Amazon Web Services For Managers
I'm asked frequently about the ins and outs of Amazon Web Services by C-levels, directors and supervisors. They aren't searching for nitty gritty nuances of Proxy with the API of the Elastic Compute Cloud, they are just interested in the general overview of how the'cloud' works.
When describing AWS for the very first time to supervisors (or anyone, for that matter) it is ideal to talk in concepts instead of in concrete terms. I have also noticed it is beneficial to attempt to tangiblize the discussion with familiar terms. With terms like"Elastic IP" gets quizical looks, but calling it a publicly accessible IP address helps people to get a better overall grasp of concepts before using the AWS terms for things.
At a really large level, you can think about EC2 as a global computing environment. Within EC2 are geographical regions which can be considered as data centers.
- EC2 (think: cloud)
------ Regions (believe: info center)
------------- Availability Zones (think: pc cluster)
Virtual Machines
Inside of an Availability Zone, we have can make virtual machines from custom or predefined Amazon Machine Images, or AMIs. An AMI is considered as a photo of machine which you may load and run within the cloud with an Availability Zone. Every time you choose an AMI and start it, it is called an instance of the AMI. You are able to choose an AMI and start it several times, each time creates a new case.
Instances are virtual machines that are running, and I really mean they are virtual. If precautions aren't taken, these virtual machines can wink out of existence and also lead to a lot of consternation. So that you do not really want to think about an Instance as something that is robust and persistent. It's merely a component of computational tools.
Virtual Hard Drives
To keep your information intact even when an Instance dies, you may use several different AWS services but one of the more common ones is that the Elastic Block Store, or EBS. Consider EBS as a Hard Disk. So, in case you have an Instance that's running your site and you wish to make sure that the database remains healthy even if the Instance disappears, you may use an EBS'hard disk'. In the event of AWS, you have generated an EBS volume and mounted it in an Instance.
Other Virtual Storage
There are other services that you could have employed besides EBS for holding this imaginary database of yours. For example, the SimpleDB, or SDB, is a perfectly reasonable substitute and could be favored in certain situations. But, SDB is a specific support for fundamental database delivery, whereas EBS is a generalized storage alternative. There's also that the Relational Database Service, or RDS that provide robust database services beyond SDB. The choice of service is frequently determined by the needs of the solution.
Virtual Backup
If we want to secure that data we now have on our EBS quantity, we are not out of the woods yet since hard drives can fail. AWS Cloud Certified will want to back this up into more secure storage. For this we can use the Simple Storage Option, or S3 for brief. It's possible to think of S3 as a readily available tape backup. Every one of those directories is called a bucket in the S3 entire world. As it's a good stable storage system, you'll want to backup your EBS volume(s) to S3 occasionally. And, if you have personalized your Instance, you are going to want to save a new picture of it in S3 also. This way, if your attentively customized Instance or EBS volume crashes for any reason, you can pull them out of your backup in S3 fairly quickly and get ready to go again.
Well, all of this would be worthless if we didn't have good security to be certain that our solution has been hacked. Two theories are employed in AWS for safety functions. The first is a set of keys that permits you and your programmers to access your systems. These are public/private important pairs and digital certificates necessary to securely log into the case. The second, referred to as a security set, can be considered as a firewall setup. You make a security set that defines how outside entities - such as web browsers, or distant backgrounds, or ftp, or email, etc. - can or cannot access your Instance.
When describing AWS for the very first time to supervisors (or anyone, for that matter) it is ideal to talk in concepts instead of in concrete terms. I have also noticed it is beneficial to attempt to tangiblize the discussion with familiar terms. With terms like"Elastic IP" gets quizical looks, but calling it a publicly accessible IP address helps people to get a better overall grasp of concepts before using the AWS terms for things.
At a really large level, you can think about EC2 as a global computing environment. Within EC2 are geographical regions which can be considered as data centers.
- EC2 (think: cloud)
------ Regions (believe: info center)
------------- Availability Zones (think: pc cluster)
Virtual Machines
Inside of an Availability Zone, we have can make virtual machines from custom or predefined Amazon Machine Images, or AMIs. An AMI is considered as a photo of machine which you may load and run within the cloud with an Availability Zone. Every time you choose an AMI and start it, it is called an instance of the AMI. You are able to choose an AMI and start it several times, each time creates a new case.
Instances are virtual machines that are running, and I really mean they are virtual. If precautions aren't taken, these virtual machines can wink out of existence and also lead to a lot of consternation. So that you do not really want to think about an Instance as something that is robust and persistent. It's merely a component of computational tools.
Virtual Hard Drives
To keep your information intact even when an Instance dies, you may use several different AWS services but one of the more common ones is that the Elastic Block Store, or EBS. Consider EBS as a Hard Disk. So, in case you have an Instance that's running your site and you wish to make sure that the database remains healthy even if the Instance disappears, you may use an EBS'hard disk'. In the event of AWS, you have generated an EBS volume and mounted it in an Instance.
Other Virtual Storage
There are other services that you could have employed besides EBS for holding this imaginary database of yours. For example, the SimpleDB, or SDB, is a perfectly reasonable substitute and could be favored in certain situations. But, SDB is a specific support for fundamental database delivery, whereas EBS is a generalized storage alternative. There's also that the Relational Database Service, or RDS that provide robust database services beyond SDB. The choice of service is frequently determined by the needs of the solution.
Virtual Backup
If we want to secure that data we now have on our EBS quantity, we are not out of the woods yet since hard drives can fail. AWS Cloud Certified will want to back this up into more secure storage. For this we can use the Simple Storage Option, or S3 for brief. It's possible to think of S3 as a readily available tape backup. Every one of those directories is called a bucket in the S3 entire world. As it's a good stable storage system, you'll want to backup your EBS volume(s) to S3 occasionally. And, if you have personalized your Instance, you are going to want to save a new picture of it in S3 also. This way, if your attentively customized Instance or EBS volume crashes for any reason, you can pull them out of your backup in S3 fairly quickly and get ready to go again.
Well, all of this would be worthless if we didn't have good security to be certain that our solution has been hacked. Two theories are employed in AWS for safety functions. The first is a set of keys that permits you and your programmers to access your systems. These are public/private important pairs and digital certificates necessary to securely log into the case. The second, referred to as a security set, can be considered as a firewall setup. You make a security set that defines how outside entities - such as web browsers, or distant backgrounds, or ftp, or email, etc. - can or cannot access your Instance.
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