Introduction to AWS and core services

diego.coder

Published in

AWS Tip

6 min readSep 22, 2022

Basic introduction to the AWS Cloud, a look at its infrastructure, payment model, and main services.

AWS

Amazon Web Services or better known as AWS, is a cloud service platform that provides computing resources focused mainly on business environments on demand. AWS provides multiple computing services in a fast and scalable way, such as computing storage, database, security, and network services.

AWS was launched in 2006 and belongs to the Amazon holding company led by businessman Jeff Bezos. Noting that AWS is the most complete cloud platform on the market, offering more than 200 services available to the user.

Composition of the global AWS infrastructure

Currently (the year 2022) the AWS Cloud includes 84 Availability Zones in 26 geographic regions around the world. Additionally, plans have been announced to add an additional 24 Availability Zones and 8 AWS Regions in Australia, Canada, India, Israel, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). AWS is the largest cloud in the world compared to its competitors.

Next, we will describe the key concepts to understand the AWS infrastructure, which are:

Regions.
Availability zones.
Data centers.

Regions

A region is a physical geographic area where AWS has deployed its data centers. Emphasizing that a region is NOT a country and each of the regions is made up of availability zones.

Availability Zones

A Region is made up of multiple Availability Zones. These availability zones are located in the same zone but strategically separated geographically from each other, in turn, they are connected in a redundant network offering ultra-low latency for their clients.

Data centers

An availability zone is made up of 2 or more data centers. These data centers are located in the same availability zone. In turn, it is said that these data centers are separated by 75 km and that each of these data centers has its own power supply, its own ventilation source, and its own network connectivity.

Create an account on AWS

To create an AWS account, you only need to enter this 👉 portal. You only have to fill in the form with your personal data and email, highlighting that it is necessary to enter a credit card for identity verification and future payments.

When you create a new account, AWS gives you the possibility to use 18 products and services for free with certain usage limits for 12 months, this is only if you sign up with a credit card. In addition, your card will not be charged unless your usage exceeds the free usage tier.

AWS Access Methods

The methods of access to the AWS platform are the following:

AWS Management Console: Easy to use graphical interface through the browser.
AWS CLI: Access to services through discreet commands. This access allows you to control AWS services through command lines.
AWS SDKs and developer kit: Incorporation of connectivity and functionalities of the AWS cloud. It allows access through various programming languages.

AWS Management Console

The AWS Management Console is a web application that encompasses and references a broad set of AWS services through dashboards.

The AWS Management Console is also available as an app for Android and iOS. This application allows you to perform relevant tasks on mobile devices, which improves the total experience on the web. For example, you can easily view and manage your existing Amazon EC2 instances and Amazon CloudWatch alarms from your phone.

Main website AWS Management Console: Features and resources.
User guide AWS Management Console: Getting started, tutorials, and developer concepts.

AWS CLI

The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) is an open-source tool that allows you to interact with AWS services by using interactive shell commands. All AWS IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) access, management, and administration features of the AWS Management Console are available in the AWS API and AWS CLI.

Main website AWS CLI: Features and resources.
User guide AWS CLI: Getting started, tutorials, and developer concepts.
Instalación AWS CLI : Guide and documentation to install in Linux, MacOS y Windows.

AWS SDKs and development kit

The AWS SDK (Software Development Kit) helps in the coding of different programming languages for interaction with AWS services. There are different development kits depending on the programming language, among the most popular are Javascript, Java, and Python

User guide AWS SDK: Getting started, tutorials, and developer concepts.

Payment models on AWS

All AWS services are based on the following payment models:

Pay as you go: Pay only for what you use. This helps us Adapt easily to changing business needs without overly compromising budgets and improving responsiveness to change.
Resource reservation: Model where instances or resources can be reserved in advance, being able to save up to 75% on capacity on demand.
Pay less for more: You can get volume discounts and realize significant savings as your usage increases.

Main cloud models

Aws has the main cloud models and services:

Public Cloud: Access to resources regardless of whether we are end users, developers, or corporations. Being able to access and manage our resources from anywhere in the world with an account.
Private cloud: Cloud that occupies dedicated computing resources within the data center. Emphasizing that a single organization hosts and manages the system. AWS relies on the Outposts service to provide this requirement.
Hybrid Cloud: Shared model between public and private cloud connection. Offering multiple options for the environment to suit each individual use case.

Cloud service models

AWS provides the 3 main service models that can be found in a cloud provider.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS): Infrastructure services that offer computing, networking, firewall, and storage systems among their main services.
Platform as a Service (PaaS): Services focused on developers. These services offer to quickly deploy applications while hiding the complexities of infrastructure and manual configurations.
Software as a service (SaaS): Ready-to-use services, it is not installed, it is used from a browser or app, and does not require as much technical knowledge.

List of the most used main services in AWS

Identity and management services: Services responsible for controlling access to AWS resources and servers. Main IAM service.
Computing services: Services in charge of providing features to perform computations such as CPU, RAM, and others. The main services are EC2, Lamba, and Elastic Beanstalk.
Storage services: Services in charge of storing all kinds of objects, files, blocks, etc. Main services S3 and EBS.
Network services: Connectivity services. Main services VPC, DNS, and Route53.
Monitoring services: Collection and audit services. Main Cloud Watch and Cloud trail services.
Security and government services: Services in charge of availability and tools to provide additional security. Main services AWS inspector and AWS shield.

Resources AWS

Main website AWS: Products, solutions, and prices of AWS.
AWS skill builder: Free courses, learning plans, and more than 500 courses are available.
AWS certification: Help students build credibility and trust by validating their cloud expertise with a credential recognized across industry and organizations.
Developer center AWS: Tutorials, tools, and events for developers.
Architecture center AWS: Provides Reference Architecture Diagrams, Authorized Architecture Solutions, Well-Architected Best Practices, Patterns, Icons, etc. AWS cloud architecture experts contributed to this expert guide.

Thanks for coming this far, if you find this useful don’t forget to clap 👏. Subscribe to receive more content 🔔.

If you need additional help, please contact me 🤠.

Thank you very much for reading, I appreciate your time.