Cloud Computing is a technology that makes available, via the Internet, services based on the provision of hardware and software resources with an on-demand formula. The resources provided include, for example, computing power, storage space, data transmission tools, and essential application services. A company that needs this type of resources to deliver its online services can rely on a cloud service provider to purchase and configure a set of resources, with the guarantee of expanding this set over time based on business and business needs—system capacity. The characteristics that have made Cloud Computing such a successful technology are:
Mainly the need to manage a personal IT infrastructure is eliminated, from purchasing hardware and software to system maintenance, passing from the need to have specialized figures in the company. Furthermore, the concept of Cloud Computing is accompanied by cost flexibility based on the natural resources used (cost per consumption).
The possibility of extending or decreasing the available resources based on the capacity required to support the load, guaranteeing system stability; for example, to increase the resources available to increase the amount of data to be managed or to increase traffic to an online service.
A good service provider takes care of putting in place all the necessary practices to ensure compliance with security policies, protection of data stored in the cloud, and compliance with a series of certifications needed for the implementation of services that require adequate levels of security (data encryption, authentication, antivirus, disk encryption, etc …).
The main types of Cloud technology are classified as follows:
The AWS cloud is a PaaS system distributed and available in 190 countries, divided into geographical areas (regions). Currently, 14 parts are active, but the birth of another four is expected in the next year. Each region includes several Availability Zones (AZ – Availability Zone): Availability Zones are, in effect, distributed data centers that allow applications to be replicated to ensure scalability and availability in a failure in a particular zone. The region to deliver your services and applications should depend on where most visitors come from.
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In the AWS system, almost every component or service is identified or recognized by an acronym. Let’s try to shed some light on the main ones.
It is the first component born in Amazon: an accessible and shareable resource storage service. It is particularly suitable for storing static resources (storage, backup, media, and software components downloaded at boot to deliver EC2 machines). Here are the main features:
This infrastructure allows you to have on-demand virtual machine instances that can be configured according to your needs. It is possible to resize, turn on and turn off the cases according to the need for computing power necessary to cope with the load: the first characteristic is, therefore, the scalability in terms of load capacity. To activate a machine, you can start from an image ( AMI – Amazon Machine Image ) or a previously saved template, a “machine model.”
You then choose the operating system (Linux / Windows), the availability zone in which to turn on the machine, and the size of the device by selecting the family (families: T2, M3, M4, C3, C4, R3, G2, I2, D2), the machine architecture by configuring RAM, CPU, storage disks and network. Then we proceed with the instance’s configuration, specifying the shutdown rules, monitoring, access permissions, and other specifications. The self-configuration of the machine provides two essential tools:
Main features:
They are storage volumes (disks) mounted on EC2 instances. They reside in the same availability zone as the EC2 instance on which they are mounted and are particularly suitable as storage for data that requires high persistence (regardless of the state of the machine to which they are attached). They are therefore ideal for use as a primary file system or database storage or for storing and managing data at high read/write rates.
Several EBS volumes can be mounted on a single EC2 instance, but a single EBS volume can simultaneously serve a single EC2 model. For high input/output loads on a disk, you can choose the Provisioned IOPS SSD type to ensure more excellent I / O performance on the disk. Through the Amazon EBS Snapshot service, disk backups can be managed, and attention must be paid to the type of connected IPs to ensure the persistence of the reference IP addresses in the event of stop / start actions on the EC2 instance on which the volume is mounted.
It is a logically isolated virtual private environment within AWS where EC2 instances reside. By default Amazon creates a VPC private network for the user account, assigning active AWS services; you can always configure the characteristics of the VPC network or create new ones.
Amazon provides some database management services: relational / NoSQL database engines, caching systems, and cloud database migration services. Below is a list:
Amazon provides a web service and application to access the AWS resource management console. To start using AWS, you need to register for a free account and link a credit card; remember that, net of free services for the first year, the rest of the instantiated and used resources will be charged according to the chosen pricing policy. From the AWS console, you can configure your account. You can turn on / off / configure resources and access the statistics of the monitoring system. It is also possible to configure networking (VPC, ACL, Security groups) and all the rules relating to security, identity, and management of access to resources (IAM users, groups and roles, federated users).
There is AWS Free Tier, the free plan that can be used to get closer to the AWS world without incurring costs. Depending on the type of service, there are different pricing policies, which can be explored at this link:https://aws.amazon.com/it/pricing/services/.
It would be impossible in an article to explore the entire range of AWS products, so I refer to the official website, which explains in detail the characteristics of each service and offers tutorials to start using this technology. By registering for the service, you can access the AWS free 1-year plan, which allows free use (with some limitations) of most of the services.
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