1.0 - Fundamental Cloud Concepts¶

Course Overview¶

AWS Certs add value for technical and non-technical resources.
Covers:
Cloud Computing Concepts
Organization of AWS Global Infrastructure
Economics of Cloud Computing
Tools and Services

Understanding Cloud Computing¶

Setting up an AWS Account¶

aws.amazon.com → Create AWS Account
Add root email address and account name
Verify the email address
Create root user password
Add contact information and account information e.g. address and name
Add payment details
Confirm identity via SMS or call.
Select support option (free will suffice)
Go to AWS Management Console → Root User → Login

Set Up Billing Alerts¶

Account dropdown → Billing management
Budgets → Create budget → Create from template (if desired)
Fill out fields as appropriate.

Traditional Data Centres¶

Consider a company not on the cloud:
They focus their application release in the US first, in US-based datacentres
They want to launch in Asia and Europe and require funding to have infrastructure built there to support the needs
Resources needed include:
- Web servers
- File servers
- Database servers
Manually setting all this up for each region is long, arduous, and error-strewn.
Further problems arise when demand scales in any of the pre-existing regions.
Moving to cloud resolves all of these problems:
No large upfront investment and planning required
Use resources as required rather than full unpredictable forecasting
New data centres and servers can be spun up / torn down as required
Lower maintenance costs
Security and compliance burden is alleviated from the organization.

Benefits of Cloud Computing¶

Trade capital expense for variable expense
No need for initial investment to build out a datacentre
Only pay for the resources used and how long they're used for
Economies of scale
AWS buys the datacentre resources on a large scale, allowing them to provision the resources on such a price - savings are passed to the customers
No need to guess capacity - cloud computing can allow scaling on demand.
Speed and agility increased - resources for testing and deployment can be spun up / torn down at will for minimal costs.
Reduces time required to maintain infrastructure
Reduced risk for the organisation around security and compliance
Provides access to emerging technologies
No more cost for maintaining data centres - more focus on the employees and other resources
Data can be easily switched to different regions.
Elasticity: The ability to acquire resources as needed and release when no longer required.
Reliability: A solution's ability to provide functionality for its users when needed.

Types of Cloud Computing¶

Cloud Computing: The on-demand delivery of compute power, database storage, applications, and other IT resources through a cloud services platform via the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing.

Cloud Computing Models¶

Models vary based on the control users want to have over the resources
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Any servers users deploy to the cloud
Can be configured to our desire and users are responsible for maintenance
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
A service preconfigured and available for users
It can then be customised by users as appropriate e.g. Wordpress, AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Any software users have access to and can use
Users do not need to consider or maintain the infrastructure.

Cloud Deployment Models¶

Public Cloud: Deployment to a provider like AWS
On-Premises Private Cloud: Deployment to a cloud-like platform in a private datacenter (VMware is a common example)
Hybrid: A combination of both e.g. cloud applications connected to a private data center.

Cloud Computing Scenarios¶

Scenario 1¶

Several production workloads in its datacentre
VMware to manage infrastructure in their data centre
Want to use AWS and integrate it with their data center for new workloads.
What would they be following?
Hybrid - Both public and private cloud used.

Scenario 2¶

Company determining whether to fund a new line of business
Team looking to monetize a new emerging technology
New business line requires new infrastructure
What benefit is most relevant?
Increased agility and elasticity
Pay-as-you-go

Scenario 3¶

Insurance company
Moving to cloud instead of colocating servers
Want to have maximum control for security and compliance reasons
What cloud computing model
IaaS - Servers can be configured as required and maintained.

AWS Global Infrastructure¶

AWS Regions and Availability Zones¶

AWS Regions
Resource / Service deployment location as geographic regions
Each geographic location has a cluster of data centres
Availability Zones
A zone of one or more data centres
Multiple availability zones are included per AWS region
All located within the geographic area of the AWS region (sub-regions effectively)
Have redundant power, networking and connectivity for disaster recovery / high availability purposes.
Example - US has 6 regions, each with at least 3 availability zones
Availability: The extent to which an application is fulfilling its intended purpose. Applications that are highly-available are built in a manner where a single failure won't lessen its ability to be fully operational.

Region and Availability Zone Naming¶

Example: us-east-2a
Format: <AREA>-<SUB-AREA>-<NUMBER><Availability Zone Letter>

Local and Wavelength Zones¶

Local Zone¶

Aim to place compute, storage, database, and other AWS services closer to end-users
An extension of a particular AWS region
Provides high-bandwidth, secure connections betwen local workloads and those running in AWS region.
Allows seasmless connection to the full range of in-region services through the same APIs and toolsets.

