When considering AWS cloud adoption you have to be clear as to what are the strengths and benefits that AWS has to offer. And when architecting your infrastructure, you have to build on these strengths and benefits in order to effectively maximize your cost savings and infrastructure improvements.
Here I will discuss some of the major strengths and benefits of AWS.
Disposable Compute
- With traditional Data Centers compute resources aren't easily disposed of after it has already served its purpose. They would normally be re-purposed or re-allocated to other projects or services other than what they were intended for when purchased. The requirements for these may vary thus putting you at risk of being over or under capacity. With AWS you can spin up compute resources as needed and tear them down after use. No need to hold on to resources that you no longer need.
Flexible Capacity
- Your AWS cloud infrastructure has the capability to scale out or scale in depending on demand. This is accomplished through the use of Autoscaling. If setup correctly, you eliminate the guesswork in workload capacity management as your infrastructure automatically adjusts based on your predefined thresholds.
Cost Effective Storage
- AWS offers a variety of cost effective cloud storage solutions based on your need. Here you have S3 Standard which is a highly available, object based storage solution which you can use to store frequently accessed files. If your files are infrequently accessed but requires quick availability, you can choose the S3 Standard Infrequent-Access which is cheaper. As with most S3 storage classes, your data is stored in a minimum or 3 Availability zones. If you do not have the need for such high availability and can easily replicate your object files, you can choose to use the S3 Reduced - Redundancy storage or S3 One Zone - Infrequent Access class which is another level cheaper than S3-IA. The cheapest amongst all storage services is Glacier. However, this should only be used for data archiving. Your object files are stored securely with S3 Standard redundancy but requires 3 - 5 hours for you to retrieve them. Files stored in Glacier are not immediately accessible since you will have to submit a retrieval request and wait 3 - 5 hours for your files to be available.
For more details on S3 follow this link: Amazon S3 storage classes
Automation and Control
- Automation and Control is showcased on a whole new level in AWS. Others would argue that automation and control can also be achieved on a traditional data center through virtualization and scripting. However there is still a degree of manual tasks that needs to be done in a non-cloud environment. With AWS, you can architect your infrastructure as a code, automate deployment, disaster recovery, event responses and much more. AWS Lambda is just one example of how robust the automation and control is with AWS. With AWS Lambda, you can build your infrastructure as a code and have it deploy as a response to an event, therefore you only pay for the resources only when your code or application runs.
There are still other benefits to be had when using AWS. It all depends on how you build your infrastructure and which use cases you base your deployments upon. But these are the main ones that are always evident with every use case scenario of an AWS Cloud deployment.
Here I will discuss some of the major strengths and benefits of AWS.
Disposable Compute
- With traditional Data Centers compute resources aren't easily disposed of after it has already served its purpose. They would normally be re-purposed or re-allocated to other projects or services other than what they were intended for when purchased. The requirements for these may vary thus putting you at risk of being over or under capacity. With AWS you can spin up compute resources as needed and tear them down after use. No need to hold on to resources that you no longer need.
Flexible Capacity
- Your AWS cloud infrastructure has the capability to scale out or scale in depending on demand. This is accomplished through the use of Autoscaling. If setup correctly, you eliminate the guesswork in workload capacity management as your infrastructure automatically adjusts based on your predefined thresholds.
Cost Effective Storage
- AWS offers a variety of cost effective cloud storage solutions based on your need. Here you have S3 Standard which is a highly available, object based storage solution which you can use to store frequently accessed files. If your files are infrequently accessed but requires quick availability, you can choose the S3 Standard Infrequent-Access which is cheaper. As with most S3 storage classes, your data is stored in a minimum or 3 Availability zones. If you do not have the need for such high availability and can easily replicate your object files, you can choose to use the S3 Reduced - Redundancy storage or S3 One Zone - Infrequent Access class which is another level cheaper than S3-IA. The cheapest amongst all storage services is Glacier. However, this should only be used for data archiving. Your object files are stored securely with S3 Standard redundancy but requires 3 - 5 hours for you to retrieve them. Files stored in Glacier are not immediately accessible since you will have to submit a retrieval request and wait 3 - 5 hours for your files to be available.
For more details on S3 follow this link: Amazon S3 storage classes
Automation and Control
- Automation and Control is showcased on a whole new level in AWS. Others would argue that automation and control can also be achieved on a traditional data center through virtualization and scripting. However there is still a degree of manual tasks that needs to be done in a non-cloud environment. With AWS, you can architect your infrastructure as a code, automate deployment, disaster recovery, event responses and much more. AWS Lambda is just one example of how robust the automation and control is with AWS. With AWS Lambda, you can build your infrastructure as a code and have it deploy as a response to an event, therefore you only pay for the resources only when your code or application runs.
There are still other benefits to be had when using AWS. It all depends on how you build your infrastructure and which use cases you base your deployments upon. But these are the main ones that are always evident with every use case scenario of an AWS Cloud deployment.
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