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Domain 3: Technology

Deploying & Operating in the AWS Cloud

Ways to Provision and Operate in AWS

Programmatic Access:

  • APIs: Set of routines and tools for building AWS software.

  • SDKs: Collection of software tools and libraries specific to various programming languages.

AWS Management Console:

  • Web-based interface for AWS management.

  • Features drag-and-drop capabilities to deploy AWS resources.

CLI:

  • Allows direct command line instructions for AWS resources.

  • Ideal for scripting and automations.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC):

  • Use scripts to provision and manage AWS resources.

  • Tools like AWS CloudFormation and terraform allow for IaC.

Deployment Models

Description

All in with Cloud/Cloud Native

Fully utilizing cloud services without on-premises resources.

Hybrid

Mixture of on-premises resources with cloud services.

On-Premises

Traditional infrastructure without significant cloud interaction.

Connectivity Options

  • VPN: Securely connect your on-premises network to the AWS cloud.

  • AWS Direct Connect: Establish a dedicated network connection from your premises to AWS.

  • Public Internet: General connectivity method but less secure.


AWS Global Infrastructure

Relationship Among Regions, Availability Zones, and Edge Locations

  • Regions: Separate geographic areas to ensure data redundancy and compliance.

  • Availability Zones: Physically isolated data centers within a region.

  • Edge Locations: Multiple distributed locations globally, primarily used by CloudFront (CDN) to cache content close to end-users.

How many Availability Zones does a typical AWS Region have?

a) 1 b) 2-3 c) 5-6 d) 10

Achieving High Availability

  • Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity: A strategic advantage of utilizing multiple regions.

  • Use of multiple Availability Zones to ensure fault tolerance and minimize downtime.

  • Some countries or industries require data to be stored in specific geographies.

Benefits of Edge Locations

  • Amazon CloudFront: A content delivery network to distribute content globally with low latency.

  • AWS Global Accelerator: Boosts the availability and performance of applications.


Core AWS Services

Categories of Services on AWS

AWS services can be classified into different categories based on their function:

  1. Compute: Services tailored for processing capabilities.

  2. Storage: Services related to data storage and retrieval.

  3. Network: Tools and services that relate to networking features.

  4. Database: Services for structured and unstructured data storage and management.

Compute Services

AWS offers several compute families tailored for different needs:

  • General Purpose (e.g., t2, m5): Balanced CPU, memory, and networking.

  • Compute Optimized (e.g., c5): For CPU-intensive workloads.

  • Memory Optimized (e.g., r5, x1): For memory-intensive applications.

  • Accelerated Computing (e.g., p3, f1): Leveraging hardware accelerators, or co-processors.

Services Providing Compute:

  • Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud): Provides resizable compute capacity. It's like having a virtual machine but in the AWS cloud.

  • AWS Lambda: A serverless compute service. You just provide the code and AWS runs it without you provisioning or managing servers.

  • Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS): A fully managed container orchestration service.

Elasticity through Auto Scaling:

  • AWS Auto Scaling allows you to maintain application availability. It dynamically adjusts its capacity to maintain steady, predictable performance at the lowest possible cost.

Purpose of Load Balancers:

  • AWS offers Elastic Load Balancing with three types: Application Load Balancer, Network Load Balancer, and Classic Load Balancer.

  • Distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets, like EC2 instances, containers, and IP addresses, in one or more Availability Zones.

Storage Services

  • Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service): Object storage service offering scalability, data availability, security, and performance.

  • Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store): Block storage service for EC2 instances. Allows persistent data storage.

  • Amazon S3 Glacier & S3 Glacier Deep Archive: Storage services optimized for infrequently accessed data, and long-term archiving with cost-efficiency.

  • AWS Snowball: A physical data transport solution, more secure and faster than internet-based transfer methods.

  • Amazon EFS (Elastic File System): Managed file storage for use with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources.

  • AWS Storage Gateway: Hybrid cloud storage service that provides on-premises applications access to cloud storage.

Networking Services

  • VPC (Virtual Private Cloud): Provides a private section of the AWS cloud where you can launch resources in a virtual network that you define.

  • Security Groups: Act as a virtual firewall to control inbound and outbound traffic to networked EC2 instances.

  • Amazon Route 53: A scalable domain name system (DNS) and domain name registration service.

  • VPN (Virtual Private Network) & AWS Direct Connect: Allow secure connection from on-premises sites to AWS. Direct Connect does so over a dedicated line for higher speed and consistency.

Database Services

  • Amazon EC2 vs. AWS Managed Databases: While you can manually set up databases on an EC2 instance, AWS managed database services, like RDS and DynamoDB, offer easier management, backups, and scalability.

  • Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service): Managed relational database service with various database engines like MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, etc.

  • Amazon DynamoDB: Managed NoSQL database service known for single-digit millisecond performance.

  • Amazon Redshift: Fully managed petabyte-scale data warehouse service.


Resources for Technology Support

  • Documentation: Comprehensive AWS documentation includes whitepapers, user guides, and reference material.

  • Support Plans: AWS offers a variety of support plans, from Basic to Enterprise.

  • AWS Partner Network: Extensive network of third-party vendors, solutions, and integrators.

  • AWS Trusted Advisor: Offers insights to reduce cost, increase performance, and ensure a secure environment.

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