AWS fundamentals and benefits of cloud computing

Introduction

In this 2 part series, we are going to be discussing the basics and benefits of cloud computing, and 5 AWS fundamentals. This first part would focus on the basics and benefits of cloud computing as well as the first 2 fundamentals of AWS, Cloud Concepts, and AWS Global Infrastructure.

What is cloud computing?

The textbook definition of this as described by AWS is: “Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centers and servers, you can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis from a cloud provider like Amazon Web Services (AWS)”

In simple terms, Cloud computing allows you to use or share supercomputers - computers that are typically way more powerful than your regular laptops and desktops and specifically designed to handle specialized tasks, without having to pay a fortune and hire a bunch of experts to set up and manage yours locally.

Who are the top players in cloud computing?

In no particular order, these are some of the top players in the computing industry: Amazon Web Services (AWS) Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Azure

Most of these platforms offer the same services like Infrastructure-as-a-service, Platform-as-a-service, Software-as-a-service, and benefits like cost savings, elasticity, fast global deploys, etc. to varying degrees.

So why AWS?

AWS is widely popular and used across the globe for the following reasons:

Establishment and services: it started in 2006 with the launch of its Simple Storage and Elastic Computer Cloud solutions. While others like GCP and Azure came into the picture around 2010 and 2011 respectively. In terms of services, AWS is a clear leader with over 200+ services, while Azure offers around 100+ services, with GCP lagging with only around 60 services.
Availability Zones and market share: AWS is available in over 66 zones across the globe, while platforms like Azure and GCP only have about 54 and 20 zones respectively. This results in a dominant 32% ($39.9 billion as of February of 2021) market share
Pricing: Believe it or not AWS offers friendlier pricing for the range of services it provides. The only catch is, that you can quickly run into debt if you don’t know what you are doing. They offer different pricing models like

a. Reserved instances: which charge an upfront fee depending on usage. You can reserve an instance for one to three years.

b. On-demand instances: no upfront cost, just fees for what you use.

c. Spot instances: depending on the availability of capacity, you can bid for extra capacity

What are the AWS fundamentals? AWS fundamentals.png pointernext.com/cpr?pg=awsfundamentals

A deep dive

Cloud Concepts (Cloud Computing)

First of all, Let’s burst some myth bubbles! Cloud Computing doesn’t mean we are magically storing data into the same place that holds rain - that would be almost impossible ;).

The real deal:

Cloud Computing is the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer. The main catch about cloud computing is in the definition above - “rather than”. Managing your own servers comes with a lot of operations overhead, cost and risks. With cloud computing, all of that is removed and you are allowed to focus more on the actual business of building and releasing software to users.

Advantages of Cloud Computing

There are several reasons why you might want to use cloud computing (maybe over an on-premise solution). Here are some of the (by no way exhaustive) benefits of cloud computing:

Less Expensive: There is an inherent capital cost associated with setting up your own servers which tends to be an expensive overhead cost. Attached to that is the variable cost required to maintain these servers such as IT equipment and personnel costs. With cloud computing, you only pay for what you use when you need to use them.
Easier and faster to scale: You find it easier and faster to scale with cloud computing because setting up servers or handling more load is a matter of clicking a few buttons to setup horizontal and vertical scaling instead of waiting for days or weeks for your IT department to set things up.
Faster Deployments: making your app globally available in multiple regions is now way faster and more easier to achieve with cloud computing. Your customers are happy because they get access to your content at extremely fast speeds.

AWS Global Infrastructure

One of the secrets behind AWS success is its geographical presence. AWS is available within 22 Geographic Regions around the world and 69 Availability Zones and 44 Edge locations! But what are these things or places?

Geographic Cloud Regions: Cloud regions are actual real-life geographic regions where data centers are located. It is important to be intentional about your cloud regions because they affect both the latency (speed of content or data delivery) and cost of delivering value to your users. For example if your customers are in Africa, it might be better to select the South African Region to host your data centers. It is also good to note that different geographic regions respond to the powers of demand and supply on their real estate differently which could impact pricing for different regions.
Availability Zones: An Availability Zone (AZ) is one or more discrete data centers with redundant power, networking, and connectivity in an AWS Region. There are multiple availability zones (69) across the AWS geographic cloud regions. For each region multiple availability zones are physically separated and connected with private low latency, high throughput, and redundant network connections.
Edge Locations: AWS Edge location are the places where data are cached to reduce the latency to users. They are located in the major cities around the world. For example, in Africa there are three edge location spots ( Cape Town, South Africa; Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya). These infrastructure are only used to provide services such as CloudFront, lambda, etc.

We have covered the basics and benefits of cloud computing and covered 2 out of our 5 deep dives in our series.

My next article will focus on the 3 other fundamentals of AWS that you would need to know about. See you next time :)