Getting Started with AWS

Getting Started with AWS

Getting Started with AWS

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Getting Started with AWS

Table of Contents
Getting Started with AWS ............................................................................................................... 1
What Can I Do with AWS? ...................................................................................................... 1
How Do I Get Started? ........................................................................................................... 1
How Do I Access AWS? ......................................................................................................... 2
Pricing ................................................................................................................................. 2
AWS Overview .............................................................................................................................. 3
Regions and Availability Zones ................................................................................................ 3
Security ............................................................................................................................... 4
AWS Product Categories ........................................................................................................ 4
Compute and Networking Services ........................................................................................... 5
Key Concepts ............................................................................................................... 5
Architecture .................................................................................................................. 8
Documentation ............................................................................................................. 9
Storage and Content Delivery Services ..................................................................................... 9
Key Concepts ............................................................................................................... 9
Usage Scenarios ......................................................................................................... 11
Documentation ............................................................................................................ 12
Database Services ............................................................................................................... 12
Key Concepts ............................................................................................................. 12
Usage Scenarios ......................................................................................................... 13
Documentation ............................................................................................................ 14
Analytics Services ............................................................................................................... 14
Overview .................................................................................................................... 14
Documentation ............................................................................................................ 15
App Services ...................................................................................................................... 15
Key Concepts ............................................................................................................. 15
Documentation ............................................................................................................ 16
Deployment Services ........................................................................................................... 17
Key Concepts ............................................................................................................. 17
Documentation ............................................................................................................ 17
Management Services .......................................................................................................... 18
Key Concepts ............................................................................................................. 18
Documentation ............................................................................................................ 18
AWS Tutorials ............................................................................................................................. 19
Run a Virtual Server ............................................................................................................. 19
Store Files .......................................................................................................................... 19
Share Digital Media .............................................................................................................. 20
Deploy a Website ................................................................................................................. 20
Host a Website (Linux) .......................................................................................................... 20
Host a Website (Windows) ..................................................................................................... 20
Run a Database .................................................................................................................. 21
Analyze Your Data ................................................................................................................ 21
Related Resources ...................................................................................................................... 22

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Getting Started with AWS

What Can I Do with AWS?

Getting Started with AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides on-demand computing resources and services in the cloud, with
pay-as-you-go pricing. For example, you can run a server on AWS that you can log on to, configure,
secure, and run just as you would a server that's sitting in front of you. For more information, see What
is Cloud Computing?
Using AWS resources instead of your own is like purchasing electricity from a power company instead
of running your own generator, and it provides many of the same benefits: capacity exactly matches your
need, you pay only for what you use, economies of scale result in lower costs, and the service is provided
by a vendor experienced in running large-scale networks.

What Can I Do with AWS?

You can use AWS to make it easier to build and manage your websites and applications. The following
are some common uses for AWS:
Store public or private data.
Host a static website.These websites use client-side technologies (such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript)
to display content that doesn't change frequently. A static website doesn't require server-side
technologies (such as PHP and ASP.NET).
Host a dynamic website, or web app. These websites include classic three-tier applications, with web,
application, and database tiers.
Support students or online training programs.
Process business and scientific data.
Handle peak loads.
For more information, see AWS Solutions.

How Do I Get Started?

The following documentation provides an overview of AWS and list of tutorials that demonstrate the
common uses for AWS:
AWS Overview (p. 3)

Getting Started with AWS

How Do I Access AWS?

AWS Tutorials (p. 19)

How Do I Access AWS?

AWS provides several ways to create and manage resources.
AWS Management Console
A web interface. To get started, see the Getting Started with the AWS Management Console.
AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI)
Commands for a broad set of AWS products. To get started, see AWS Command Line Interface User
Guide.
Command Line Tools
Commands for individual AWS products. For more information, see Command Line Tools.
AWS Software Development Kits (SDK)
APIs that are specific to your programming language or platform. For more information, see SDKs.
Query APIs
Low-level APIs that you access using HTTP requests. For more information, see the API
documentation for each service.

Pricing
AWS can offer significant cost savings compared to the equivalent on-premises infrastructure. You can
use the AWS Simple Monthly Calculator to estimate what it would cost to use AWS.
Note that if you created your AWS account within the last 12 months, you are eligible for the AWS Free
Tier.
For more information about managing your costs, see Pricing and the Economics Center.

