, into numeric IP addresses, such as 192.0.2.1.
  • Durability
    • This term refers to a system’s ability to perform its responsibilities over time, even when unexpected events can occur. For example, Amazon S3 is designed for 99.999999999 percent data durability.
  • Edge Location
    • An edge location is a data center that an AWS service uses to perform service-specific operations.
  • Edge Location
    • This is the ability to acquire resources as you need them and to release resources when you no longer need them. In the cloud, you want to do this automatically.
  • Firewall
    • A firewall is a device that has a network protection application installed to safeguard the network from intentional or unintentional intrusion.
    • A firewall sits at the junction point or gateway between the two networks, usually a private network and a public network, such as the internet.
  • Gateway
    • A gateway is a device or node that connects two different networks by translating communications from one protocol to another.
  • On Premises
    • This term refers to IT hardware and software applications hosted where the business operates or in a physical data center.
  • Availability zone
    • An Availability Zone is a distinct location in an AWS Region that’s insulated from failures in other Availability Zones.
    • It is designed to provide inexpensive, low-latency network connectivity to other Availability Zones in the same Region.

Understand AWS Cloud

  • Advantages of cloud computing
    • Trade fixed expense for variable expense
      • pay for the services as u consume
    • Benefit from massive economies of scale
      • Because usage from hundreds of thousands of customers is aggregated in the cloud, providers, such as AWS, can achieve higher economies of scale, which translates into lower pay as-you-go prices
    • Stop guessing about capacity needs
      • just scale if u have to
    • Increase speed and agility
      • easy to access, launch, deploy, allowing devs to focus on innovation
    • Stop spending money on maintaining servers and hardware
    • go global in minutes
      • Conveniently deploy your application in multiple Regions around the world.
  • computing deployment model
    • the way a company chooses to organize its IT resources
    • determines how users and applications access files, data, and other applications
    • 3 commonly accepted
      • cloud-based
        • you can migrate existing applications to the cloud, or you can design and build new applications in the cloud
        • all in the cloud (servers, files, etc managed in cloud for u)
      • on-premises
        • i handle everything
        • resources are deployed in facilities owned by the company using virtualization and resource-management tools
      • hybrid deployments
        • reality is that most companies are here, but some companies start cloud-native
        • files may be mixed.
  • cloud computing models
    • on-premises
      • business handles everything (all hardware and software)
    • managed servers
      • amazon ec2
      • You manage the server: When you launch an EC2 instance, AWS provides the hardware and virtualization, but you are responsible for everything inside the instance:
        • Managing the operating system (updates, patches, security)
        • Installing and configuring software
        • Setting up networking and security (firewalls, security groups)
    • managed services
      • customer passes more control to AWS by selecting a managed service to deploy their applications
      • AWS manages the infrastructure: You focus on deploying your application while AWS handles:
        • Server provisioning, scaling, and load balancing
        • OS updates, patching, and monitoring
      • AWS Elastic Beanstalk -takes care of deploying your core infrastructure so you can concentrate on writing the code for your application
    • fully managed services
      • a customer passes the most control to AWS by selecting a fully managed service to deploy → both infrastructure and application management
      • With an AWS fully managed service, you can focus on the work to be done while AWS manages the administration and maintenance of the application itself
      • amazon dynamodb

Infrastructure of the AWS cloud

  • Computer Networking, How does the internet work

  • AWS virtualizes servers where you choose the compute, memory, storage, and throughput you need

  • Fault isolation boundaries

    • limit the effect of a failure in a workload to a limited number of components
    • Components outside the boundary are unaffected by the failure.. (kinda like React components)
    • Examples
      • AWS Cloud (global boundary)
        • Services in the cloud are isolated from interruptions from the outside world
      • Region (regional boundary)
        • Big physical locations where AWS builds a lots of data centers, connects to the cloud
          • the data centers are just far enough so that problem is not affected largely
        • Regions are isolated and independent from other Regions with a few exceptions.
        • Each Region consists of multiple independent and physically separate Availability Zones in a geographic area.
          • All Regions currently have three or more Availability Zones.
        • The resources and data that you create in one Region do not exist in any other Region (u have to replicate/copy)
        • How to select a region
      • Availability zone (zonal boundary)
        • Purely virtual, NO PHYSICAL (customer will never see)
          • data center group that supports AZs
        • An Availability Zone are distinct locations within a Region that are engineered to be isolated from failures in other Availability zones (AZs)
        • far enough apart to prevent a single failure affecting multiple AZs but close enough to support fast communication

