Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services: what is it?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive cloud computing platform offered by Amazon. It provides a wide range of services and tools to help businesses build, deploy, and manage their applications and data infrastructure in the cloud. AWS offers a highly scalable and flexible infrastructure that can accommodate businesses of any size. It provides a vast array of services, including storage, compute power, databases, analytics, machine learning, and more, which can be integrated and customized to meet specific business needs.
One of the key advantages of AWS is its global presence, with data centers located in various regions worldwide. This allows businesses to store and process their data closer to their customers, reducing latency and improving performance. AWS also offers robust security measures, such as encryption and access controls, ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data.
Furthermore, AWS offers cost-effective pricing models, allowing businesses to pay only for the resources they use. This eliminates the need for upfront investments in hardware and infrastructure, making it an attractive choice for businesses looking to optimize their costs.
Now that we have a better grasp on what AWS is all about, let dive into some of its services.
AWS services: 15 of its core services highlighted
AWS has over 200 different services, some more relevant than others. In this section we will mention some of the most important services AWS has to offer for businesses looking to build and manage their cloud data infrastructure.
- Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
- AWS Lambda
- AWS Batch
- AWS Identify and Access Management (IAM)
- Amazon Athena
- AWS Glue
- AWS Step Functions
- Amazon CloudWatch
- Amazon EventBridge
- Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)
- Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)
- Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)
- AWS CodeBuild
- AWS CodeDeploy
- AWS CodePipeline
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) one of the oldest AWS services available and the basis of a lot of data engineering solutions. It is a highly scalable and secure object storage service that allows businesses to store and retrieve large amounts of data and can serve as a data lake for analytics purposes. This is where a lot of your data will live before, during and after data transformation. With its durability and availability, S3 ensures that your data is safe and accessible at all times.
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda is a serverless computing service that enables businesses to run their code without provisioning or managing servers. It allows you to execute your code in response to events, such as changes to data in S3, updates to a database, or even HTTP requests. Lambda automatically scales your applications in response to incoming requests, ensuring high availability and cost efficiency. This service is particularly useful for businesses looking to build event-driven architectures or develop microservices.
AWS Batch
AWS Batch is a fully managed service that helps businesses efficiently run batch computing workloads at any scale. It allows you to define and execute batch jobs, such as data processing, without the need to manage the underlying infrastructure. Batch automatically provisions the required compute resources and optimizes their usage, enabling you to focus on your data processing tasks rather than infrastructure management. It is not a standalone service, but rather a tool used together with Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) to run containerized jobs and applications for which the Docker images can be stored on Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR). Depending on the compute requirements or specific configurations, you can choose either Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) or AWS Fargate as a compute environment.
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management) is a service that helps businesses securely control access to their AWS resources. As such, it is a foundational service which should be very well understood by anyone engaged with AWS service provisioning. It allows you to manage user identities, roles, and permissions, ensuring that only authorized individuals or systems can access your data. IAM enables businesses to create fine-grained access policies, granting different levels of permissions to different users or groups. With IAM, you can manage and audit user access, enhancing the security and compliance of your data solutions.
Amazon Athena
Amazon Athena is an interactive query service that allows businesses to analyze data directly from their Amazon S3 buckets using standard SQL queries. It eliminates the need for complex data transformations or loading data into a separate database. Athena provides a serverless and highly scalable solution for ad-hoc querying and analysis of large datasets. With its pay-per-query pricing model, businesses can optimize costs by paying only for the data they process.
AWS Glue
AWS Glue is a fully managed extract, transform, and load (ETL) service that makes it easy for businesses to prepare and transform their data for analytics. Glue provides a serverless and scalable solution for data integration and transformation, reducing the time and effort required to build and maintain data pipelines. With Glue, businesses can accelerate their data analytics initiatives and gain valuable insights from their data. The AWS Glue Data Catalog works in conjunction with Amazon Athena to define tables which can then be queried using SQL.
AWS Step Functions
AWS Step Functions is a serverless workflow service that enables businesses to coordinate multiple AWS services into serverless workflows. It allows you to build and visualize workflows using a graphical interface, making it easy to track and debug the execution of your applications. Step Functions provides a reliable and scalable solution for orchestrating complex business processes or coordinating microservices, ensuring that your data flows smoothly through your applications.
Amazon CloudWatch
Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring and observability service that provides businesses with real-time insights into their AWS resources and applications. It collects and tracks metrics, logs, and events, allowing you to monitor the performance and health of your data solutions. CloudWatch provides customizable dashboards, alarms, and automated actions, enabling businesses to proactively identify and resolve issues. With CloudWatch, you can gain valuable operational insights and ensure the reliability and availability of your data solutions.
Amazon EventBridge
Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus service that simplifies the integration and routing of events across AWS services and SaaS applications. It allows businesses to build event-driven architectures and decouple their applications, making them more scalable and resilient. EventBridge enables you to define rules to route events to different targets, such as Lambda functions, SNS topics, or SQS queues. With EventBridge, businesses can connect and automate their data solutions, ensuring seamless communication and coordination between different components.
Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)
Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service) is a fully managed message queuing service that enables businesses to decouple and scale their applications. It provides a reliable and scalable platform for sending, storing, and receiving messages between distributed systems or microservices. SQS ensures that messages are stored redundantly and delivered reliably, even in the face of failures. With SQS, businesses can build loosely coupled and fault-tolerant data solutions, ensuring the smooth flow of data between different components.
Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)
Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service) is a fully managed messaging service that enables businesses to send and receive messages or notifications. It provides a flexible and highly available platform for pub/sub messaging, allowing you to send messages to multiple subscribers or endpoints. SNS supports various protocols, including HTTP, email, SMS, and mobile push notifications. With SNS, businesses can distribute messages to different systems or users, ensuring effective communication and collaboration within their data solutions.
Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)
Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) is a managed database service that simplifies the setup, operation, and scaling of relational databases. It supports popular database engines like MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and SQL Server, allowing businesses to focus on their applications rather than database administration. RDS provides automated backups, software patching, and high availability, ensuring that your data is secure and accessible at all times.
AWS CodeBuild
Amazon CodeBuild is a fully managed continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) service that helps businesses automate their software builds, tests, and deployments. It provides a scalable and secure environment for compiling source code, running tests, and producing deployable artifacts. CodeBuild integrates seamlessly with other AWS services and popular CI/CD tools, allowing businesses to easily set up and customize their build pipelines. With CodeBuild, businesses can accelerate their software development processes and ensure the quality and reliability of their applications.
AWS CodeDeploy
Amazon CodeDeploy is a fully managed deployment service that automates the process of deploying applications to various compute services. It provides a consistent and reliable deployment experience, allowing businesses to release new features or updates to their applications. CodeDeploy supports both blue/green and in-place deployments, ensuring minimal downtime and rollback capabilities. With CodeDeploy, businesses can streamline their deployment processes and ensure smooth transitions between application versions.
AWS CodePipeline
Amazon CodePipeline is a fully managed continuous delivery service that helps businesses automate their release pipelines for software changes. It allows you to model, visualize, and automate the steps required to release your applications, from source code management to production deployment. CodePipeline integrates with various AWS services and third-party tools, enabling businesses to build end-to-end CI/CD workflows. With CodePipeline, businesses can increase the speed and reliability of their software releases, ensuring efficient and consistent delivery of their applications.