Getting Started with AWS

Regions and Availability Zones

AWS Overview
AWS offers a broad set of services that help you move faster, lower your costs, and scale your applications.
The following documentation provides a high-level overview of the concepts that you should understand
before you get started with AWS.

Contents
Regions and Availability Zones (p. 3)
Security (p. 4)
AWS Product Categories (p. 4)

Regions and Availability Zones

Amazon has data centers in different areas of the world (for example, North America, Europe, and Asia).
Correspondingly, AWS products are available to use in different regions. By placing resources in separate
regions, you can design your website or app to be closer to specific customers or to meet legal or other
requirements. Note that prices for AWS usage vary by region.
Each region contains multiple distinct locations called Availability Zones. Each Availability Zone is
engineered to be isolated from failures in other Availability Zones, and to provide inexpensive, low-latency
network connectivity to other zones in the same region. By placing resources in separate Availability
Zones, you can protect your website or app from the failure of a single location.
AWS resources can be tied to a region or tied to an Availability Zone. Not every region or Availability
Zone supports every AWS resource. When you view your resources, you'll only see the resources tied
to the region you've specified. This is because regions are isolated from each other, and we don't replicate
resources across regions automatically.
The following table lists the AWS regions.
Name

Region Code

Asia Pacific (Tokyo)

ap-northeast-1

Asia Pacific (Singapore)

ap-southeast-1

Asia Pacific (Sydney)

ap-southeast-2

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Security

Name

Region Code

EU (Frankfurt)

eu-central-1

EU (Ireland)

eu-west-1

South America (Sao Paulo)

sa-east-1

US East (N. Virginia)

us-east-1

US West (N. California)

us-west-1

US West (Oregon)

us-west-2

Security
AWS provides a secure global infrastructure, plus a range of features that you can use to secure your
data in the cloud. The following are highlights:
Physical access to AWS data centers is strictly controlled, monitored, and audited.
Access to the AWS network is strictly controlled, monitored, and audited.
You can manage the security credentials that enable users to access your AWS account using AWS
Identity and Access Management (IAM). You can create fine-grained permissions to AWS resources
and apply them to users or groups of users.
You can apply ACL-type permissions on your data and can also use encryption of data at rest.
You can set up a virtual private cloud (VPC), which is a virtual network that is logically isolated from
other virtual networks in the AWS cloud. You can control whether the network is directly routable to
the Internet.
You control and configure the operating system on your virtual server.
You can set up a security group, which acts as a virtual firewall to control the inbound and outbound
traffic for your virtual servers.
You can specify a key pair when you launch your virtual server, which is used to encrypt your login
information. When you log in to your virtual server, you must present the private key of the key pair to
decrypt the login information.
For more information, see the following resources:
AWS Security Center
AWS Overview of Security Processes
AWS Security Best Practices

AWS Product Categories

AWS offers a broad set of services. To learn more about each AWS product category, see the following:
Compute and Networking Services (p. 5)
Storage and Content Delivery Services (p. 9)
Database Services (p. 12)
Analytics Services (p. 14)
App Services (p. 15)
Deployment Services (p. 17)

Getting Started with AWS

Compute and Networking Services

Management Services (p. 18)

Compute and Networking Services for AWS

AWS provides a variety of computing and networking services to meet the needs of your applications.
You can provision virtual servers, set up a firewall, configure Internet access, allocate and route IP
addresses, and scale your infrastructure to meet increasing demand.
You can use the compute and networking services with the storage, database, and application services
to provide a complete solution for computing, query processing, and storage across a wide range of
applications.
Contents
Key Concepts (p. 5)
Architecture (p. 8)
Documentation (p. 9)

Key Concepts
The following are concepts that you should understand before using the compute and networking services.

Instances and AMIs

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) provides resizeable computing capacityliterally, servers
in Amazon's data centersthat you use to build and host your software systems. An Amazon Machine
Image (AMI) is a template that contains a software configuration (for example, an operating system, an
application server, and applications). From an AMI, you launch an instance, which is a copy of the AMI
running as a virtual server on a host computer in Amazon's data center.You can launch multiple instances
from an AMI, as shown in the following figure.

