AWS Cloud Basics Concept

Syed Abu Owais Bin Nasar

MS (CSIT) NED-UET -- BS (CS) UoK UBIT
abu_owais@yahoo.com -- +92.344.2124471
https://www.linkedin.com/in/abuowais/
 AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

Table of Contents
What Is Cloud Computing? ........................................................................................................................... 2
On-Premises Infrastructure Versus Cloud Computing .................................................................................. 2
Which Cloud Computing Model Is Best for You? .......................................................................................... 2
Cloud ......................................................................................................................................................... 3
Hybrid........................................................................................................................................................ 3
On-premises .............................................................................................................................................. 4
Stop Spending Money Running and Maintaining Data Centers ................................................................... 5
AWS Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator............................................................................................ 5
Trade Capital Expense for Variable Expense................................................................................................. 7
Stop Guessing Capacity ............................................................................................................................. 7
Benefit from Massive Economies of Scale ................................................................................................ 8
Increase Speed and Agility ........................................................................................................................ 9
Go Global in Minutes ................................................................................................................................ 9
Keep Your Data Safe.................................................................................................................................. 9
Meet Compliance Requirements .............................................................................................................. 9
Wrap-Up.................................................................................................................................................... 9
Global Cloud Based Options ....................................................................................................................... 10
Key AWS Service Categories ....................................................................................................................... 10
Go Global .................................................................................................................................................... 11
Create Your Global Footprint ...................................................................................................................... 12
Regions and Availability Zones.................................................................................................................... 13
Points of Presence Locations .................................................................................................................. 14
Wrap-Up.................................................................................................................................................. 14
AWS Management Tools............................................................................................................................. 14
AWS Management Console .................................................................................................................... 15
Personalize Your AWS Experience .......................................................................................................... 15
Learn More About AWS .......................................................................................................................... 16
AWS CLI ....................................................................................................................................................... 17
AWS SDKs .................................................................................................................................................... 17
Wrap-Up.................................................................................................................................................. 18
Resources .................................................................................................................................................... 18

1|Page
 AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

What Is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing refers to the on-demand delivery of information technology (IT) resources via the
Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining your own data centers
and servers, organizations can acquire technology such as compute power, storage, databases, and
other services on an as-needed basis.

Think of how you can flip a switch to turn on lights in your home and the power company sends the
electricity. It’s like that.

On-Premises Infrastructure Versus Cloud Computing

In a traditional IT environment, all the physical components required to run your systems are owned,
operated, maintained, and housed on-premises. However, hardware requires a large up-front
investment to procure and continual expense and effort to maintain. The cost, complexity, and time
required to expand or alter an on-premises infrastructure can slow or even stop you from experimenting
with new processes or systems.

Cloud computing has become the ideal solution to achieve those needs.

In an on-premises environment, you connect and log on to the corporate network to access resources
such as applications, file sharing, and storage. With cloud computing, virtual technology provides access
to the same or similar IT resources through the Internet.

Which Cloud Computing Model Is Best for You?

Now that you have decided to move to the cloud, you must decide which cloud computing deployment
model is best for your project. Based on budget and company policies, every deployment has to follow a

2|Page
 AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

set of predetermined guidelines. This can include internal or external governance requiring sensitive
data to be stored in-house, or technical challenges that do not allow for a fully deployed cloud solution.

The cloud computing deployment models include:

• Cloud
• Hybrid
• On-premises or private cloud

Each of the cloud computing deployment models allows for a solution that provides you with different
levels of control, flexibility, and management.

Cloud
A cloud-based application is fully deployed in the cloud. Applications in the cloud have either been
created in the cloud or have been migrated from an existing on-premises infrastructure to take
advantage of the benefits of cloud computing. Cloud-based applications can be built on low-level
infrastructure pieces like file sharing and storage, or can use higher level services where you don’t need
to worry about infrastructure management, architecting, and scaling requirements.

Hybrid
A hybrid deployment is a way to connect infrastructure and applications between cloud-based resources
and on-premises systems. This type of model can extend and grow your infrastructure into the cloud
while connecting to internal systems through secure network connections.