Wavelength Zones¶

AWS infrastructure deployments that embed AWS compute and storage services within communication service providers 5G networks.
Allows application traffic from 5G devices to reach application servers without leaving the telecommunication networks.

AWS Edge Locations¶

Points of Prescence:¶

Elements of AWS global infrastructure that exist outside of AWS regions.
Located in or around populated areas - specific AWS services use them to deliver content to end users as quickly as possible.
2 Types of infrastructure per point of prescence:
Edge locations
Regional edge caches

Edge Locations¶

Used as nodes of a global content delivery network
Primarily used by Amazon CloudFront and AWS Route 53
Allows AWS to serve content from locations closest to users.

Visualizing AWS Global Infrastructure¶

Global infrastructure
Edge locations listed per region amongst other information

Global Infrastructure Scenarios¶

Global Infrastructure Scenario 1¶

Looking to transfer to AWS with a few workloads
Requirement to store backup data in multiple geographic areas
What element of AWS Global Infrastructure will help best?
AWS Regions - Regions are geographical areas e.g. could store data in one and run the applications in another.

Global Infrastructure Scenario 2¶

Content served across the world
Wanting to optimize performance to users worldwide
Want to leverage a content delivery network
What element is best suited to help this from AWS infrastructure?
Edge Locations

Global Infrastructure Scenario 3¶

Legacy applications transitioning to AWS
99.5% uptime required
Don't want issues at single datacentres to cause outages
What element of the global infrastructure will help?
Availability zones

Understanding Cloud Economics¶

Economics of the Cloud¶

Capitalized Expenditure (CapEx):
Upfront costs or investments to attain a fixed asset
Example for building a datacenter would be the building, servers, etc.
Operating Expenditure (OpEx)
Day-to-day business activities
Example being maintenance costs

Handling Demand in Data Centre¶

As application usage grows, data centres need to grow with it in capacity
When first launched, there would be a lot of unused capacity
Eventually, demand would exceed capacity → data centre capacity needs to be increased
In terms of CapEx vs OpEx
CapEx starts out large due to initial acquiring
OpEx maintained at generally consistent levels.
Any time the capacity needs to be increased, CapEx goes up.

Handling Demand in the Cloud¶

Companies in the cloud can ensure the capacity is always "just enough" to ensure the demand is met
As the cloud resources are being leveraged, there is no CapEx costs, instead, the OpEx costs vary depending on the application usage adn the demand.

Financial Implications¶

Own Data Centre	Cloud Infrastructure
Large CapEx	No upfront investment
Potential for under used capacity or unmet demand	Pay as you go for infrastructure (OpEx)
Increasing capacity takes time and additional investment (CapEx)	Capacity scales to meet user demand and can be immediately provisioned
Monthly costs will map to predicted infrastructure needs	Costs mirror usage levels - use more, pay more, use less, pay less etc.

Organizing and Optimizing AWS Costs¶

AWS Cost Explorer
User Interface for AWS Cost Analysis
Provides breakdowns per:
- Service
- Cost tag
Provides 3-monthly forecasting.
Provides recommendations for cost optimizations.
Data accessible via API
AWS Budgets
Takes data from AWS Cost explorer to plan and track usage across services.
Tracks cost per service, service usage, reserved instance utilisation and coverage, and savings plans utilisation and coverage.
AWS Cost Planning Tools:
AWS Pricing Calculator
- Allows in-depth analysis of cost for multiple AWS services for cloud-based workloads.
AWS Migration Hub:
- Provides recommendations and a business case for transitioning workloads to the cloud.
Deprecated Tools:
AWS TCO Calculator - Enabled estimated savings for using cloud infrastructure to be determined
AWS Simple Monthly Calculator
AWS Resource Tags:
Metadata assigned to specific AWS resources
Key/Value
Common usage includes department, environment, or project.
Cost allocation can report can include costs grouped by active tags.
AWS Organizations:
Allows organisations to manage multiple accounts under a single master account
Offers consolidated billing for all accounts.
Facilitates centralized logging and security standard implementation.

Building a Business Case for the Cloud¶

Steps to build a business case:
Analyze the current workloads
Forecast the infrastructure needs
Create a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for both options.
Tools available:
AWS Migration Hub - Gathers information from multiple services and tools in AWS to forecast required infrastructure.
Migration Evaluator - Similar to the migration hub but provides a more in-depth analysis.

