Pravin Mishra’s Expert Insights to Boost Your Cloud Computing with AWS

Everything You Need to Know to be an AWS Cloud Practitioner. Cloud computing with AWS has revolutionized the tech landscape. Pravin Mishra’s book offers a comprehensive roadmap for navigating this powerful platform. Whether you’re a novice or a seasoned pro, this guide promises to elevate your AWS expertise.

Dive into this review to discover how Mishra’s book can transform your cloud computing journey and propel your career to new heights.

Genres

Technology, Cloud Computing, IT Infrastructure, Business Technology, Software Development, Network Administration, Digital Transformation, System Architecture, DevOps, Information Technology

Mishra’s book delivers a thorough exploration of Amazon Web Services (AWS). It covers fundamental concepts, key services, and practical applications. The author breaks down complex topics into digestible sections, starting with an overview of cloud computing and AWS basics. He then delves into core services like EC2, S3, and RDS, explaining their functions and use cases.

The book progresses to more advanced topics, including networking with VPC, security best practices, and serverless computing with Lambda. Mishra also addresses crucial aspects like cost optimization, scalability, and high availability.

Throughout the text, real-world examples and hands-on exercises reinforce learning. Code snippets and configuration walkthroughs provide practical guidance for implementing AWS solutions.

Review

Mishra’s work stands out for its clarity and depth. It strikes a balance between technical detail and accessibility, making it suitable for both beginners and intermediate users.

The book’s structure follows a logical progression, building knowledge systematically. This approach helps readers grasp complex concepts without feeling overwhelmed.

One of the book’s strengths is its focus on best practices and real-world scenarios. This practical orientation ensures that readers can apply their knowledge immediately in professional settings.

However, the rapidly evolving nature of AWS means some sections may become outdated quickly. Readers should complement this book with AWS’s official documentation for the most current information.

The inclusion of case studies would have enhanced the book’s value, providing more context for AWS applications in various industries.

Despite minor shortcomings, this book serves as an excellent resource for anyone looking to build a solid foundation in AWS. It’s particularly valuable for IT professionals transitioning to cloud technologies or developers seeking to expand their skill set.

Recommendation

Old-fashioned data centers are expensive to set up and time-consuming to maintain. You have to purchase the hardware, set up a cooling system, and power and maintain the entire system. With cloud computing, these issues cease to exist. Cloud computing services — computing, storage, databases, and networking — are available on the internet, and you only pay for what you use. Cloud services aren’t just highly adaptable — they’re available all over the world. It’s not surprising that many companies are transitioning from traditional data centers to cloud computing.

Take-Aways

• Cloud computing involves computing, storage, databases, and networking delivered on-demand via the internet.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) are primarily used through the AWS Management Console, its command-line interface (CLI), or its software development tool (SDK).
• Identity and Access Management (IAM) ensures that only the appropriate people in your company access the cloud services they need.
• Amazon’s simple storage service (S3) allows you to store and access data from anywhere.
• A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is specific to your AWS and disconnected from other networks.
• Computing in AWS is cost-effective and highly flexible.
• AWS can automatically add or remove resources as needed.
• Databases involve structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data.
• It’s important to protect your data in the cloud.

Summary

Cloud computing involves computing, storage, databases, and networking delivered on-demand via the internet.

Traditional data centers involve hard, physical assets, including stacks of powerful computers and resources that cool them — and a place to keep them. Cloud computing, by contrast, is delivered on-demand via the internet. Cloud computing services provide computing and storage capacity, databases, and networks, as well as other related services.

“Another feature that makes cloud computing so simple is its pay-as-you-go pricing. You only pay for what you request and what you use in cloud computing.”

Your personal computer’s “compute power” allows it to run applications and process data. When working on the cloud, a computing service performs these functions — allowing you to create a cloud-based PowerPoint presentation for work, for example. After you create your PowerPoint, you need to save it — meaning, you need storage capacity. The trouble with storing data on your laptop’s hard drive is that hard drives sometimes crash — and data gets lost. Cloud storage allows you to securely preserve data on remote servers, for whatever length of time you want. By storing data in the cloud, you lower the risk of losing data because it is stored on multiple servers, rather than on just one device. If you need to work with significant amounts of “structured data” — data organized systematically, such as on an Excel sheet — you’ll need a database. There are different types of data and databases. Finally, if you’re using cloud computing, storage capacity, and databases, you’ll also need networking services to connect these other services.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) are primarily used through the AWS Management Console, its command-line interface (CLI), or its software development tool (SDK).

In order to get started with AWS, you need to create an account — and become a user. The AWS account user controls the account and its resources. People not on your account won’t be able to access it. There are essentially three ways to engage with AWS.