3|Page
 AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

At the most fundamental level, hybrid can be viewed as having data that resides both on-premises and
in the cloud. This is often done to economically store large amounts of data, use new cloud-native
databases, move data closer to customers, or to create a backup and archive a solution with cost-
effective high availability.

On-premises
Deploying resources on-premises, by using virtualization software and resource management tools, is
also called private cloud. An on-premises deployment does not provide many of the benefits of cloud
computing (which are discussed later in this module). However, it’s sometimes preferred for the ability
to provide dedicated resources at your physical location.

In this model, you carry the burden of all operating expenses of the deployment. These expenses can
include IT infrastructure upkeep, software licensing, and the people needed to manage the physical
infrastructure.

In most cases, an on-premises deployment model is the same as with legacy IT infrastructure. But it has
the added complexity of using application management and virtualization technologies to try and
increase your return on investment.

4|Page
 AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

Cloud, hybrid, and on-premises deployments are all cloud computing deployment models that you can
choose to deliver resources to your users.

Stop Spending Money Running and Maintaining Data Centers

Maintaining an on-premises data center is expensive and complex. Whether you own or rent data
center facilities, you still need to manage investments such as servers, storage, networks, and IT staff, to
name a few.

Cloud computing essentially moves the traditional data center to the cloud and reduces or even
eliminates the need to manage those elements mentioned above. In other words, cloud computing
enables you to focus on your customers’ needs without the heavy lifting of running data centers.

The AWS Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator compares the cost of running your applications in an
on-premises environment to AWS. A link to the TCO Calculator is available in the Resources section at
the end of this unit.

AWS Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator

Use this new calculator to compare the cost of your applications in an on-premises or traditional hosting
environment to AWS. Describe your on-premises or hosting environment configuration to produce a
detailed cost comparison with AWS.

5|Page
AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

1. Describe your existing or planned on-premises or hosting infrastructure in four steps, or enter
detailed configurations.

2. Get an instant summary report which shows you the three year TCO comparison by cost
categories.

6|Page
 AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

3. Download a full report including detailed cost breakdowns, Methodology, Assumptions, and
FAQ or store the report in Amazon S3 for sharing with others.

Trade Capital Expense for Variable Expense

With AWS, you pay only for the computing resources that you need, for as long as you need them, with
no licensing dependencies. Think about the ability to scale with this approach.

• Spin up one virtual server or a thousand.

• Computing resources can be used for a few hours, or 24/7.

AWS accommodates use cases that require only a small amount of resources to enterprise sized projects
without upfront capital expense. There are no complex agreements, termination clauses, or hidden fees
involved. You pay only when you consume computing resources, and you pay only for how much you
consume.

Stop Guessing Capacity

Before cloud computing, you had to build data centers based on guessing your infrastructure capacity
needs. If the design didn’t plan for enough resources, your customers would suffer the consequences
through apps that wouldn’t work, websites that couldn’t open, and services that were unavailable. If
you overplanned and exceeded the capacity needs, you ended up paying for idle resources that you
didn’t really need.

7|Page
 AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

AWS provides elasticity, giving you the ability to provision the amount of resources that you actually
need. You can quickly deploy new applications, instantly scale up as the workload grows, and shut down
resources that are no longer required, scale down the workload, without having to plan for a worst-case
scenario. This reduces costs and improves your ability to meet your users’ demands.

Benefit from Massive Economies of Scale

Because usage from hundreds of thousands of customers is aggregated in the cloud, providers such as
AWS can drive economies of scale that are otherwise difficult to replicate. The scale and operations of
the AWS Cloud supports lower costs and higher efficiency than those in on-premises data centers. This
translates into lower pay-as-you-go prices becoming available to you.

8|Page
 AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

Increase Speed and Agility

There are only so many hours in a day, and your time is best spent focusing on your business and adding
value to your customers instead of waiting for resources to become available.

