This slide set was from a talk I gave on June 13, 2013 at Windsor Hackforge (hackf.org). It's aimed at current or aspiring software developers who are interested in learning about cloud computing in general, and how to get up and running on Amazon's AWS Platform. Whether you're new to virtualization and cloud services, or already familiar with the concepts and looking to ramp up quickly on the AWS service stack, there will be some useful information for you in this presentation.

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An Introduction for (Aspiring) Developers
Saturday, June 15, 13

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Agenda
• Introduction to key concepts: virtualization
and cloud computing
• Introduction to core AWS services
• Demo: provisioning a new virtual machine
(VM)
Saturday, June 15, 13

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What is “the cloud” anyway?
• Means different things to
different people
• On demand resources
• Used mostly for servers
(web, database, application)
• Possible to run a desktop
environment
CPU
RAM Disk
Network
FOR RENT
Saturday, June 15, 13

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What can you do with it?
• Try out a new app in a clean, isolated environment
• Test an upgrade before doing it in production
• Development, staging and testing environments
• Run production servers (web, database, etc)
• Load testing without impacting production
• Access important software / data from anywhere
Saturday, June 15, 13

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What is aVirtual Machine?
CPU Disk Memory Video Sound
Keyboard
& Mouse
Hypervisor
Operating System Operating System
Saturday, June 15, 13

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Virtual Servers - Recap
• An operating system (Windows, Linux)
• Multiple “instances” on shared hardware
• EachVM is logically isolated from others
• Connected via network (also virtual!)
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Lots of Cloud Providers
Saturday, June 15, 13

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Why Amazon?
• High seasonal resource peaks (Christmas)
• Lots of idle capacity for most of year
• Why not rent it out?
• Scale Out strategy is a cheaper way to run
high-demand software
Saturday, June 15, 13

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AWS: Main Characters
ELB
Route
53
EC2 S3
Elastic Computing Cloud Simple Storage Service
Elastic Load BalancerDistributed DNS Service
EC2
Elastic Computing Cloud
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Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2)
• Virtual Servers: Linux or Windows
• Micro: 1 CPU, < 1 GB memory
• Huge: 32 CPU, > 1TB memory
• Fire upVMs on demand
• Many purpose-specific instance types:
High CPU, GPU, High Memory
Saturday, June 15, 13

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Geared for High Availability
• Not perfect uptime, better than most
• Built on cheap/commodity hardware
• Redundancy built into software layer
• Cheaper than hardware redundancy
• Most outages are human-caused anyway!
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Regions & Availability Zones
• VMs are deployed in regions
• Each region has multiple availability zones
• Data is stored in multiple availability zones
within a single region
• Developer is still responsible for multi-site
architecture (alternative: Heroku)
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Scale Up or Scale Out
• Scale up - Mount yourVM image on more
powerful hardware
• Scale out - Run multipleVMs with
Elastic Load Balancer (EBS)
Saturday, June 15, 13

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Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
• Preconfigured server environments
• “Virtual Appliance”
• Examples: LAMP server, Squid Proxy, Drupal
• Many free ones available, some require
additional charges - “software rental”
• Create your own AMIs
Saturday, June 15, 13

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Storage Considerations
• Be careful which AMIs you choose
• Ephemeral storage - data destroyed on
termination of instance
• Elastic Block Store (EBS) - persistent
storage, backed by S3
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But we’ve gotVMware!
• Can work just as well as a cloud service
• You are pre-buying capacity, whether you
need it or not
• Potential to impact productionVMs
(i.e. load testing, bandwidth constraints)
• Capacity constraints appear sooner than
most expect
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Programmatic Management
• Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
• Manage your entire AWS infrastructure
programmatically
• Respond automatically to changes in
demand (scale out, scale back)
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Free Usage Tier
• 750 hours / month (24h x 31d) for 1 year
• Micro instance only
• Doesn’t have to be 1VM! Could be 10!
• Tip: Shut downVMs when not in use
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Costs
• Pay-as-you-go model
• Minimum charge: 1 hour
• Range from 1.9c per hour to $$$
• Prices lowered regularly
• Most services have a free usage tier
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Getting Started
• Sign up: aws.amazon.com
• Lots of pre-configuredVMs available
• Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
Saturday, June 15, 13

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Demo: Provisioning aVM
Saturday, June 15, 13

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Obligatory XKCD
Saturday, June 15, 13