When you launch an instance, you select an instance type, which determines the hardware capabilities
(such as memory, CPU, and storage) of the host computer for the instance.You can access your instance
using its assigned public DNS name or public IP address. The public DNS names for instances are as
follows:

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Key Concepts

The US East (N. Virginia) region

ec2-public_ip.compute-1.amazonaws.com

Other regions
ec2-public_ip.region_code.compute.amazonaws.com

Your instances keep running until you stop or terminate them, or until they fail. If an instance fails, you
can launch a new one from the AMI.
You start from an existing AMI that most closely meets your needs, log on to the instance, and then
customize the instance with additional software and settings. You can save this customized configuration
as a new AMI, which you can then use to launch new instances whenever you need them.

VPCs and Subnets

A virtual private cloud (VPC) is a virtual network dedicated to your AWS account. It is logically isolated
from other virtual networks in the AWS cloud, providing security and robust networking functionality for
your compute resources. A VPC closely resembles a traditional network that you'd operate in your own
data center, with the benefits of using the scalable infrastructure of AWS.
A subnet is a segment of a VPC's IP address range that you can launch instances into. Subnets enable
you to group instances based on your security and operational needs. To enable instances in a subnet
to reach the Internet and AWS services, you must add an Internet gateway to the VPC and a route table
with a route to the Internet to the subnet.
We recommend that you launch your EC2 instances into a VPC. Note that if you created your AWS
account after 2013-12-04, you have a default VPC and you must launch EC2 instances into a default or
a nondefault VPC.

Security Groups
A security group acts as a virtual firewall for your instance to control inbound and outbound traffic. You
can specify one or more security groups when you launch your instance. When you create a security
group, you add rules that control the inbound traffic that's allowed, and a separate set of rules that control
the outbound traffic. All other traffic is discarded. You can modify the rules for a security group at any
time and the new rules are automatically enforced.

Getting Started with AWS

Key Concepts

Amazon Route 53 Hosted Zones

Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable cloud Domain Name System (DNS) web service. It
is designed as an extremely reliable and cost-effective way to route visitors to websites by translating
domain names (such as www.example.com) into the numeric IP addresses (such as 192.0.2.1) that
computers use to connect to each other. AWS assigns URLs to your AWS resources, such as your EC2
instances. However, you might want a URL that is easy for your users to remember. For example, you
can map your domain name to your AWS resource. If you don't have a domain name, you can search
for available domains and register them using Amazon Route 53. If you have an existing domain name,
you can transfer it to Amazon Route 53.
Amazon Route 53 enables you to organize your DNS records using hosted zones. When you create a
hosted zone, you receive four name servers to help ensure a high level of availability.

Auto Scaling Groups

Auto Scaling supports groups of virtual servers, an Auto Scaling group that can grow or shrink on demand.

Load Balancer
A load balancer distributes traffic to multiple instances. You can achieve even higher levels of fault
tolerance by using your load balancer with instances in multiple Availability Zones. As instances are
launched and terminated, the load balancer automatically directs traffic to the running instances. Elastic

Getting Started with AWS

Architecture

Load Balancing also performs health checks on each instance. If an instance is not responding, the load
balancer can automatically redirect traffic to the healthy instances.

Architecture
The following diagram shows an example architecture for your compute and networking services. There
are EC2 instances in public and private subnets. Access to the instances in the public subnets over
protocols like SSH or RDP is controlled by one or more security groups. Security groups also control
whether the instances can talk to each other. The Auto Scaling group maintains a fleet of EC2 instances
that can scale to handle the current load. This Auto Scaling group spans multiple Availability Zones to
protect against the potential failure of a single Availability Zone. The load balancer distributes traffic evenly
among the EC2 instances in the Auto Scaling group. When the Auto Scaling group launches or terminates
instances based on load, the load balancer automatically adjusts accordingly. Amazon Route 53 provides
secure and reliable routing of your domain name to your infrastructure hosted on AWS.

Getting Started with AWS

Documentation

Documentation
For more information, see the following documentation:

Amazon EC2
Auto Scaling
Elastic Load Balancing
Amazon VPC
Amazon Route 53

Storage and Content Delivery Services for AWS

AWS provides a variety of services to meet your storage needs.
Contents
Key Concepts (p. 9)
Usage Scenarios (p. 11)
Documentation (p. 12)

Key Concepts
The following are concepts that you should understand before using the storage and content delivery
services.