With AWS, new IT resources are just a click away. You can spin up servers in minutes. Then, when
servers aren’t needed anymore, you can shut down servers in the same amount of time. This reduces
the time it takes to make those resources available to you from weeks to just minutes. This increases the
agility in which you can experiment and try new ideas, bringing innovation back into your organization.

Go Global in Minutes
Putting your data centers where your customers are can be a costly proposition, especially if they are
located all over the globe. AWS enables you to easily deploy your system in multiple regions around the
world with just a moment’s notice. This ensures lower latency and a better experience for your
customers at minimal cost.

Keep Your Data Safe

At AWS cloud security is a top priority. AWS gives you complete ownership and control over your data
through simple point-and-click tools. This includes the ability to determine where to store your data,
secure it in transit or at rest, and manage access to AWS services and resources.

From the design of the data centers to the services, AWS starts from the ground up with security in mind
as a focus.

AWS data centers:

• Use electronic surveillance and multifactor access control systems.

• Are staffed 24/7 by trained security guards.
• Adhere to strictly regulated access procedures.
• Are designed to tolerate system or hardware failures with minimal customer impact.

Take a digital tour of an AWS data center, including a review of the physical and environmental controls
in place.

Meet Compliance Requirements

AWS maintains security and data protection in the cloud by managing dozens of compliance programs in
its infrastructure. When services are built, AWS works with regulators to ensure that compliance
requirements are met so that you can start off on a stronger foundation. By operating in an accredited
environment, you reduce the scope and cost of audits that you need to perform.

Wrap-Up
When you use the AWS Cloud, you clear away obstacles to innovation like high costs and long-term
contracts. AWS offers over 165 fully featured services across categories including compute, storage, and
database, to name a few.

9|Page
 AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

Global Cloud Based Options

AWS offers many services for building or expanding your cloud environment, ranging from compute,
storage, networking, and databases, to game tech and robotics. These services are designed to help you
move faster, lower IT costs, and scale. You can use the service stand-alone, or combine them to create a
custom solution that meets your needs.

There are over 165 AWS services, organized into service categories. Here is a quick introduction.

Key AWS Service Categories

Service Description Service Examples
Category
Compute Compute services are the processing power • Amazon Elastic
needed to run your application. The AWS Compute Cloud
compute portfolio provides tools to develop, (Amazon EC2)
deploy, run, and scale your applications in the • AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Cloud. • AWS Fargate
• AWS Lambda
Storage Storage is one of the core building blocks of AWS. • Amazon Simple
These services hold the information used by your Storage Service
applications. They provide reliable, scalable, and (Amazon S3)
secure options to store, transmit, and back up • Amazon Elastic Block
your data. Store (Amazon EBS)

10 | P a g e
 AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

• Amazon S3 Glacier
Networking & Your network is the foundation of your • Amazon Virtual
Content infrastructure. AWS Networking & Content Private Cloud
Delivery Delivery services are used to support your content (Amazon VPC)
delivery network, such as virtual private cloud, • Amazon Route 53
direct connections, and load balancing needs. • Amazon CloudFront
Database Database services range from relational databases • Amazon Aurora
that are easy to set up and operate, to NoSQL • Amazon Relational
databases built for higher demand and low Database Service
latency—AWS offers a solution for all database (Amazon RDS)
needs. • Amazon DynamoDB
Analytics Analytics services enable you to transform raw • Amazon Athena
data into meaningful information. They help you • Amazon Redshift
collect, visualize, and analyze your data to get the • Amazon Kinesis
answers you need to run your business.
AWS Cost Use these services to access information about • AWS Cost Explorer
Management your costs and usage, organize your costs across • AWS Budgets
business lines, understand cost drivers and usage • AWS Cost and Usage
trends, set budgets, and optimize your AWS Report
usage.
Management & This category includes end-to-end IT lifecycle • Amazon CloudWatch
Governance management—control and secure your • AWS CloudFormation
environment, reduce costs, simplify compliance, • AWS CloudTrail
and enhance operational efficiency. • AWS Trusted Advisor
Migration & AWS offers services for migrating any workload— • AWS Database
Transfer application, website, database, storage, physical Migration Service
or virtual server (or even an entire data center) to • AWS Snowball
AWS. • AWS DataSync
Security, These services provide tools to achieve • AWS Identity and
Identity & compliance and protect your infrastructure and Access Management
Compliance data from both internal and external threats and (IAM)
exposures. • Amazon Inspector
• AWS Shield
• AWS Security Hub

Go Global
The AWS Global Infrastructure is built around Regions and Availability Zones.

