Amazon Web Services

The Blue Book pages 19 onwards

References
http://developer.amazonwebservices.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 Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
Amazon CloudFront
Amazon SimpleDB
Amazon 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/using-soap-api.html
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 reserved for your use;
disappears once the server is terminated.
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 instances and
machine images?
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 company-specific
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