Amazon Web Services
Encyclopedia
Amazon Web Services is a collection of remote computing
services (also called web service
s) that together make up a cloud computing
platform, offered over the Internet by Amazon.com
. The most central and well-known of these services are Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3
.
Launched in July 2002, Amazon Web Services provide online services for other web sites or client-side applications. Most of these services are not exposed directly to end users, but instead offer functionality that other developers can use. In June 2007, Amazon claimed that more than 330,000 developers had signed up to use Amazon Web Services.
Amazon Web Services’ offerings are accessed over HTTP, using Representational State Transfer
(REST) and SOAP protocols. All services are billed on usage, but how usage is measured for billing varies from service to service.
On April 20, 2011, some of Amazon Web Services suffered a major outage.
Remote computer
A remote computer is a computer to which a user does not have physical access, but which he or she can access or manipulate via some kind of network....
services (also called web service
Web service
A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the web.The W3C defines a "Web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network". It has an interface described in a machine-processable format...
s) that together make up a cloud computing
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....
platform, offered over the Internet by Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
. The most central and well-known of these services are Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3
Amazon S3
Amazon S3 is an online storage web service offered by Amazon Web Services. Amazon S3 provides storage through web services interfaces...
.
Launched in July 2002, Amazon Web Services provide online services for other web sites or client-side applications. Most of these services are not exposed directly to end users, but instead offer functionality that other developers can use. In June 2007, Amazon claimed that more than 330,000 developers had signed up to use Amazon Web Services.
Amazon Web Services’ offerings are accessed over HTTP, using Representational State Transfer
Representational State Transfer
Representational state transfer is a style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web. The term representational state transfer was introduced and defined in 2000 by Roy Fielding in his doctoral dissertation...
(REST) and SOAP protocols. All services are billed on usage, but how usage is measured for billing varies from service to service.
On April 20, 2011, some of Amazon Web Services suffered a major outage.
List of AWS services
- Amazon AWS Authentication, an implicit service, the authentication infrastructure used to authenticate access to the various services.
- Amazon CloudFrontAmazon CloudFrontAmazon CloudFront is a content delivery network offered by Amazon Web Services. CloudFront operates on a pay-as-you-go basis. The service was launched in Beta on November 18, 2008....
, a content delivery networkContent Delivery NetworkA content delivery network or content distribution network is a system of computers containing copies of data placed at various nodes of a network....
(CDN) for distributing objects stored in S3 to so-called "edge locations" near the requester. - Amazon CloudWatch, provides monitoring for AWS cloud resources and applications, starting with EC2.
- Amazon DevPay, currently in limited beta version, is a billing and account management system for applications that developers have built atop Amazon Web Services.
- Amazon Elastic Beanstalk provides quick deployment and management of applications in the cloud.
- Amazon Elastic Block StoreAmazon Elastic Block StoreAmazon Elastic Block Storage provides raw block devices, that can be attached to Amazon EC2 instances. These block devices can then be used like any raw block device. In a typical use case, this would include formatting the device with a filesystem and mounting said filesystem. In addition EBS...
(EBS) provides persistent block-level storage volumes for EC2. - Amazon Elastic Compute CloudAmazon Elastic Compute CloudAmazon Elastic Compute Cloud is a central part of Amazon.com's cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services . EC2 allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications...
(EC2) provides scalable virtual private servers using XenXenXen is a virtual-machine monitor providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently....
. - Amazon Elastic MapReduce allows businesses, researchers, data analysts, and developers to easily and cheaply process vast amounts of data. It uses a hosted HadoopHadoopApache Hadoop is a software framework that supports data-intensive distributed applications under a free license. It enables applications to work with thousands of nodes and petabytes of data...
framework running on the web-scale infrastructure of EC2Amazon Elastic Compute CloudAmazon Elastic Compute Cloud is a central part of Amazon.com's cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services . EC2 allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications...
and Amazon S3. - Amazon ElastiCache provides in-memory caching for web applications.
- Amazon Flexible Payments ServiceAmazon Flexible Payments ServiceAmazon FPS is an Amazon Web Service that allows the transfer of money between two entities. The service was launched as a limited beta in August 2007, and later in February 2009 was promoted to General Availability...
(FPS) provides an interface for micropayments. - Amazon Fulfillment Web Service provides a programmatic web serviceWeb serviceA Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the web.The W3C defines a "Web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network". It has an interface described in a machine-processable format...
for sellers to ship items to and from Amazon using Fulfillment by Amazon. - Amazon Historical Pricing provides access to Amazon's historical sales data from its affiliates. (It appears that this service has been discontinued.)
- Amazon Mechanical TurkAmazon Mechanical TurkThe Amazon Mechanical Turk is a crowdsourcing Internet marketplace that enables computer programmers to co-ordinate the use of human intelligence to perform tasks that computers are unable to do yet. It is one of the suites of Amazon Web Services...