  • Choosing the right region

    • compliance with data governance and legal req - might dictate where data needs to be geographically stored.
    • available services within a region
    • pricing - different services have different costs depending on the Region used
    • proximity to your customers - the closer, the faster

  • edge location

    • a site that Amazon CloudFront uses to cache copies of content for more efficient delivery to users at any location

  • AWS Local Zones

    • They extend AWS Regions by placing compute, storage, and database resources closer to large cities, industries, and IT hubs.
    • They are physically separate from the main AWS Regions but still connected to them via high-speed networks.
    • They allow latency-sensitive applications (like gaming, media streaming, and real-time analytics) to run closer to end users

  • Cloud services, regions, and AZs

    • All AWS services locally reside within a region (like residents)
    • Regional Services → Exist at the region level (spanning multiple AZs).
      • Amazon S3 - each bucked is created in a specific Region
    • Zonal Services → Require you to select specific Availability Zones (AZs).
      • majority of AWS services
      • Amazon EC2

Connecting to the AWS Cloud

  • AWS Management Console
    • a user-friendly, web-based interface that you can use to manage your AWS resources
    • central hub for managing AWS resources
    • key to successful AWS adoption is to start small, experiment, and gradually scale your usage as your needs grow
    • After setting up amazon account, you can start exploring the AWS Management Console
  • Accounts
    • corporate acc - used for general operations
    • development acc - used for testing & developing new solutions
    • production acc - used for customer-facing applications and services
  • AWS account root user
    • complete access to all AWS services and resources in acc
    • use the root user to create the first AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) user and assign it permissions to create other users.
    • Then, continue to create other IAM users, and access those identities for performing regular tasks throughout AWS
    • Only use the root user when you need to perform a limited number of tasks that are only available to the root user.
  • IAM
    • a crucial service in the AWS environment that you can use to securely manage access to your AWS resources
    • IAM users → individual identities that can access your AWS environment
      • partners, employees, even automated systems
      • can assign specific permissions/actions

AWS connection types

  1. Customers accessing your AWS hosted website
    • Ex. AWS hosted website
    • website’s URL typed → request travels over the internet and reaches Amazon CloudFront, the AWS content delivery network → CloudFront will then fetch the website’s content from Amazon S3 (where you stored your website files) and deliver it quickly and efficiently to the customer, no matter where they’re located.
  2. Application within the AWS Cloud accessing the internet
    • Ex. a web application hosted on Amazon EC2 that needs to fetch data from a third-party API.
    • The application can securely access the internet through the AWS managed network without worrying about configuring firewalls or managing internet-facing resources
  3. AWS service accessing another AWS service
    • AWS services need to communicate with each other
    • your web application might need to store data in DynamoDB, an AWS fully managed NoSQL database
      • The application can efficiently and securely access the DynamoDB service through the AWS network

Building a website

  • services: hosting a static website
    • Amazon S3 - store static files (HTML, CSS, images, etc)
      • highly scalable and durable
      • u need to turn on static website hosting on your S3 bucket, and uncheck the blocking option
    • Amazon CloudFront - AWS content delivery network (CDN) service. It helps distribute your website’s content to users around the world efficiently
    • Amazon Route 53 - AWS DNS, which you can use to register and manage your website’s domain name.
  • services: hosting a dynamic website
    • Amazon Lightsail - suitable if you need a convenient, affordable way to get your website online efficiently.
    • AWS Elastic Beanstalk - focus on application code while AWS handles the operations
    • AWS EC2 - makes it possible to launch and manage virtual servers called instance. provides you with most control over ur website’s infrastructure and its code

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