• A Region is a physical location in the world that provides multiple, physically separated, and
isolated Availability Zones.

• Availability Zones consist of one or more discrete data centers, each with redundant power,
networking, connectivity, and are housed in separate facilities.

AWS builds data centers in many Regions, and across multiple Availability Zones within each Region.
Each data center is designed with excess bandwidth connections. If a major disruption occurs, there’s
capacity to route traffic to the remaining sites, minimizing the impact on you.

11 | P a g e
 AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

When a Region is designed, AWS reviews potential hazards or scenarios which can impact a data center,
such as utility faults, like power and network outages, as well as, geographic hazards like typhoons,
floods, and earthquakes. Also, Availability Zones are physically separated within a typical metropolitan
Region and are located in lower risk flood plains.

All this lends to maximum resiliency against system disruption.

Create Your Global Footprint

A successful global footprint depends on how you use Regions and their Availability Zones. The AWS
Global Infrastructure is comprised of 69 Availability Zones within 22 geographic Regions. There are also
announced plans for nine more Availability Zones and three more Regions in Indonesia, Italy, and South
Africa.

All this means there's opportunity for cloud computing internationally and you can expect that AWS will
continue to add Regions.

Let’s do a quick check before moving on.

• A Region is a geographical location, like US East (N. Virginia).

o Within each Region, there are multiple Availability Zones.

o Each Availability Zone has one or more data centers, with some Availability
Zones having as many as six data centers, housed in separate facilities, all with
capacity to fail-over to other Availability Zones within the same Region.

Note that no Availability Zone can be part of two Regions.

Now, let’s dive deeper into the AWS Global Infrastructure.

12 | P a g e
 AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

Regions and Availability Zones

From the below example, you can see two Regions, US East (N. Virginia) and Asia Pacific (Hong Kong).
Each Region is completely independent. The example shows each Region has two Availability Zones.
Availability Zones are connected to each other with fast, private fiber-optic networking designed to
allow users to automatically fail-over between Availability Zones without interruption.

When you launch a computing resource, you can select an Availability Zone or let AWS choose one for
you. If you distribute your resources across multiple Availability Zones, you can design your app so that if
a resource fails, a resource in another Availability Zone can handle requests.

Keep in mind, when you create resources in AWS, they will be tied to the Region that you select and not
automatically replicated. AWS recommends provisioning your resources across multiple Availability
Zones. You learn about the tools you use to manage these resources later in this module.

13 | P a g e
 AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

Points of Presence Locations

To deliver content to end-users in the fastest way possible, AWS employs a Global Network of
166 Points of Presence (PoP) in 65 cities across 29 countries.

These Points of Presence are divided into edge locations and regional edge caches. Some highly
populated areas have multiple edge locations to ensure efficient content delivery when there’s high
traffic.

When a user makes an initial request for your content, the closest edge location caches a copy. The edge
location then delivers the newly cached content to users who access that content and are close to that
edge location, rather than retrieving the same content over and over again. This process speeds up
content delivery by giving users access to content from an edge location potentially in the same city. The
process repeats as more users access content from edge locations around the globe.

Regional edge caches are used when content isn’t accessed frequently enough to remain in an edge
location. Regional edge caches absorb this content and provide an alternative to fetching that content
from the origin server.

Wrap-Up
Every component of the AWS Global Infrastructure is designed and built for redundancy and reliability,
from Regions to Availability Zones to edge locations and more.

AWS Management Tools

There are three tools that you can use to create and manage AWS resources.