Buckets and Objects

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is an Internet-scale data storage service that handles vast
amounts of data and large numbers of concurrent accesses. You store your data in containers called

Getting Started with AWS

Key Concepts

buckets. You can control who has permissions for each bucket. A bucket can contain any number of
objects of any type, such as HTML pages, source code files, image files, and encrypted data. The name
of each bucket must be globally unique.
You can group objects using folders. These folders are included in the key name for an object. For
example, mysite/html/default.html. Each object can be accessed through its unique URL:
protocol://domain/bucket_name/object_key

protocol
The protocol is either http or https.
domain
The domain is s3.amazonaws.com for buckets created in US Standard or
s3-region_code.amazonaws.com for buckets created in a region.
bucket_name
The name of the bucket.
object_key
The full key name for the object.
For example, https://s3.amazonaws.com/mysite/html/default.html (US Standard) or
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/my-bucket/image.png (US West (Oregon)).

CloudFront Distributions
Use Amazon CloudFront to create a content delivery network (CDN) that makes your website content
available from data centers around the world, called edge locations. You store your content on an origin
server, such as an Amazon S3 bucket or an HTTP server running on an EC2 instance. You create a
CloudFront distribution, associate the distribution with the origin server, and then use a CloudFront URL
to access your content:
http://distribution_id.cloudfront.net/file.ext

Alternatively, you can associate your own domain name with your CloudFront distribution.
When a user accesses an object that's part of a CloudFront distribution, CloudFront checks whether the
object is already in a cache that's near the user. If it is, CloudFront serves the content from the cache;
otherwise, CloudFront copies the requested content from the origin server to the cache.

Instance Store Volumes

Amazon EC2 provides instance store volumes for many types of EC2 instances. The disks for these
volumes are physically attached to the same host computer as the instance, so access to these volumes
is very fast. There is no additional charge to use the instance store volumes provided by the instance
type, but you can incur data transfer changes for data transferred to and from the instance.
An instance store volume is usable only from a single instance and only during its lifetime. For instance
types that support multiple instance store volumes, you can stripe your data across multiple volumes.
The data on an instance store volume is erased when the instance terminates. If an application uses
instance store volumes for persistent data, it must periodically replicate the data or copy it to durable
storage.

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Usage Scenarios

Amazon EBS Volumes

Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) provides network-attached storage (NAS) for use with your
EC2 instances. After you create, attach, and mount an Amazon EBS volume to your instance, you can
use it just as you would use a physical hard drive on your computer. Each volume can be attached to
only one EC2 instance, but you can detach an Amazon EBS volume from one EC2 instance and attach
it to another. You can attach multiple Amazon EBS volumes to an EC2 instance, and you can also stripe
your data across multiple volumes.
You can back up the data on your Amazon EBS volumes by creating snapshots, which are stored in
Amazon S3. You can create a new Amazon EBS volume from a snapshot and then attach it to an EC2
instance.

Vaults and Archives

Amazon Glacier provides low-cost, durable storage that is suitable for data archiving and backup. You
create a vault, which is a container for archives. An archive is any object that you store in the vault, such
as a photo, video, or document. Each archive has a unique ID and an optional description. While you can
create and delete a vault using the AWS Management Console, you must upload, download, and delete
archives programmatically. Note that these operations typically take 3 to 5 hours to complete.

Usage Scenarios
The following table summarizes the common usage scenarios for the AWS storage options. For more
information, see AWS Storage Options.
Storage Option

Usage

Amazon S3

Use Amazon S3 for a wide range of scenarios, from

backing up your data, to storing your images and
videos (to be accessed directly or through a CDN),
to hosting static websites.

Amazon EBS

Use Amazon EBS for data that changes frequently

and must persist. For example, use Amazon EBS
volumes as the primary storage for a database or
file system, or for applications that require access
to raw block-level storage.

Instance store volumes

Use instance store volumes for temporary storage

of data that changes frequently, such as buffers,
caches, or scratch data, or data that is replicated
across a fleet of instances.
If your data must persist beyond the lifetime of the
EC2 instance, use Amazon EBS volumes instead.

Amazon CloudFront

Use CloudFront edge locations to improve the

speed of your website. This is especially important
if your website displays large media files, such as
high-resolution images, audio, or video.

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Documentation

Storage Option

Usage

AWS Import/Export

Use AWS Import/Export to transfer data to or from

AWS (Amazon S3 buckets, Amazon EBS snapshots, or Amazon Glacier vaults), using portable
storage devices. This is a good option if it would
be too costly or slow (more than a week) to transfer
your data to AWS over the Internet.

AWS Storage Gateway

Use AWS Storage Gateway to provide a seamless

and secure connection between an on-premises
software appliance and Amazon S3. This is useful
for corporate file sharing, enabling existing onpremises backup applications to store primary
backups in Amazon S3, and data mirroring.

