MSDN Documentation: AWS Tutorials

Introduction to AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud computing platform offered by Amazon that provides a broad set of global compute, storage, database, analytics, networking, mobile, developer tools, management, mobile, and even artificial intelligence services.

Key Concepts

• Regions and Availability Zones
• Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
• Identity and Access Management (IAM)
• Scalability and Elasticity

Begin your cloud journey with a solid grasp of these fundamental principles.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Amazon EC2 allows you to provision virtual machines (instances) that you can access and control. It provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud.

Getting Started with EC2

1. Choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI).
2. Select an instance type based on your needs.
3. Configure storage and security groups.
4. Launch your instance and connect via SSH.

Example: Launching a Web Server

This tutorial guides you through launching a simple web server on an EC2 instance.

# Example command to launch an EC2 instance (simplified)
aws ec2 run-instances \
    --image-id ami-0abcdef1234567890 \
    --instance-type t2.micro \
    --key-name MyKeyPair \
    --security-group-ids sg-0123456789abcdef0
                

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

Amazon S3 is an object storage service that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. You can use S3 to store and protect any amount of data, for virtually any use case.

Key Features

• Buckets and Objects
• Storage Classes (Standard, Intelligent-Tiering, Glacier)
• Versioning and Lifecycle Management
• Access Control Lists (ACLs) and Bucket Policies

Example: Uploading a File to S3

Learn how to upload files to an S3 bucket using the AWS Management Console and CLI.

# Example command to upload a file to S3
aws s3 cp my-local-file.txt s3://my-example-bucket/my-remote-file.txt
                

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)

Amazon RDS makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity while automating time-consuming administration tasks such as hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups.

Supported Engines

• Amazon Aurora
• PostgreSQL
• MySQL
• MariaDB
• Oracle
• SQL Server

Explore tutorials on creating and managing your RDS instances for various applications.

AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda is a compute service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. It automatically scales your application by running code in response to events. You only pay for the compute time you consume.

Common Use Cases

• Data processing
• Real-time file processing
• Building web backends

• Event-driven architectures

Example: A Simple "Hello World" Lambda Function

Learn to create your first Lambda function and trigger it with an API Gateway.

// Example Node.js Lambda function
exports.handler = async (event) => {
    const message = "Hello from AWS Lambda!";
    const response = {
        statusCode: 200,
        body: JSON.stringify(message),
    };
    return response;
};
                

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

Amazon VPC lets you provision a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud where you can launch AWS resources in a virtual network that you define. You have complete control over your virtual networking environment, including selection of your own IP address range, creation of subnets, and configuration of route tables and network gateways.

VPC Components

• Subnets (Public and Private)
• Route Tables
• Internet Gateway (IGW)
• Network Access Control Lists (NACLs)
• Security Groups

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) enables you to manage access to AWS services and resources securely. Using IAM, you can create and manage users and groups, and use permissions to allow or deny their access to AWS resources.

Key IAM Concepts

• Users
• Groups
• Roles
• Policies (Identity-based and Resource-based)

Implementing the principle of least privilege is crucial for security best practices.