THE CLOUD OPERATING SYSTEM

Amazon Web Services (also called AWS Cloud) is a cloud services provider and therefore something like an operating system for Internet-enabled services. The AWS Cloud can be used to provide functions that were previously located in a separate data center or rack: file servers, web servers and database servers. The special thing is that these resources are “scripted”, ie they can be created, stopped and deleted via interfaces. But AWS can do more like this:

Hundreds of other services have been added in recent years that work in a similar way, can be combined as desired, and have certain advantages over a conventional implementation. The main advantages of the AWS Cloud are that customers have full control over their services, they can be scaled practically infinitely on request and can be rolled out at many locations worldwide.

AWS also meets all data security requirements that companies in Germany are subject to.

AWS Cloud Frankfurt - Amazon Web Services - Paas - SaaS - IaaS

To put it more specifically, a cloud services provider consists of these components:

  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS),
  • Platform as a Service (PaaS) and
  • Software as a Service (SaaS) and
  • Function as a Service (FaaS).

Infrastucture as a Service means that customers have access to available IT services via the Internet, for example in the area of data storage or computing power, and can use them anywhere and on different devices. Platform as a Service describes the use of a cloud platform over the Internet to develop web applications. Software as a Service stands for the provision of browser-based software by an external service provider that can be used by several users at the same time (an example of a SaaS service is Google Docs). Function as a service (FaaS) is a category of cloud computing services that provides a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage application functionalities without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typically associated with developing and launching an app (for example Lambda as part of the AWS Cloud).

In addition to AWS, there are several other providers of cloud services, such as Azure (Microsoft) and the Google Cloud Platform.

Amazon Web Services - Magic Quadrant by Gartner 2019

MAIN AWS SERVICES

I have been dealing with the basic AWS services EC2, S3 and Route 53 especially between 2018 and 2021. Earlier, I installed, configured and made hardware available myself in the data center for more than 10 years. Cloud services free a devops engineer of “manual” work in the data center and shift the work to the software level.

I decided to take AWS certifications, because I am very interested in the topic of cloud computing and want to get to know as many aspects of the AWS Cloud as possible. Meanwhile, I am accordingly certified as AWS Solutions Architect Associate.

The most important building blocks in everyday AWS use are:

Virtual Servers
AWS offers virtual servers with the EC2 service, for example. Here you can select between Linux distributions or Microsoft Windows as operating system. Billing takes place depending on the online time (hourly or second-by-second), used memory or compute units. Serverless services such as AWS Lambda are an alternative to virtual servers.
Storage Space
You can save almost “unlimited” large amounts of data on AWS and billing takes place for used storage space. Storage is carried out via the file hosting service S3, which is used in the background by numerous other AWS services.
Networking
The content from AWS services (e.g. EC2 or S3) can be provided globally using CloudFront, a content delivery network (CDN). The global distribution reduces access time. Services like Route 53 enable things that conventional domain services do not allow, such as DNS failover: a replacement server takes over if, for example, a server fails.

Furthermore, AWS can protect your websites and APIs against DDOS attacks on layers 3, 4 and 7 in the OSI model.

Databases
With Relational Database Service (RDS) you can start a highly available database system that includes all common database manufacturers such as MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle within a few minutes. Or you can switch to big data systems like Redshift if you want to analyze large amounts of data.
Tools
AWS provides many online tools that enable developers to program, analyze, debug, test and deploy applications. Such tools help to foster the trend towards micro services and away from monolithic applications.
AWS Marketplace
A huge selection of software can be booked via the AWS Marketplace that is tailored to the AWS platform. Numerous applications from the areas of IoT, AI or Big Data can also be found here.

The cloud area is still in its infancy and will continue to grow in the coming years as companies are moving more and more services there. Significant innovations are also expected in the fields of big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Did you know…?
Amazon Web Services is the market leader for cloud services. But it’s not the only one. In the last months I also got involved in projects using Azure and GCP (Google Cloud Platform).
Michael Wutzke - Web Developer Frankfurt

Michael Wutzke

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate in Frankfurt

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Michael Wutzke