• The AWS Management Console.

• The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI).

• The AWS Software Development Kits (SDKs).

14 | P a g e
 AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

Each option is built upon a common interface, or API, that serves as the foundation for AWS. So you can
use these tools interchangeably.

AWS Management Console

The AWS Management Console is a graphical interface used to interact with AWS services and features.
You can manage all aspects of AWS services, as well as your AWS account, including monitoring your
monthly spending, managing security credentials, and setting up new users.

Find Services in the Console

There are several ways to find and open services that you need. On the homepage you can (A) search for
what you need, (B) select recently visited services, or (C) expand the All services section to browse
through all of the AWS services. The Services option (D) is always displayed in the top navigation bar,
allowing you to search for what you need at any time, list services by groups, or arrange alphabetically.

Personalize Your AWS Experience

You can personalize your experience in the console by creating shortcuts to the services that you visit
the most often. The pin icon (E) allows you to drag and drop service links right onto the toolbar. You can
use Resource Groups (F) to streamline your use of the console.

You can create a resource group for each application, service, and collection of related resources you
frequently use. This allows you to quickly navigate to each saved resource group using the AWS menu in
the top left corner of the screen. Resource groups are specific to identities, so each user in your account
can create unique resource groups for their own frequently-accessed resources and their common tasks.
You can also share resource group definitions with others in the same account using a URL.

With Resource Groups, you can view collections of resources that share common tags. The Tag Editor
allows you to easily manage tags for resource types that support tags and apply tag keys and values to

15 | P a g e
 AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

multiple resources at one time. The Tag Editor supports global tag searching and bulk editing, so you can
find all resources with a particular tag, or make a tag change across multiple resources with just a few
clicks.

Learn More About AWS

The console homepage also features resources to help you learn about the services and features AWS
has to offer and get you started building your solutions faster.

• The Build a solution section features automated wizards and workflows that can help you
create the resources that you need for your solution.

• The Learn to build section includes learning resources organized by solution type and use case.
Resources include tutorials, videos, self-paced labs, project guides, and course documentation.

Manage AWS Resources from Your Mobile Device

There’s even an app that you can use with iOS or Android platforms, so that you can view your existing
resources and alarms, and perform tasks at your convenience.

16 | P a g e
 AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

AWS CLI

The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) is an open-source tool that lets you interact with the AWS
services without having to do a lot of configuration. With the AWS CLI, you use command in your
terminal program, like Linux shells, Windows command line, and a remote terminal such as PuTTY or
SSH.

The AWS CLI provides direct access to the public APIs of AWS services. You can explore a service’s
capabilities with the AWS CLI, and develop shell scripts to manage your resources. Or you can take what
you learn to develop programs in other languages by using the AWS SDKs.

AWS SDKs
The AWS SDK and its supporting interfaces enable you to access AWS using a variety of popular
programming languages. This makes it easy to use AWS in your existing applications and enables
creating applications to deploy and monitor complex systems entirely through code. These language-
specific SDKs contain APIs that allow you to easily incorporate the connectivity and functionality of the
wider range of AWS Cloud services into your code without the difficulty of having to code the functions
yourself.

17 | P a g e
 AWS CLOUD BASICS CONCEPT S. ABU OWAIS BIN NASAR

AWS provides extensive resources for these SDKs, including getting started guides, developer guides, API
references, as well as community forums and blogs.

Wrap-Up
This module was the first step in understanding the essentials of the AWS Cloud. Now that you know the
basics, we encourage you to keep learning and expand your knowledge about the AWS Cloud and
services.

Resources
• Site: Tools to Build on AWS
• Site: AWS Command Line Interface
• Site: API Resource Groups and Tag Editor Documentation
• Article: Six Advantages of Cloud Computing
• Tool: AWS Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator
• Site: AWS Data Controls
• Site: AWS Data Center Virtual Tour
• Site: Cloud Products
• Site: Amazon Web Services Cloud Platform
• Site: AWS Global Infrastructure

18 | P a g e