“It [AWS Console] is a web interface for interacting with AWS services. Since it can be accessed through your web browser, it is the easiest way to manage resources on AWS.”

The AWS Management Console is perhaps the simplest and most straightforward way to work on AWS. You can also use the AWS Management Console on phones and other mobile devices. The AWS Management Console is user-friendly and great for people who are just starting out with the service. Though you can only automate some AWS services through Console — you’ll need to trigger other operations manually — it’s highly effective for administrative purposes. You can also access AWS through the AWS command-line interface (CLI). Unlike the Management Console, you can automate tasks on CLI: Say you have 50 account users and want to delete all those whose names start with a certain letter. With the Console, you’d need to locate and delete each user individually. With CLI, you can create one command to find all the relevant users and another to delete them. In addition, you can access and work with the AWS with the AWS software development kit (SDK). Unlike CLI, SDK supports a wide variety of programming languages, including Go, Java, PHP, and Python.

Identity and Access Management (IAM) ensures that only the appropriate people in your company access the cloud services they need.

AWS’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) service provides what is effectively an identity card for access to the AWS. Just as access to workspaces in corporate environments or government buildings requires photo identification, access to an organization’s cloud computing system and its resources typically requires identification of some kind. Access will be partitioned, depending on the employee. For instance, a person working in accounting will have access to certain AWS resources, while someone in marketing will have access to others.

“AWS IAM provides access control across all of its services and resources. It is possible to specify who can access which services and resources, and under what conditions.”

IAM centers around three core features: “identification,” “authorization,” and “authentication.” Identification refers to how the AWS identifies each user who is attempting to access the system. In practice, this requires every user to provide a unique username and password. Authentication entails verifying the identifying information you provide. In this case, it means that the AWS system’s internal processes confirm that you are providing the correct username and password. With authorization, the systems approves you for use of the AWS and whichever of its resources are partitioned to you.

Amazon’s simple storage service (S3) allows you to store and access data from anywhere.

Cloud computing systems need more than computing and some form of security — they need storage too. One of AWS’s central offerings is the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3). S3 has considerable capacity. Users can save, find, use, and create backup copies of limitless amounts of data over the internet from anywhere in the world. Users can access S3 via the AWS’s Management Console, CLI, or SDK.

“S3 is a perfect storage solution for storing massive amounts of data, such as audio files, movies, large-scale photo storage, big data sets, and so on.”

In order to store data in S3, you have to create an AWS “bucket.” A bucket is just a storage vehicle — and you can create more than one for organizational purposes. The bucket should have a unique name accessible across the system. For convenience and organizational purposes, you can create folders within buckets. When you store data in S3, whether it’s in a text document or a video, it’s called an “object.” Buckets essentially serve as directories for stored objects. Objects in S3 have a maximum size of 5 terabytes. If you need to upload something larger than that, you need to break it up and upload it in parts.

AWS offers different types of storage called “storage classes.” These classes refer primarily to the frequency with which data is accessed. The “S3 Standard” is the most frequently used storage class, and it’s for data that’s used often. It offers high levels of security and durability — there is very little risk of losing your data. “S3 Intelligent-Tiering” automatically stores user data in the most cost-effective tier, based on use patterns. Intelligent-Tiering also provides high levels of durability and reliability. The “Infrequent Access” class is for data that you rarely access, but would like readily available when you do need it. This service generates fees for each instance of data retrieval. “One Zone-Infrequent Access” involves data you rarely use, and for which instant availability is less of an issue. Use this class for less important data backup as retrieval is substantially cheaper than for the Infrequent Access storage class.

A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is specific to your AWS and disconnected from other networks.

A VPC is connected to cloud computing’s networking capacity and dimensions. In your AWS, depending on your organization and your profession, you will use a variety of resources. The VPC is, in effect, a private virtual space in which you can access your resources. A VPC is a virtual network that is exclusive to your AWS account. It’s disconnected from all other virtual networks that live on the AWS Cloud.

“A VPC is nothing but a virtual data center on Amazon Web Services. It is private because it is only for you, and you have complete control over it.”

A VPC is basically a private network you, and you alone, own. It is available in all regions in which the AWS operates, and it is up to you who can connect to it. The IP addresses for your VPC, which are called “CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing)” are unique: The IP addresses are disconnected from each other. You are free to select IP addresses and generate sub-networks, among other features.

Computing in AWS is cost-effective and highly flexible.

It’s important to tailor cloud computing resources to your business needs. AWS’s Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) allows you to scale “virtual machines” (VM) up or down, as needed. A virtual machine functions like a computer within a computer, with its own separate processing, memory, and storage.Though a virtual machine might share the physical computer it operates within, all virtual machines operate independently. For this reason virtual machines are portable — you can move them from one physical host to another.