Amazon Glacier

Use Amazon Glacier when cost is paramount, you

need the data infrequently, and you can wait several hours for the data to be retrieved.
If you need fast or frequent access to your data,
use Amazon S3 instead.

Documentation
For more information, see the following documentation:

Amazon S3
Amazon CloudFront
Amazon EBS
Amazon Glacier
AWS Import/Export
AWS Storage Gateway

Database Services for AWS

AWS provides fully-managed relational and NoSQL database services, as well as in-memory caching as
a service and a petabyte-scale data-warehouse solution.

Key Concepts
The following are concepts that you should understand before using the database services.

Relational Database
A relational database is organized into tables that are related to each other by key values. It is the traditional
type of database.
If your application primarily indexes and queries data and doesn't require joins or complex transactions,
consider a NoSQL database instead. If you have large binary files (audio, video, and image), consider
storing the files in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and storing the metadata for the files
in your database.

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Usage Scenarios

NoSQL Database
A NoSQL database offers schema flexibility (for example, to provide JSON document model support),
fast read and write performance, virtually limitless scaling, and high availability. NoSQL database tables
are schemaless and can be used to store JSON-style documents or key-value pairs. This functionality
makes NoSQL databases ideal for managing structured or unstructured data.
If your application requires joins or complex transactions, consider a relational database instead. If you
have large binary files (audio, video, and image), consider storing the files in Amazon S3 and storing the
metadata for the files in your database.

DB Instance
A DB instance is the basic building block of Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS); it is
an isolated database environment in the cloud. A DB instance can contain multiple databases.
When you launch a DB instance, you select a database engine (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, or Microsoft
SQL Server) and a DB instance class, which determines the compute and memory capabilities for the
DB instance. You also specify a security group for the DB instance. The firewall for the DB instance
prevents any access to its databases other than what you've granted through the rules for the security
group. You can launch your DB instance in a virtual private cloud (VPC) for additional network access
control. You can also use the security features of your DB engine the same way that you'd use them on
your local network.
In a Multi-AZ deployment, Amazon RDS automatically provisions and maintains a synchronous standby
replica in a different Availability Zone. The primary DB instance is synchronously replicated across
Availability Zones to a standby replica to provide data redundancy, eliminate I/O freezes, and minimize
latency spikes during system backups. In the event of a planned or unplanned outage of your DB instance,
Amazon RDS automatically switches to a standby replica.
Amazon RDS can use replication functionality built into the PostgreSQL or MySQL DB engine to create
a special type of DB instance called a read replica from a source DB instance.
Amazon RDS provides two different methods for backing up and restoring your DB instances: automated
backups and user-initiated backups known as DB snapshots.

Usage Scenarios
The following table summarizes the common usage scenarios for the AWS database options. For more
information, see Running Databases on AWS.
Database Option

Usage

Amazon RDS

Provides a fully-managed relational database that scales to large

datasets. It is easy to scale the database storage and compute resources and provide read replicas. You have a choice of database
engines: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, or Microsoft SQL Server.
Most software designed for use with these databases should work
unmodified with Amazon RDS.
If you need a specific relational database that isn't supported by
Amazon RDS, host the database on Amazon EC2 instead.

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Documentation

Database Option

Usage

Amazon Redshift

Provides a fast, fully-managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse that

makes it easy and cost-effective to analyze a vast amount of data.
If you need to perform online transaction processing, use Amazon
RDS instead.

Amazon DynamoDB

Provides a fully-managed NoSQL database with fast performance

at a low cost. Common use cases include mobile apps, gaming, digital ad serving, live events, metadata storage for Amazon S3 objects,
e-commerce shopping carts, and web session management.
If you have large objects (for example, 10 GB or larger in size), store
those objects in Amazon S3 and maintain the metadata in Amazon
DynamoDB.

Amazon ElastiCache

Provides a fast, fully managed, in-memory cache in the cloud. You

have a choice of caching engines: Memcached and Redis. Common
use cases include improving performance by caching the results of
I/O-intensive queries, managing web session data, and caching dynamically-generated web pages.
If you need data persistence, use DynamoDB instead.

Hosted on Amazon EC2

Enables you to manage the software, compute resources, and storage

resources for your database with complete control. For best performance, select the right EC2 instance type and EBS volume type for
your scenario. You can also increase the number of EBS volumes
and use striping to increase performance.
If you are running a database engine that's supported by Amazon
RDS, consider the benefits offered by using a fully-managed RDS
database instead.