AWS Pricing Calculator¶

Used to estimate future workloads
Accessible at calculator.aws
Create Estimate → Fill out desired fields i.e.:
Location or Service Type
Configure Services:
- Quick Estimate or Advanced Estimate
- Service Details e.g. for EC2 check the resources
- Expected utilisation
- Pricing Strategies
- Any sub-services e.g. Elastic Block Storage (EBS) for EC2 Instances
Upfront, Monthly and Total 12 month costs are provided upon completion.
Any additional services can then be added to the estimate as required e.g. Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
The estimate can then be exported or shared.
Additionally estimates can be grouped within the estimate e.g. group based on "application" or "function".

Reviewing Costs - Costs Explorer¶

AWS Accounts → Profile Dropdown → Billing Dashboard → Cost Explorer → Launch Cost Explorer
Provides initial overviews such as:
Current monthly cost
Forecast month-end costs
Daily cost grouping
- Can be filtered per AWS Service, region, resource, etc.
From LHS pane → Reports
Includes reports such as:
- Monthly costs per account
- Daily costs

Applying Cloud Economics¶

Cloud Economics Scenario 1¶

Multiple departments within AWS
FInance requesting clean separation of AWS costs within departments
All resources are within a single AWS Account
What approach would meet this need for future costs with minimal effort?
Resource tags

Cloud Economics Scenario 2¶

Company considering transition to the cloud
2 physical data centres
Stakeholders wanting financial insight
Which approach to make a business case?
Use the migration hub or migration evaluator

Cloud Economics Scenario 3¶

Web developer
Looking to move site to cloud.
Financial estimates needed.
What approach?
Use the pricing calculator.

Supporting AWS Infrastructure¶

Support Resources¶

AWS support → Allows support tickets to be submitted
Includes Personal Health Dashboard. and Trusted Advisor
AWS Support:
Enables support from AWS resources for workloads running in the cloud
Provided in different tiers based on need and scope
Includes tools to provide automated answers and recommendations
AWS Personal Health Dashboard
Provides alerts and remediation guidance when events occur in AWS that may impact you e.g. regional outages
AWS Trusted Advisor
An automated tool to check AWS usage against best practices
Accessible from the AWS console
Provides multiple checks based on the support plan tier, in addition to core checks
Checks include:
- Cost optimization
- Performance
- Security
- Fault Tolerance
- Service Limits

AWS Support Plan Tiers¶

Support plan tiers are based on:
Communication method
Response Time
Cost
Type of guidance offered
Basic Support
Provided for all customers
Access to trusted advisor (7 core checks)
Documentation, forums, and 24x7 customer service access
AWS Personal health dashboard
Free
Developer Support
Everything in basic
Includes access to support engineers via email during business hours
1 Primary contact
$29/month
Business support
All of developer support
Full set of trusted advisor checks
24x7 phone, email and chat access to support engineers
unlimited contacts for support requests
Third-party software support provided
$100/month (based on AWS usage)
Enterprise Support:
All features of business support
Includes technical account manager (TAM)
Includes concierge support team
$15,000/month
Support Response Times dependent upon the nature of the request:
General Guidance
System Impaired
Production System Impaired
Production System Down
Business-Critical System Down

AWS Support Tools¶

AWS Console → Health View and Trusted Advisor are automatically included as widgets
Also accessible from search bar
Trusted Advisor:
Shows summary and recommendation categories
Recommendations only provided based on checks available.
Details on recommended actions provided, with remediation steps.
Will show checks which aren't included for reference.
Checks can be downloaded.
AWS Health Dashboard
Service health dashboard
Issue and events logs
Service history.

When You Need Help¶

Resources available for help:
AWS Quickstart - Provides steps for standard platform deployments
AWS Partner Network Consulting Partners - 3rd Party Consultants that are Partners with AWS
AWS Professional Services

Infrastructure Support Scenarios¶

Infrastructure Support Scenario 1¶

Moving multiple workloads into AWS
One workload is mission-critical
24/7 support needed
What support level? - Business Support

Infrastructure Support Scenario 2¶

Evaluating AWS for future or workloads
Workloads supports multiple offices globally
Email text or call to support needed.
Response within 15 mins needed.
What support plan? Enterprise

Infrastructure Support Scenario 3¶

Account for a personal project
No Technical Guidance needed
Want access to Trusted Advisor etc
Basic Support plan needed.