Amazon Web Services: Beginner's Guide to AWS for Developers

Have you ever imagined how an application like Facebook works? How is Facebook available on the internet? It’s much more than a website — it’s an online platform used by billions of people across the world.

In reality, understanding how Facebook operates is simple. To process the billions of people in website traffic each second, the company relies on thousands of servers to avoid a systematic crash and keep the website online.

As you can imagine, it costs this company a lot of money to maintain the integrity of its servers and keep Facebook live. For smaller companies offering SaaS products and similar applications, making these types of accommodations can be both extremely difficult and expensive.

Thus, cloud computing resources has become a viable solution to deliver valuable internet based computing service for all kinds of businesses. Amazon Web Services (AWS), without any shock, owns a large market share in was clouds computing technology.

Understanding what cloud computings and AWS resources doesn’t have to be difficult if you were considering creating an SaaS product or already have one. This beginner’s guide will provide all the information you need to make a switch to aws Cloud services computing and save a lot of money and time in the process.

Table of Contents

Why is Any of This Important?

In order for you to fully understand cloud’s computing and how AWS can help, let’s use an example. Let’s say that you are creating an application, like the aforementioned Facebook.

Your web applications development on AWS is finished and is ready to go on your computer. The next step is making sure the web applications is available online so other people can use it. How would you ensure that this happens?

Here is how an application traditionally goes live online:

You will need to purchase a server. This is where you’ll upload your application to go online.
Next, it’s important to ensure that your application is always online with minimal downtime and eliminate website crashes altogether. This requires hiring people or a company to manage the productivity of your server.
Machines are prone to malfunctioning. You’ll also need to hire a person or team to make sure that your server’s hardware is up-to-date and in working order. This doesn’t mean that nothing will go wrong, and you must be ready to spend money if something goes awry.
Finally, once your application becomes popular and widely-used, you’ll have to consider auto scaling your server hardware and keep a close eye on your application’s traffic fluctuations.

All of these procedures must take place before an application goes online. As you can imagine, it’s going to be extremely burdensome and expensive to put them into effect. Are you wondering how you can streamline these procedures and save money in the process?

The solution is Amazon virtual private cloud computing.

What is Cloud Computing?

With the same example, here is how cloud computings can help:

When you choose clouds computing, you can rent as many servers as you want to host your application. The was clouds computing service provider will simply charge you based on the amount of hours you use them. If you use your servers for one hour, you’ll be billed accordingly. This model allows you to scale while reducing operating systems costs.
You can configure specific servers to maximize redundancy. Specifically, you can set up the same servers in multiple different locations. This means that if one of your servers goes offline, your application can still be hosted by the available servers. This increases uptime significantly without human supervision.
All hardware updates and server maintenance will be handled by your clouds computing provider. To put it simply, they own them and they’ll fix them.
As your application grows, you can set up automatic scaling. This means that more servers will be used as your application’s web traffic increases. On the down side, if your application digresses, less servers will be used.

All of this sounds like a perfect solution to traditional server use. So, what is cloud’s computings?

Cloud’s computing is simply the use of remote servers on the internet that a company doesn’t own. The “cloud” in cloud’s computing indicates that all of the computing power is being processed in a remote, digitized AWS environment.

In fact, the advent of private cloud computings has led to almost every modern business to use the cloud. This helps them to save a lot of money and place their servers in the hands of well-known companies that include Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.

By switching to cloud’s computing, you can take advantage of all the benefits that traditional server infrastructures don’t offer at cost-friendly pricing models that will allow your business to scale in the future.

Cloud computing platform/services are generally offered by the three main providers you’ll find below.

Who Are the Major Players in Cloud Computing?

Cloud’s computing is no longer a secret for modern businesses. As such, it’s offered by dozens of different companies. Among them, three major companies have the most control:

Microsoft Azure
Google Cloud Services/Platforms
Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services happens to be the most prolific provider of cloud’s computing services. This guide will break down what AWS is and why you should make the switch.

The History of AWS

The AWS platform was originally launched back in 2003, before cloud’s computing was widely recognized. A year later, AWS was retooled to elevate the platform focused on web services.

Particularly, executives wanted to expand the platform to a broader target audience – people and businesses who would need remote cloud’s computing solutions. In 2006, AWS was relaunched to provide three main services:

S3 cloud storage
SQS
EC2

Over time, the platform became widely-used among the world’ largest tech giants and global enterprises.

Why Amazon Web Services?

AWS isn’t the only cloud’s computing solution, but it ranks consistently as one of the best. Here are some key statistics regarding AWS:

Amazon is one of the largest companies in the entire world. As expected, AWS holds a large market share of 40%. This is substantial considering that Microsoft Azure holds a 16% share in the market.
Compared to Google and Microsoft, Amazon offers the most reliable solution. Based on cumulative downtime, Amazon had the highest uptime and least cloud services outages.
Amazon is the oldest solution available. It was available in 2006 before cloud’s computing was even a trend.