Documentation
For more information, see the following documentation:
Amazon RDS
Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon ElastiCache
Amazon Redshift

Analytics Services for AWS

Today, the amount of data that companies need to analyze is vast. AWS provides analytics tools that
can scale to very large data stores efficiently and cost-effectively.

Overview
Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR) uses Hadoop, an open source framework, to manage and
process data. Hadoop uses the MapReduce engine to distribute processing using a cluster.

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Documentation

Amazon EMR makes it easier to install, configure, and manage Hadoop. You identify the data source,
specify the number and type of EC2 instances for the cluster and what software should be on them, and
provide a MapReduce program or run interactive queries. Amazon EMR manages the computing resources
and runs your MapReduce program or provides tools like Hive or Pig for queries.
AWS Data Pipeline makes it easy for you to regularly move and process data. You create a pipeline,
which defines the input data source, the compute resources (EMR clusters or EC2 instances) to perform
the processing, any conditions that must be met before performing any processing, and the output data
location (such as Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, Amazon RDS, and Amazon DynamoDB).
Amazon Kinesis enables real-time processing of streaming data at a massive scale. You can send data
from Amazon Kinesis to a data warehouse, such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) or
Amazon Redshift, or to an Amazon EMR cluster.

Documentation
For more information, see the following documentation:
Amazon EMR
Amazon Kinesis
AWS Data Pipeline

App Services for AWS

AWS provides a variety of managed services to use with your applications, including streaming, queueing,
push notifications, email delivery, and transcoding.

Key Concepts
The following are concepts that you should understand before using the app services.

Message Queues
A queue contains messages and enables processes to coordinate their work in an asynchronous manner.
Processes write, read, and delete messages from the queue, and perform work based on the information
contained in the retrieved messages. You can design your application in a modular way, so that instead
of performing tasks in serial and waiting until each task completes, tasks are performed independently
and communicate with each other when there is work to be done.
Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) ensures that each message is delivered at least once,
supports multiple processes reading and writing from the same queue, and enables you to control who
can write to and read from the queue. Each queue must have a unique name and receives a unique URL.
Messages are small, so you'll often use Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to store data and
include a pointer to the data in your message.

Notifications
A notification lets a recipient know when an event has occurred. Unlike a message queue, the information
is delivered to the recipient automatically, so the recipient doesn't need to check for messages and retrieve
them.
Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) coordinates and manages the delivery of messages
to recipients. A publisher produces messages and sends them to a topic, which defines the message
protocol (such as email, SMS, or Amazon SQS) and the recipient list. A consumer subscribes to the topic

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Documentation

and receives the messages sent to the topic. When you create a topic, you can control which publishers
can send messages to the topic and which subscribers can register for notifications.

Workflows
A workflow engine coordinates work across distributed components. A workflow is a set of activities
together with the logic that coordinates the activities. Amazon Simple Workflow Service (Amazon SWF)
serves as a central hub for the workflow and also maintains the state of each workflow execution. You
create and register activity workers, which complete the work, and a decider, which provides the
coordination logic. Then you start one or more executions of your workflow.

Email
Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) provides an easy and cost-effective way for you to send
a high volume of email. Amazon SES handles outbound email only. It also collects metrics for you about
the messages that were delivered, bounced, rejected, and marked as spam, and provides access to your
metrics in real time.

Search
Amazon CloudSearch makes it easy for you to add search capability for your content to your website.
First, create a search domain, which defines the data to search, controls how Amazon CloudSearch
indexes your data, and allocates instances to index the data and process requests. Next, upload the data
for search to your domain. Amazon CloudSearch analyzes your data and generates a search index, which
provides the results for search requests. Now you can submit search requests to the search endpoint for
your domain to quickly locate content that meets the specified search criteria.

Streaming Applications
Amazon AppStream deploys your application on AWS infrastructure and streams input and output between
your application and a variety of devices, such as personal computers and mobile devices. The processing
occurs in the cloud, so the client application on the device can be small in size and require minimal
computing power.

Transcoding
Transcoding is the process of converting a video from one format to another. This enables the video to
play back on a variety of mobile devices, web browsers, and televisions. Amazon Elastic Transcoder
simplifies common transcoding tasks. You create a job, which defines the transcoding operation for a
specific video stored in Amazon S3. Elastic Transcoder completes the job, providing status updates during
the transcoding operation, and storing the output video in Amazon S3.

