Amazon Web Services

The Blue Book pages 19 onwards

References
http://developer.amazonwebservi

ces.com/connect/forumindex.jspa

An overview of AWS
AWS

is Amazons umbrella description

of all of their web-based technology
services.
Mainly infrastructure services:

Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon

Amazon

Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Simple Storage Service (S3)
Simple Queue Service (SQS)
CloudFront
SimpleDB

EC2 is hiring

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2-jobs/

Amazon EC2
EC2

provides web services API for

provisioning, managing, and
deprovioning virtual servers
inside amazon cloud.
Applications anywhere on the
Internet can launch a virtual
server in the amazon cloud with a
single web services call (either
REST or SOAP WS call)
Where is SOAP API? For example,

http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonEC2/dg/2006-06-26/usin

Storage
Instance

store : disappears with

the instance (transient)
Block storage: SAN-like, persists
across time
S3 is independent of an instance:
for archival purposes: vault: store
it now and retrieve it at a later
date
Amazon: SimpleDB: Relational
database better than MySQl or
Oracle for reliability.

Amazon Cloud-front
Cloud-based

content distributing
network enables you to place the
content at the edges of the
network for rapid delivery.
Place the contents in S3 and run
the application from anywhere
and the content is moved to
where the application is (to the
edges).

S3
Amazon

web services API support the ability

to:
Find buckets and objects
Discover their meta data
Create new buckets
Upload new objects
Delete existing buckets and objects
When manipulating the buckets you can
optionally specify where they should be
stored.
Use REST API preferably something that
abstracts out even that: Jets3t; s3cmd
(command line)
BitTorrent access to S3 is also available

Bucket Naming
Flat

namespace
Names may contain only
lowercase letters, numbers,
periods, underscores, and
dashes, and must start with a
number or letter
Create your own namespace with
your own bcukets

EC2 concepts
See

figure 2.1
Instance: virtual server running a
guest os of your choice
AMI: Pristine image of your server
so that you can launch any
number of instance from this.
Minimally machine image will
operating systems + pre-installed
tools.
Elastic IP address: Not static not
dynamic but elastic; an IP

EC2 (contd.)
Availability

zone: Any two availability

zones are guaranteed to share any
common points of failure ( US, EU,
Asia/Pacific)
Security group: define the
firewall/security. Defines what can talk
to your instances. (Ex; http, and not
sftp etc.)
Snap shot: You can take snapshots of
block volume (that can be formatted
etc) and is stored in S3 for later use or
for rollback etc.
What is the difference between

How to access Ec2?

AWS

console
http://console.aws.amazon.com
The ElasticFox firefox plugin
The amazon command line tool

Typical Use in an
organization
Maintain

a library of AMIs for the

business
May contain legacy systems or companyspecific systems
Harden AMIs using such software as
Bastille
Launch

instances for non-technical but

domain experts to work with.
What will you provide them so that they
can start working?

Use

S3 for archival storage and shared

storage