AWS Fundamentals

Serving 190 countries with scalable, reliable, low-cost infrastructure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) powers thousands of businesses across the world. Not only that, AWS takes nearly half of the worldwide public cloud share. This AWS fundamentals tutorial article will help you learn everything you need to about AWS and its services.

To put things into perspective, let’s use the Spotify application, for instance: so what would Spotify be without a cloud service provider like AWS. What if Spotify ran out of songs to play? This is one of the four major problems that Spotify would face.

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Other problems would be:

  • Providing users access to songs from anywhere in the world
  • Cataloging the songs that were released and would soon be released
  • Managing more than 20,000 songs added every day

The solution to all these problems came in the form of Amazon Web Services! AWS offers large storage capacity, proper utilization of resources, and easy scalability.

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What Is AWS?

Before we get deeper into understanding and learning about AWS fundamental and more, let us go through what exactly AWS is? Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a highly available, secure cloud services platform that offers more than 100 cloud applications. Providing a pay-as-you-go system removes the requirement for capital to be provided upfront. It helps in controlling, auditing, and managing identity, configuration, and usage.

Several companies around the world use AWS’s services, such as Docker, Kellog’s, NASA, McDonald’s, BMW, Harvard Medical School, and Adobe, to name a few.

Now that you know how much of a broad appeal AWS has around the world, let’s find out what makes AWS so unique.

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How Has AWS Become So Successful?

1. Security: AWS provides a secure and durable platform that provides end-to-end security and storage.

2. Experience: The skills and infrastructure management born from Amazon’s many years of experience can be very valuable.

3. Flexibility: It allows users to select the operating systems, language, database, and other services as per their requirements.

4. Easy to use: AWS lets you host your applications quickly and securely, regardless of whether it’s an existing or new application.

5. Scalable: The applications you use can be scaled up or down, depending on your requirements.

6. Cost savings: You only pay for the compute power, storage, and other resources that you use, without any long-term commitments.

7. Scheduling: This enables you to start and stop AWS services at predetermined times

8. Reliability: AWS takes multiple backups at servers at multiple physical locations

AWS’s success comes from the services it provides, so let’s have a look at some of them.

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What Services Does AWS Provide?

AWS services are divided into these domains:

AWS-services

We’re going to have a look at each of these domains and the services within them in this AWS fundamentals tutorial. First, let’s have a look at AWS Compute services. 

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1. Amazon EC2

EC2 provides compute capacity in the cloud. This capacity is secure and resizable based on the user’s requirements. EC2 can expand or shrink the resources provided, depending on the load the organization is facing. 

Amazon EC2

2. Amazon Elastic Beanstalk

Helps to scale and deploy web applications made with several programming languages like java, python, ruby, and .NET. EBS handles the deployment of the code as soon as it is uploaded.

Amazon Elastic Beanstalk

3. Amazon Lightsail

Enables a virtual private server (VPS) to be launched and managed with ease. It includes everything required by developers who want to start their projects quickly on a virtual machine.

Amazon Lightsail

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4. Amazon Lambda

It allows you to pay only for compute time. No need for provisioning and managing servers. Lambda executes code only when required, and scales automatically. It can handle a few requests a day, all the way to thousands a second. 

 

Amazon Lambda

Next up in the AWS fundamentals tutorial, let’s have a look at AWS Storage services:

1. Amazon S3:

S3 is an object storage that can store and retrieve data from anywhere: websites, mobile apps, IoT sensors, and so on. It is durable, provides comprehensive security, and flexibility in managing data.

Amazon s3

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2. Amazon Glacier

Amazon Glacier is a cloud storage service that is used for archiving data and long-term backup. The glacier is used for data archiving and long term backup. 

Amazon Glacier

3. Amazon EBS

Amazon Elastic Block Store provides block storage volumes for instances of Amazon EC2. EBS is a reliable storage volume that can be attached to any running instance that is in the same availability zone. 

Amazon EBS

4. Amazon Elastic File System

Amazon EFS provides elastic file storage, which can be used with AWS Cloud Services and resources that are on-premises. It is easy to use and offers a simple interface that allows you to create and configure file systems quickly and easily.

Amazon Elastic File System

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Next up in the AWS fundamentals tutorial let’s have a look at the AWS Database services:

1. Amazon RDS

Amazon RDS eases the process involved in setting up, operating, and scaling a relational database in the cloud. It helps with tasks like hardware provisioning, database setup, backup, and so on. It frees us from managing the hardware and enables us to focus on the application.

rds

2. Amazon Redshift

Amazon Redshift is a data warehouse that enables users to analyze their data using SQL and other BI tools. It is a fast, fully managed data warehouse. It also allows users to run complex analytical queries against structured data using sophisticated query optimizations.

redshift

Wondering about other services? This AWS fundamentals tutorial has got you covered!