Documentation
For more information, see the following documentation:
Amazon AppStream
Amazon CloudSearch
Amazon Elastic Transcoder
Amazon SES
Amazon SQS
Amazon SWF

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Getting Started with AWS

Deployment Services

Deployment Services for AWS

The deployment services make it easy for you to create your solution on AWS without having to manage
each service separately.

Key Concepts
The following are concepts that you should understand before using the deployment services.

Elastic Beanstalk Environments

Elastic Beanstalk enables you to easily move your app from its development environment to AWS
infrastructure in minutes. You provide basic configuration information, and Elastic Beanstalk launches an
environment, which runs a single version of your app, provisions the AWS resources required to support
your app, such as EC2 instances, and then deploys your app. After your app is deployed, you can update
your environment and the changes are applied automatically.
If you know which AWS resources you want to use and how to configure them, you might prefer to use
AWS CloudFormation instead.

AWS CloudFormation Templates and Stacks

AWS CloudFormation enables you to provision the AWS resources that you need predictably and
repeatedly. First, you create a template, a JSON file that defines the required AWS resources, such as
EC2 instances and Amazon EBS volumes. You can start from an existing template, or create one from
scratch. You can save your template locally or in Amazon S3. Then you create a stack, which manages
your resources as a single unit, and AWS CloudFormation provisions the resources described in your
template and configures them to work together. If stack creation fails, AWS CloudFormation deletes any
resources that were created. If stack creation succeeds, you can begin to use your resources. If needed,
you can edit your template and update the stack based on the modified template. AWS CloudFormation
updates the resources as specified.

AWS CodeDeploy Deployments

AWS CodeDeploy fully automates your code deployments to one or more EC2 instances, allowing you
to deploy quickly and reliably, with maximum availability. First you define an application, which uniquely
identifies what to deploy, how to deploy it, and where to deploy it. Each revision of your application has
an archive file in Amazon S3 or GitHub that contains the source content and a specification for the
deployment. You deploy your application revision to a deployment group, which is a set of EC2 instances
that have the same tags or belong to the same Auto Scaling group.

AWS OpsWorks Stacks and Apps

AWS OpsWorks enables you to provision the AWS resources that you need and deploy your apps to
those resources. It depends on Chef recipes to handle tasks such as installing software and configuring
resources. You create a stack to manage your AWS resources as a single unit. An app represents the
code that you want to run on an application server and contains the information required to deploy the
code. The code itself is stored in a repository such as Amazon S3.

Documentation
For more information, see the following documentation:
Elastic Beanstalk

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Getting Started with AWS

Management Services

AWS CloudFormation
AWS CodeDeploy
AWS OpsWorks

Management Services for AWS

AWS provides a variety services that help you manage your AWS resources.

Key Concepts
The following are concepts that you should understand before using the management services.

User Permissions
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) enables you to manage users and user permissions in
AWS. You can control which users can access which AWS resources.

Directory Services
AWS Directory Service enables you to grant access to AWS to directory users and groups. You can
create a new directory in the cloud, or connect to an existing on-premises directory, such as Microsoft
Active Directory.

CloudWatch Metrics
CloudWatch monitors your AWS resources and provides you with data known as metrics. You can also
configure CloudWatch to send alerts. For example, you can receive an email when your AWS bill reaches
a certain amount, or configure Auto Scaling to add or remove EC2 instances from your Auto Scaling
group as demand changes.

CloudTrail Logging
CloudTrail captures AWS API calls made for your AWS account by the AWS Management Console, AWS
SDKs, command line tools, and AWS deployment and management services, and delivers log files to
Amazon S3 so that you can get a history of the calls. The logs contain the identify the users and accounts
that made the calls, the source IP addresses the calls were made from, and when the calls occurred.

Documentation
For more information, see the following documentation:
AWS Identity and Access Management
AWS CloudTrail
Amazon CloudWatch
AWS Directory Service

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Getting Started with AWS

Run a Virtual Server

AWS Tutorials
The following tutorials are designed to get you started creating and using resources on AWS.
Tutorials
Run a Virtual Server (p. 19)
Store Files (p. 19)
Share Digital Media (p. 20)
Deploy a Website (p. 20)
Host a Website (Linux) (p. 20)
Host a Website (Windows) (p. 20)
Run a Database (p. 21)
Analyze Your Data (p. 21)
For video tutorials, see Getting Started with AWS.