With this said, all companies starting a new product will look to a managed hosting provider for the most complex applications. Stakeholders, in particular, will be reluctant to do business with an ill-equipped provider.

Amazon has a lot to show for their large market share in cloud’s computing. For example, Netflix, the world’s most preeminent video streaming service, is hosted exclusively on AWS.

It also helps that Amazon itself uses the service. When you consider that a bunch of top companies are using AWS, making the decision to follow seems easier. Now that you fully understand why AWS is important, it’s time to dig deep into what the service truly is.

What is AWS?

Amazon Web Services is a computing service offered by Amazon. It allows members to online access the cloud for computing, content delivery, networking, relational database service, cloud storage, and much more.

AWS provides companies with all the services they need to get their IT infrastructure started without them purchasing anything. As such, AWS provides numerous services based on your specific needs.

List of AWS Services

AWS offers more than 100+ different services. For brevity, this guide will touch on the most important services available to businesses. Primary AWS services are broken down into the following categories:

Storage
Compute
App continuous Integration
Engagement
Management
Security
Database

Compute:

AWS provides computing services to help businesses utilize high-end servers to host websites and applications. AWS provides a wide variety of computing services, which include:

AWS EC2
Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Lambda
Auto-scaling
AWS Load Balancer
AWS ECR
AWS ECS

All of these services are designed to provide remote computing solutions to all kinds of businesses.

Storage:

Amazon offers scalable simple storage service, helping businesses to store files. Each file can be a maximum size of 5 TB.

These storage and backup services include:

Amazon S3
AWS S3 Glacier
AWS Elastic File System (EFS)
AWS Storage Gateway

Database:

Amazon can even manage your databases for you, offering backups, security patches, and much more:

Amazon RDS
DynamoDB
Amazon Redshift
Amazon ElastiCache

Security:

Websites and applications will always face security threats. Facebook is a prime example of a large company that was the victim of a massive data breach from hackers. AWS provides the following security group services:

AWS IAM
AWS KMS

Management:

AWS allows users to develop resources with a single click. With these tools, you can set up a large infrastructure and manage it with ease:

AWS CloudFormation
AWS OpsWorks
AWS CloudTrail
AWS CloudWatch

How Does AWS Pricing Work?

Amazon is the largest eCommerce company in the world. As such, the company offers relatively affordable pricing options for individuals and businesses. When you choose receive these benefits:

Pay-as-you-go – When you choose to use Amazon Web Services, you only pay for the services you use. No matter how many services you’re using, you’ll be billed an hourly rate, nothing more — nothing less. The pricing of your servers, however, will depend on its configuration.
Save money when you reserve use – You can save a lot of money when you commit to a particular machine on a long-term basis. If you plan on using a server for two years, you can reserve it, make a partial or full payment and save money.
Pay less by using more – With AWS, the more you use, the less you pay. For example, if you use more storage, you can enjoy volume-based discounts.

You can minimize your storage bills even more when you choose to classify your data as frequently and infrequently used. When you accomplish this, your data will be separated in various storage classes, such as magnetic tapes, disk storage, and SSD.

SSDs, in particular, are much faster than the other options. Therefore, your frequently used data will be stored there. The data you don’t use frequently will be transferred to a slower storage mode to reduce costs.

How to Create an AWS Account: 3 Simple Steps

AWS, and cloud’s computing in particular, seems like a very difficult concept to grasp. Luckily, creating an Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounts is very simple. In fact, you can begin your cloud’s computing procedures in three easy steps:

Step #1 – The first step is using your credit/debit card details to open your account. A small service fee will be charged to your card for validation purposes.
Step #2 – Select the plan you want. AWS offers a basic, developer, and business plan with specific limits. The basic plan is free, the developer plan costs $29/month, and the business plan costs $100/month.
Step #3 – Finally, you’ll receive access resources to the AWS Management Console. The next step is learning how to use the services you’re looking for.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Now that you fully understand what AWS is, you may have some additional questions. Below are some FAQs on the subject:

Why should I learn AWS?

AWS is the largest provider of cloud computing service’s. As such, there is a shortage of qualified professionals that can use the platform. If you learn how to use this platform, you can save money in investing in traditional server hardware.

Do you need programming skills to learn AWS?

You don’t need any programming skills to learn AWS. You can choose between different programming languages, such as Python, .NET, and Java.

Is Linux necessary in using AWS?

Most organizations that use AWS also use Linux. While it’s not necessary to use Linux, it’s recommended if you plan on creating an Amazon Web Service account.

Elevate Your Application Today!

AWS has opened the reality of making computing more accessible and convenient. If this has inspired you to create a new web-based product, we’d love to help. At Dev.co, we provide exceptional application development services.

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Ryan Nead

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Ryan is the VP of Operations for DEV.co. He brings over a decade of experience in managing custom website and software development projects for clients small and large, managing internal and external teams on meeting and exceeding client expectations--delivering projects on-time and within budget requirements. Ryan is based in El Paso, Texas.
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Amazon Web Services: Beginner’s Guide to AWS for Developers