AWS Getting Started Guide

What is AWS?

AWS, or Amazon Web Services, is a collection of cloud computing web services for businesses. The advantage of cloud computing for businesses is the opportunity to cut down on up-front capital infrastructure expense, and replace it with a scalable and variable low cost IT infrastructure. Using a cloud service, businesses need not plan on procuring servers and other IT infrastructure in advance. Instead, businesses have the ability to get thousands of servers in a matter of minutes, thus delivering results faster.

Today, the AWS cloud provides a highly scalable, reliable, cost cutting infrastructure platform to thousands of businesses all over the world. AWS has data centers in US, Europe, Japan, Singapore and Brazil.

What Can One Do with AWS?

If you’re looking to store content in a cloud, build a website, deploy any web application, run data to compute heavy workloads, or build backup solutions, AWS is the perfect cloud computing option for you. AWS provides flexibility to any industry, regardless of its use.

AWS can help with everything from simple applications to complex implementations. Following is a list of common cloud computing scenarios that can benefit from AWS.

Storing Private Data in a Cloud: Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) can be used to store all kinds of data, ranging from images and files to deploying a static website in the cloud, and controlling its access.
Deploying an Application: Without having to worry about AWS infrastructure, Java, PHP, or .NET applications can be deployed effectively in a matter of seconds.
Launching a Server in the Cloud: With the help of AWS, one can launch instances with custom application environment and operating system. For a better idea of how this works, you can visit Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), to learn how to quickly launch, connect to, and terminate an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance.

>> 14 Steps to Launching an AWS Application, part one

>>14 Steps to Launching an AWS Application, part two

>>14 Steps to Launching an AWS Application, part three

>> Learning AWS Procedures

>> Using AWS command line tools

>> Using Auto-Scaling Credentials

>> Using Query API

>> Creating an S3 Bucket

>> Creating an Amazon CloudFront Distribution

>> Creating a Load Balancer

>> Creating Your Amazon EC2 Security Group

>> Creating a Key Pair