Run a Virtual Server

Launch a virtual server using Amazon EC2 for complete control of your AWS computing resources. For
more information, see Amazon EC2.
Task

Tutorial

Launch and connect to a Linux instance

Getting Started with Amazon EC2 Linux Instances

Launch and connect to a Windows instance

Getting Started with Amazon EC2 Windows Instances

Store Files
You can use AWS to store files that you'll access or share on a regular basis, or files that you need to
archive and access infrequently.
For more information, see Backup and Recovery.

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Getting Started with AWS

Share Digital Media

Task

Tutorial

Use Amazon S3 to store data and retrieve it quickly Getting Started with Amazon Simple Storage Service
Use Amazon Glacier to store archival data at a low Getting Started with Amazon Glacier
cost

Share Digital Media

You can use AWS to store or share digital media. For more information, see Digital Media.

Deploy a Website
You can use AWS to host your static website. You can also use AWS deployment services to quickly set
up a dynamic website. For more information, see Deployment and Management on AWS.
Task

Tutorial

Deploy a static website using Amazon S3

Getting Started with AWS: Hosting a Static Website

Deploy a web app using AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Getting Started with AWS: Deploying a Web App

Host a Website (Linux)

You can use AWS to host your website on Linux virtual servers. For more information, see Websites &
Website Hosting and Application Hosting.
Task

Tutorial

Host a WordPress Blog

Hosting a WordPress Blog with Amazon EC2

Host Drupal using scaling and load balancing

Getting Started with AWS: Hosting a Web App for

Linux

Host a Website (Windows)

You can use AWS to host your website on Windows virtual servers. For more information, see Websites
& Website Hosting and Application Hosting.
Task

Tutorial

Host a WordPress Blog

Deploying a WordPress Blog on Your Amazon EC2

Windows Instance

Host a .NET app using scaling and load balancing Getting Started with AWS: Hosting a .NET Web
App

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Getting Started with AWS

Run a Database

Run a Database
You can use AWS to run your database. For more information, see Running Databases on AWS.
Task

Tutorial

Use Amazon DynamoDB, a fully-managed NoSQL Getting Started

database service
Use Amazon RDS to set up, operate, and scale a
relational database in the cloud

Getting Started

Use Amazon Redshift, a fast, fully-managed,

petabyte-scale data warehouse solution

Amazon Redshift Getting Started

Analyze Your Data

You can use AWS to manage and analyze your business or scientific data. For more information, see
Big Data.
Task

Tutorial

Use Amazon EMR to count words

Count Words with Amazon EMR

Use Hive with Amazon EMR to query Apache web Tutorial: Web Server Log Analysis
server logs
Use Hadoop with Amazon EMR to evaluate Twitter Tutorial: Sentiment Analysis
data
Automate moving and processing data using AWS Processing Access Logs
Data Pipeline

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Getting Started with AWS

Related Resources
The following table lists some of the AWS resources that you'll find useful as you work with AWS.
Resource

Description

AWS Products & Services

Information about the products and services that AWS offers.

AWS Documentation

Official documentation for each AWS product, including service introductions, service features, and API reference.

AWS Discussion Forums

Community-based forums for discussing technical questions

about Amazon Web Services.

Contact Us

A central contact point for account questions such as billing,

events, and abuse. For technical questions, use the forums.

AWS Support Center

The hub for creating and managing your AWS Support cases.
Also includes links to other helpful resources, such as forums,
technical FAQs, service health status, and AWS Trusted Advisor.

AWS Support

The home page for AWS Support, a one-on-one, fast-response support channel to help you build and run applications
in the cloud.

AWS Architecture Center

Provides the necessary guidance and best practices to build

highly scalable and reliable applications in the AWS cloud.
These resources help you understand the AWS platform, its
services and features. They also provide architectural guidance for design and implementation of systems that run on
the AWS infrastructure.

AWS Security Center

Provides information about security features and resources.

AWS Economics Center

Provides access to information, tools, and resources to compare the costs of Amazon Web Services with IT infrastructure
alternatives.

AWS Technical Whitepapers

Provides technical whitepapers that cover topics such as architecture, security, and economics. These whitepapers have
been written by the Amazon team, customers, and solution
providers.

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Getting Started with AWS

Resource

Description

AWS Blogs

Provides blog posts that cover new services and updates to

existing services.

AWS Podcast

Provides podcasts that cover new services, existing services,

and tips.

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