(Mturk) manages small units of work distributed among many humans. - Amazon Product Advertising APIAmazon Product Advertising APIAmazon's Product Advertising API, formerly Amazon Associates Web Service and before that known as Amazon E-Commerce Service , is a web service and application programming interface that gives application programmers access to Amazon's product catalog data...
formerly known as Amazon Associates Web Service (A2S) and Amazon E-Commerce Service (ECS), provides access to Amazon's product data and electronic commerce functionality. - Amazon Relational Database ServiceAmazon Relational Database ServiceAmazon Relational Database Service or Amazon RDS is a distributed relational database service by Amazon.com. It is a web service running "in the cloud" and provides users a relational database for use in their applications. Amazon RDS makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database...
(RDS) provides a scalable databaseDatabaseA database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
server with MySQLMySQLMySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
and Oracle support. - Amazon Route 53Amazon Route 53Amazon Route 53 is a relatively new part of Amazon.com's cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services . Route 53 provides scalable and highly available Domain Name Service . In addition to being able to route users to various AWS services, including EC2 instances, Route 53 also enables AWS...
provides a highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service. - Amazon Simple Email ServiceAmazon Simple Email ServiceAmazon Simple Email Service is part of Amazon.com's cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services . SES provides AWS users with infrastructure for sending outbound bulk email correspondence.- Pricing :...
(SES) provides bulk and transactional email sending. - Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) provides Web Service based storage.
- Amazon Simple Queue ServiceAmazon Simple Queue ServiceAmazon Simple Queue Service is a distributed queue messaging service introduced by Amazon.com in April of 2006. It supports programmatic sending of messages via web service applications as a way to communicate over the internet...
(SQS) provides a hosted message queue for web applications. - Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) provides a hosted multiprotocol "push" messaging for web applications.
- Amazon SimpleDBAmazon SimpleDBAmazon SimpleDB is a distributed database written in Erlang by Amazon.com. It is used as a web service in concert with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud and Amazon S3 and is part of Amazon Web Services. It was announced on December 13, 2007....
, allows developers to run queries on structured data. It operates in concert with EC2 and S3 to provide "the core functionality of a database." - Amazon Virtual Private CloudAmazon Virtual Private CloudAmazon Virtual Private Cloud is a commercial cloud computing service that provides a virtual private cloud, allowing enterprise customers to access the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud over an IPsec based virtual private network...
(VPC), in limited beta, creates a logically isolated set of Amazon EC2 instances to be connected to an existing network using a VPNVirtual private networkA virtual private network is a network that uses primarily public telecommunication infrastructure, such as the Internet, to provide remote offices or traveling users access to a central organizational network....
connection. - AWS CloudFormation, create a collection of related AWS resources and provision them in an orderly and predictable fashion.
- AWS Import/Export, accelerates moving large amounts of data into and out of AWS using portable storage devices for transport.
- AWS Management Console (AWS Console), A web-based point and click interface to manage and monitor the Amazon infrastructure suite including EC2Amazon Elastic Compute CloudAmazon Elastic Compute Cloud is a central part of Amazon.com's cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services . EC2 allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications...
, EBSEBS-Education:* Educational Broadcasting System is a Korea educational broadcasting-company* Edinburgh Business School, is the Graduate School of Business of Heriot-Watt University...
, Amazon Elastic MapReduce, and Amazon CloudFrontAmazon CloudFrontAmazon CloudFront is a content delivery network offered by Amazon Web Services. CloudFront operates on a pay-as-you-go basis. The service was launched in Beta on November 18, 2008....
. - AWS Simple Monthly Calculator helps you estimate your AWS monthly costs
See also
- Azure Services PlatformAzure Services PlatformThe Windows Azure Platform is a Microsoft cloud platform used to build, host and scale web applications through Microsoft data centers. Windows Azure Platform is thus classified as platform as a service and forms part of Microsoft's cloud computing strategy, along with their software as a service...
- Cloud computingCloud computingCloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....
- Google App EngineGoogle App EngineGoogle App Engine is a platform as a service cloud computing platform for developing and hosting web applications in Google-managed data centers. It virtualizes applications across multiple servers,...
- LinodeLinodeLinode is a web application hosting and cloud computing provider based in Galloway Township, New Jersey. Linode allows system administrators and software developers to rent virtual servers on which to run their own computer applications...
- Rackspace Cloud
- RightScaleRightScaleRightScale is a web based cloud computing management platform for managing cloud infrastructure from multiple providers. The RightScale platform enables the management of public, private and hybrid clouds...
- SkytapSkytapSkytap, Inc., founded in 2006, is a cloud computing provider that provides virtual lab automation as a cloud service. It is headquartered in Seattle, Washington...
External links
- Amazon Web Services main page
- Amazon Web Services Events
- Official Amazon Web Services YouTube Channel - Tutorials on using and optimizing services running on AWS
- Presentation about Amazon Web Services by Amazon Evangelist Jeff Barr, from QCon London 2008
- Interview about Amazon Web Services with Amazon Evangelist Jeff Barr, from QCon London 2008
- Interview with Amazon VP Adam Selipsky in The Guardian newspaper, 26 March 2009, by Mark Harris
- Bezos Opens Web-Services Sharing for Profits
- Jeff Bezos' Risky Bet