What Is Cloud Storage? Definition, Types, Benefits, and Best Practices
Cloud storage is a cloud computing model that allows users to save important data or media files on remote, third-party servers. Users can ...
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Public cloud storage requires few administrative controls and can be accessed online by the user and anyone else who the user authorizes. With public cloud storage, the user/company doesn’t need to maintain the system. Public cloud storage is hosted by different solution providers, so there’s very little opportunity for customizing the security fields, as they are common for all users. <anchor>Amazon Web Services (AWS)</anchor>, IBM Cloud, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure are a few popular public cloud storage solution providers. Public cloud storage is easily scalable, affordable, reliable and offers seamless monitoring and zero maintenance.
Common AWS Services Explained: EC2, RDS, S3, VPC, Lambda
# Common AWS Services Explained: EC2, RDS, S3, VPC

July 31, 2019

As the internet grew in popularity after the dotcom boom, Amazon saw an opportunity to let companies set up their IT infrastructure online. This move marked the launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS), a platform which allowed users to buy various infrastructural resources. This was also the beginning of the era of cloud computing, a market where AWS is now the undisputed leader.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) leads over other service providers by a significant margin in the cloud compute services market, holding 20&percnt; more market share than Microsoft Azure, its closest competitor. The platform offers over 150 different services spread across 20 categories, providing versatility and flexibility for companies across verticals.

In this article, we will take a look at the basics of AWS along with the most popular AWS services. These include Elastic Compute Cloud, AWS Relational Database Service, AWS S3, and Virtual Private Cloud. Each of these products plays a different role in establishing a robust IT infrastructure and scaling it effectively.

Table of Contents

## What Is AWS?

AWS is a platform that provides IT infrastructure through web services, more commonly known as a cloud computing platform. It allows enterprises to requisition virtual computers or cloud instances over the internet with increased uptime and redundancy measures. These instances can be deployed on a large scale, with hundreds or even thousands available upon request.

This easy scalability and the flexibility with which each instance could be configured provided a convenient and cost-effective method to bolster infrastructure. On-premises cloud solutions had long been the go-to option for organizations. However, with the rise of AWS, cloud computing became an accessible and widely-adopted standard.

Apart from providing configurable cloud instances, AWS also offers other infrastructure, such as storage, website hosting, content delivery, databases, and more. The platform offers services across 23 categories, including analytics, blockchain, developer tools, game technology, robotics, internet of things (IoT), machine learning, security, and more.

AWS is present in 21 geographic regions around the world. This has allowed them to expand their footprint on a global scale, making an impact in cloud computing markets across borders.

Owing to its first-mover advantage, Amazon has been able to capture a large chunk of the cloud services market. AWS made a revenue of $26.65 billion in 2018, with projected earnings for this year being well above $30 billion.

## Benefits of AWS

With a first-mover advantage in the market, AWS has largely cemented the benefits of using cloud platforms in the mind of corporates. Due to this, the platform has gained a wide adoption base among enterprises. Let’s look at these benefits in detail.

### Cost-Effective Operations

Choosing AWS over on-premise computing solutions allows enterprises to save expenses due to the pay-as-you-go pricing model. On-premise solutions require upfront investments for server-grade hardware and further investments for the upgrades.

AWS, on the other hand, allows companies to get started with a relatively small investment, and scale on-demand using the cloud’s easy extensibility. Moreover, costs for upgrades are also significantly reduced as Amazon keeps its servers updated with the latest hardware.

### Flexibility and Scalability

AWS allows companies to quickly change the kind of resources they are currently using. This allows the user to adapt to customer demand on the fly, without the need to physically acquire infrastructure. The flexibility of AWS has also resulted in the implementation of strategies, such as cloud bursting.

In cloud bursting, cloud computing resources are added whenever the demand increases. This allows companies to quickly add more compute power when their current configuration begins to fall short, thus keeping the application up at a minimal cost.

### Support for Many Languages

AWS supports many programming languages, and thus, does not require domain-specific knowledge. Apart from languages, the platform also allows developers to provision infrastructure as code. Using mechanisms, such as application programming interfaces (APIs) and virtual machines, developers can add more computing power to infrastructure through a simple line of code.

Companies can employ any of AWS’ services in any configuration through a procedure known as infrastructure-as-code. This allows enterprises to add services in a modular fashion and thus create unique and tailored solutions.

### Security and Compliance Outsourcing

Using third-party cloud vendors usually decreases the cost of maintaining appropriate security and compliance measures. This not only includes security certifications and audits but ever-evolving regulation, such as the ones seen by the rise of GDPR compliance.

AWS boasts of a bevy of standard security certifications, such as PCI DSS Level 1, FISMA Moderate, FedRAMP, HIPAA, and many more. Moreover, the service provider is also responsible for local compliance, allowing companies to focus on their operations instead of their infrastructure.

As mentioned previously, AWS has over 140 services spread across 23 categories, many of which are split into sub-services. Here are some of the most widely used AWS services.

## List of the Most Popular AWS Services in 2019

A list of the most used AWS services allows us to see what kind of use-case cloud computing holds for enterprises. It also allows us to take a deeper look into the kind of services Amazon provides. Let’s take a look at the most popular AWS services of 2019.

List of AWS Services

List of AWS Services

### AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Amazon EC2 is one of the most widely-used services offered by Amazon. It hosts configurable virtual machines in the AWS cloud, which can be configured individually to suit the end user’s needs. The service allows users to configure a computer with the required amount of CPU, GPU, RAM, and storage, and be able to access it within minutes.

This service allows companies to quickly and easily scale their operations up or down, depending on their computing requirements. New systems can be provisioned, configured, and deployed in a matter of minutes. This flexible architecture of EC2 has made it the go-to option for many companies.