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1. AWS Application Discovery Service

AWS ADS helps enterprise customers perform the process of migration by collecting information about their on-premises data centers. 

Domain: Migration

2. Amazon Route 53

Route 53 is a scalable DNS web service to route end users to Internet applications. 

Domain: Networking and content delivery

3. Elastic Load Balancing

Elastic Load Balancing automatically diverts incoming traffic into multiple targets.

Domain: Networking and content delivery

4. AWS Autoscaling

AWS Auto Scaling automatically adjusts resource usage to ensure steady performance at the lowest cost. 

Domain: Management tools

5. AWS Identity and Access Management

AWS IAM helps users manage AWS resources securely, allowing users and groups to be allowed or denied permission. 

Domain: Security

Find the Right AWS Course

Simplilearn's AWS courses offer a comprehensive pathway for professionals aiming to master Amazon Web Services and enhance their career prospects in cloud computing. Whether you are a beginner looking to understand the basics or an experienced professional seeking advanced skills, Simplilearn's expert-led training provides in-depth knowledge and hands-on experience with AWS's core services and solutions. Our courses are designed to align with industry standards and prepare you for AWS certification exams, ensuring you have the credentials and expertise that employers value. Elevate your cloud computing capabilities with Simplilearn’s AWS courses and gain the competitive edge needed to thrive in today’s tech-driven world.

Course NameSkills You'll LearnExplore Program
AWS Cloud Practitioner EssentialsMaster AWS Cloud Adoption Framework Learn AWS pricing models and supportEnroll Now
AWS Technical EssentialsAWS Compute, AWS Storage Monitoring and Optimization
AWS Networking
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Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate AZ-104Administer Azure AD users and groups Build and configure an Azure App ServiceEnroll Now
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Architecting on AWSAWS Skill Builder labs Official AWS live class training contentEnroll Now
Cloud Operations on AWSLearn CloudOps lifecycle processes Live online training from AWS-authorized instructorsEnroll Now
AWS Solutions ArchitectMaster IAM, VPC, EC2, EBS 16 live demosEnroll Now
AWS Devops CertificationMaster CI CD Pipelines, Contenrization & More Infrastructure Design and ImplementationEnroll Now
Microsoft Certified DevOps Engineer Expert AZ-400Design and implement build and release pipelines Azure exam voucher includedEnroll Now
Advanced Architecting on AWSMaster best practices for security, networking, serverless architecture, and cost optimizationEnroll Now

What Can We Expect of AWS in the Future? 

  • A greater variety of cloud applications
  • Expansion into other marketing units
  • Greater innovation in AI 
  • Greater adoption by organizations

Now that you know how AWS is set to grow in the future let’s have a look at a practical example to deploy a web application in this AWS fundamentals tutorial.

Use Case - Deploying an AWS application

In this section of the AWS fundamentals tutorial, we will be using the services Route 53, CloudWatch, EC2 and S3, and Elastic Load Balancer to deploy a web application that will store data about customers subscribing to a particular website. 

EC2: EC2 is used for provisioning the computational power required for the application.

S3: Provides additional storage.

CloudWatch: Helps monitor the web application. Here, we use it to see if we need to scale in or out.

Route 53: Helps to register a domain name for your web application.

ELB: It will create a monitoring environment while handling security and load balancing requirements of the application.

We’ll start by using the Elastic Beanstalk service.

web-app
Fig: Set up application name, environment name, domain, and platform using EBS (Elastic Beanstalk)

congrats

Fig: After it’s set up, using the website would produce the following page

This is the default page and is now awaiting a code. 

upload-code

Fig: Upload code for the website

Same URL

Fig: Using the same URL again would produce the following web page

signing-up.

Fig: Signing up would send an email to the owner of the website

logging

Fig: Confirmation about someone logging into the website

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Next Step to AWS Mastery

By now, you must be clear what exactly AWS is, how AWS became so successful, the services provided by AWS, the future of AWS, and a use case on how you can deploy a web application on AWS. If this has piqued your interest to learn AWS, you can check out this video: AWS fundamentals Tutorial for Beginners

We offer multiple cloud computing courses and certifications for both beginners and cloud enthusiasts who wish to grow in their field. To get started with, check out the PGP Cloud Computing that will help you to understand AWS fundamentals, the architectural principles and services such as EC2, EBS, VPC, IAM and elevate your career to the cloud. If you wish to take your AWS career to the next level, you should enroll in the PGP Cloud Computing to learn how to design and deploy highly scalable and fault-tolerant applications on AWS, implement AWS security and testing, and become an expert in AWS components.

About the Author

Shyamli JhaShyamli Jha

Shyamli is a Senior Research Analyst at Simplilearn. She is proficient in Blockchain and Cryptocurrency, Cloud Computing, Android Development and other coding lan…

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