“You can run multiple virtual machines on a single physical host. This can drastically reduce your physical infrastructure costs, as you will have to buy fewer physical computers.”

As an AWS computing service, EC2 has numerous virtues. Not only can you create numerous virtual machines on a single physical device, EC2 is “scalable” in that you can adjust its size to meet your computing needs.In fact, you can configure your virtual machine so that it automatically generates the number and size of virtual machines you need. In addition, EC2 provides “Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS),” meaning that you rent virtual machines from AWS, and AWS itself purchases and maintains the physical hardware. Finally, since EC2’s virtual machines are located in Amazon’s data center, and you have complete control over your virtual machines, you can configure their security arrangements to your own specifications.

AWS can automatically add or remove resources as needed.

AWS provides an “elastic load balancer” (ELB) and offers “autoscaling.” The ELB helps distribute — or redistribute — incoming traffic in a balanced, manageable way. EC2 virtual machines and the ELB interact in important ways. When EC2 needs to scale up and generate new virtual machines, it informs the ELB that new virtual machines are available to absorb traffic. The ELB will automatically direct incoming load to various EC2 instances.

“Reactive scaling means that servers are manually brought up and down based on the changes in workload. ”

Manually scaling physical resources takes time and money. Administrators will have to keep track of server capacity and demand. They may have to go out and buy new servers to meet enhanced needs. These issues simply don’t occur with cloud computing. Indeed, much of this happens instantaneously — and automatically with AWS Autoscaling. AWS Autoscaling keeps track of your capacity and adds or removes capacity in order to optimize performance — and keep costs low.

There are, however, a variety of autoscaling approaches and policies that serve different purposes. The simplest and most rudimentary approach is to manually adjust autoscaling based on your desired maximum and minimum capacity. You can update as the demand for capacity changes. “Dynamic scaling” involves changing the number of EC2 virtual machine instances based on periods of peak or low demand. “Predictive scaling,” on the other hand, increases capacity based on rises in anticipated demand. Whereas dynamic scaling reacts to events as they change, predictive scaling anticipates future events based on evolving data and historical experience.

Databases involve structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data.

Data comes in three types: Structured, unstructured, and semi-structured.Structured data has a predetermined type and format: Imagine an Excel spreadsheet in which you’ve organized employee contact information — first names in one column, last names in the next column, and phone numbers in the third. Unstructured data, like videos, lack a preset model. Semi-structured data is technically a kind of structured data, but you can change one element without needing to alter all the others to match.

“Storing small data can be managed through Excel sheets and tables. But when it comes to huge amounts of data, you need databases.”

Since data comes in different kinds, so do databases. Relational databases are best for structured data organized into tables, like student registration information. Non-relational databases, on the other hand, are good for storing unstructured and semi-structured data. The virtue of non-relational databases is that you don’t need to identify and define your data’s character in advance.

Organizations will also face a choice between managing databases on-premises or in the cloud. On-premises database management is a complicated, time-consuming, and sometimes expensive task. Managing databases from the cloud is more streamlined, efficient, and cost-effective. Amazon’s Relational Database Service (RDS), for instance, is a cloud-based managed service that facilitates database set-up, operation, scaling, and backup. RDS pricing is pay-as-you-go. You pay for the hosting of the database and for both storage and I/O (input-output) costs. Storage is charged per gigabyte a month; I/O is charged for every million requests.

It’s important to protect your data in the cloud.

A lot of people and organizations are transitioning to the cloud, making it a target for cyber-criminals looking to steal and exploit sensitive information or disrupt an organization’s functioning. Amazon Web Services provides one of the world’s most secure cloud computing environments. In addition to the security measures it provides, AWS also oversees its facilities 24/7 in order to ensure data is secure and fully available.

“Cloud security is the most crucial topic for all cloud users.”

AWS security is not AWS’s sole responsibility, however — it’s shared with users. User responsibility depends upon the resources it uses. In general, the provider, AWS, is responsible for the security “of” the cloud and the user is responsible for security “in” the cloud. AWS is responsible for the security of its data centers, networks, hardware, and other technology and software. With that in mind, it monitors data centers, provides cyberattack detection systems, and insists on a rigorous authentication process for employees. Users must secure their own operating systems and application data, and carefully regulate access to the system. In addition, AWS oversees any security compliance issues that might apply to organizations that operate internationally.

About the Author

Pravin Mishra specializes in designing and implementing multi-cloud-based solutions. As an AWS trainer, he helps students and IT professionals switch to careers in the AWS Cloud.