Amazon EC2 also has a variety of features that allows it to function better in conjunction with other AWS services. This includes integrations with Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, and Amazon VPC, along with Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling. EC2 Auto Scaling automatically increases or decreases the number of required EC2 instances depending on the load.

Amazon EC2 is also more cost-effective than setting up an on-premise solution, as virtual machines (VMs) can be requested from the lowest level of load and scaled up as the demand increases. There is no need to invest money upfront, as with building an on-premises computing solution.

### Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)

Amazon RDS is used for building a relational database service in the cloud. Just like other AWS products, Amazon RDS also allows the provisioning of large amounts of storage in an accessible format.

Relational databases are an easy way to store and index large amounts of data, thus making it the go-to option for large companies. Overall, Amazon RDS offers a way to quickly and dependably create a relational database in the cloud. This, in turn, allows easy backup and redundancy measures for private data.

Under the umbrella of RDS, AWS provides various configurations of hardware and software depending on the use-case. These configurations stand as services on their own and are optimized for memory, performance, or input/output speed. These include Amazon Aurora, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle Database, and Microsoft SQL Server.

RDS provides many benefits over on-premises databanks, such as improved security through isolation. Moreover, it is also easy to provision a database through a command-line interface, with a variety of options regarding storage type. As with other AWS services, RDS can also be scaled up or down depending on the user load on the system.

Customers can choose between two different types of storage, both backed by high-speed storage mediums known as solid-state drives. While one is optimized for high-performance applications that require a lot of input and output, the other is a slower medium for cost-effective general use.

### Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

Storage was one of the first infrastructural options offered over the cloud and remains one of AWS’ most used services to date. It is worth noting that S3 is different from Amazon RDS, as the latter is a way to create a database, while the former simply stores all kinds of objects.

S3 allows users to store any form of information on AWS servers, which can then be accessed from any computer with the required credentials. There are various classes of storage available, ranging from extremely cost-efficient options to high-performance, high-speed storage mediums.

The service also provides many optimizations and cost-savings tools, such as S3 Storage Class Analysis. This tool computes the access patterns of the data saved on the cloud and suggests the most cost-effective and usable alternative for that specific pattern. It also includes a feature called S3 Intelligent-Tiering, which observes data access patterns and tiers objects automatically.

The service also provides security and durability of data through duplication. Every time data is uploaded to AWS S3, it is copied and stored in geographically distinct locations. This provides security through redundancy, allowing companies to retrieve important data at any time.

### Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

As with every cloud, AWS is accessed through the internet. However, the internet is open to all. This creates security issues for companies storing private data in the cloud. Amazon VPC aims to solve this problem.

VPC allows internal company networks to be configured in a way that they are not accessible through the internet, instead of treating it as a ‘private subnet’. This approach is used to protect backend infrastructure, such as applications servers or hosted websites from being accessed by individuals without credentials.

Moreover, VPC allows users to configure the network they want their cloud instances to run on. This gives them complete control over factors, such as IP address, network gateways, and the creation of subnets.

VPC offers a large degree of security and access control. Instances can be cordoned off from those who do not have access to them, and VMs can also be isolated from the rest of the network for testing. VPC can be set up from the command line and can be scaled easily as the need for virtual machines evolve.

### Amazon Lambda

Amazon Lambda allows users to focus squarely on developing and not provisioning infrastructure. Built on the elastic nature of other AWS offerings, Lambda allows for serverless compute. With serverless compute, an individual does not need to provision resources individually. The service provider takes care of all the infrastructural requirements.

Lambda removes the need to provision or manage servers. Instead, it allows users to pay for just the amount of compute time they are using to run code. When there is no code running, the service is not running as well, and the users are not charged. When the code begins execution, a customized VM is deployed to address the requirements of the code being run.

This not only allows for more cost-saving but also a more efficient way of managing cloud resources. Lambda either allows developers to upload and run code or triggers virtual machines from other AWS services.

Using an API, it is also possible to call and execute the service from any web or mobile application. Lambda scales continuously and automatically depending on the load, with usage being based on a sub-second basis.

Overall, the service allows developers to focus on deployment and execution instead of provisioning infrastructure. The cost-effective nature and sub-second billing of the service also makes it a dependable option to flesh out backend infrastructures of mobile applications.

Sharing his views about the most popular AWS service today, Jeff GallimoreOpens a new window, co-founder and partner, ExcellaOpens a new window says, “The AWS service where we see the most usage is still EC2 (compute), which goes back to the very genesis of AWS. It is the most basic building block of a cloud-based infrastructure. However, where we’re seeing the most growth and interest in the container and serverless services – so AWS EKS, Fargate, and Lambda.”

## Closing Thoughts for Techies

AWS is not only the market leader in the cloud computing space but also one of the oldest names in the market. With services for almost any use-case, AWS seems to be maintaining its position as the leader. However, some emerging trends may change this soon.

Hybrid cloud seems to be the most poised to take away AWS’ position. The rise of hybrid cloud solutions has not only caused a resurgence in on-premise solutions, but also a higher degree of using many service providers’ services alongside each other. This means that companies that previously functioned solely on AWS products use them along with products from Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

However, the fact still remains that many of the world’s most popular sites function on AWS. Apart from Amazon itself, AWS provides the backend infrastructure for streaming giants like Netflix and Twitch. Twitter, Adobe, Airbnb, BMW, Samsung, General Electrics, and HTC are some other leaders that use AWS.

Overall, AWS not only kick-started the cloud computing race but also allowed companies to completely build backend infrastructure over the internet.

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Anirudh V K

Freelance Contributor

Anirudh is a tech enthusiast and journalist who keeps updated with all the latest advances in computing. He is interested in computer hardware, video games, reading books, and finding beauty in nature.

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