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 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/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.)
Availabilityzone: 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 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