First slide
By the end of this module, you will learn and understand AWS architecting fundamentals and best
practices.
Poll question
Lets start by doing series of polling question .This is to allow me assess each student familiarity with
module content
So how far is your org in its journey to AWS cloud?
Module review
The module breaks down into the following sections:
AWS services
AWS infrastructure
Well-Architected Framework
but before we enter the real topic , again you will be presented with series of qestion on Busines
requests. Its like this, The business requests serves as a requirement set by a fictional company
stackholder, after going thru the course content, after finding out which service or best practices can be
used, we will present the solution to the requirement set in the business request
At the end of each module, students will be asked 2-5 knowledge check questions to help review the
topics and services covered in module.
Then there is also a lab where you will be guided to explore and interact with the AWS Management
Console and AWS Command Line Interface.
Business Requests
Here is our first business request by a CTO .
As cloud rchitect you will need to consider these questions as yuo navigate thru the module. During the
module content, yuo learn about topics that will able to answer these questsion.
AWS Services
Why customers move to AWS?
Is a very fundamental question. And we going to answer this question by breaking it down into few
component part as we look at what makes up AWS sevices
Amazon Web Services
AWS stands for Amazon web Services. Amazon in here ofc referring to the company name . The services:
is not just a database service, or email service, but rather referring to Amazon web services; in another
word AWS is not just 1 or 2 different kind service but whole lot of different thing. In fact AWS has over
200 services. This services are already in place, you as customer just start to allocate them and consume
them. Meaning you do not have to start building from scratch, you just come right in and start using
those services. And the way they are accessible are thru the world wide web - so there is way the name
comes from Amazon Web Services.
And another point is that when you start to use services in amazon, you pay as you go as opposed to buy
it spent million up front and worry about utilization later. I mean in the old time legacy data center, when
your business demand drop; IT infra continue to operate, you cant like say oh now we do not need those
services, those machine lets get rid of it. Is not that easy. In cloud, yes it is that easy; when there is
demand, lets boot up the server and start to server application data, but when there is no more need for
it, simply shutdown the service or delete it even; and you just pay for the time the service is running.
Why customers move to AWS
AWS is the world most comprehensive and adopted cloud platform. AWS offers services such as
compute, database, and storage. With the AWS pay-as-you-go model, and its security practices, have
made AWS the preferred cloud solution for businesses and public organizations.
What this slide try to entails is that bcos you spend less time in acquiring and managing actual physical
infrastrcuture, you can focus on developing and innovating your application code that deliver real
business value to customer. That is the agility; as in business agility, application agility - speed to
build , speed to deliver business idea.
Optimize cost - And at the same time, reduces cost by paying only what you use . As explained
earlier; bcos you not buying the whole It infrastructure as you commonly face with on-premises built up,
which you might not be utilizing it to fullness; you can pay for compute resources only if you are really
using them.
Minimize security vulnerabilities - and often in on-prem facility, orgnanization have to
worry too many things on the security, threats or risk such as natural disaster man-made disaster,
breaks-in, flood, fire and so on. Behind AWS data center they are already built with advanced security
system with all the anti-fire, anti-flooding, anti-shocking system , so again you do not have to worry
about them and the cost that comes with it.
Reduce managament complexity - managability is offloaded from you where frequent
update/upgrade/tech refresh all is no longer your responsibility.
AWS service categories
As I mentioned earlier, there are over 200 services n AWS : ranging from analytics to quantum
technologies.
However in course, we going to be focusing on the middle line of icons as shown in the slides
Please understand this, the flow of the course module; main purpose is provide fundamental to
intermediate level understanding to AWS base services;
Now there are in fact in many cases, customer will use purpose built spealized services that goes beyond
our course content. Feel free to use documentation or the online supplemental course to explore that.
AWS infrastructure
Next common question - how is AWS global infra are organized. To answer that, <nxt slide>
AWS infrastructure topics
In this topics, we will look at few key AWS physical infrastructure definition
Data Centers
By definition, Data centers are physical building or facility that hosts 10 of thousands physical servers
with massive amount of compute resources such as CPU , RAM, disk storage, network appliances and so
on.
Availability Zones
AZ shorts for availability zones
Often DC are named as Zone or to be exact built into a availability zones. You can regard a availability
zone like a fault domain, having 2 or more zones; you are designing an high availability solution. When a
zone is down, your application or business data continue to serve to end users. If look deeper, an
availability zone also will be built with redundant power, redundant networking with high speed
connectivity in AWS region
AWS Regions
And 3 to 6 typically 3 AZ will be grouped into region. A region usually refers to the exact location of
where the DC is located; such as US west region or Asia Pacific region. Of which of this region in fact is
referring to a country like Asia Pacific
Each region is completely independent from each other. Meaning to say services deployed into each
region are not connected by default, they are isolcated from each other AWS doesnt automatically
perform replication of your data acoss regions. Ofc as you explore some of the services : database
service, networking service, replication can be configured with the respective service. That is for another
day to explore.
When customer start to deploy services into AWS; they can decide either to do so with a single AZ or
onto a Region which comprises of multiple AZ for a higher redundancy design. Ofc all this lead to
another whole bunch of questions: how about costing? or performance related issues. <nxt slide>
Factors impacing region selection
Choice is yours, to decide which region your application should be deployed or operating. IT all comes to
this 4 factors. The governance, which you need to properly consider any legal requirements based on
privacy laws, data governance , or compliance you need to follow when deploying ur business workload
there.
Nxt is the latency - how close is your service to tcustomer to provide a good performance
Then service avaiability - not all AWS services are available in all regions, you may need to dig deeper
into documenation for this. But as we go thru some of the basic service in future slides we will explore
that.
And finally the cost - deploying service into different region have different cost. Esp if you do so with US
region, often this comes with very low price, and some with great discount even. Research the pricing
and compre costs to make the best decision for your business workloads.
AWS Local zones
What if the nearest AWS Region is till far away from our facilities, especially we have a group of similar
industry that requires similar setup such as for image rendering, video streaming and we need the AWS
to come over and setup a data center here.
Local Zones are an extension of an AWS Region in geographic closer to end users.
AWS Local zone is not quite an availability zone. So they do not have full features like a availability zone.
They are created essentially to bring compute resources to particularly big population area based on
industry or customer type
One good example to this is, one of first local zone that was built was in Los Angeles area, America. And
you probably have heard of this, LA is famous with media and entertainment content creation -
hollywood! Bcos there are many entertainment focus customer; that have lots of data that had to be
stream back and forth for production video or audio- since they are lots of demand in the LA area. Hence
AWS brought local zone there to solved latency-senstive problems using application and desktop
streaming services
Besides that, the real-time gaming, machine learning hosting and training focus customer are also
benefited from local zone over the years.
On top of that, AWS Local zones are in fact using the same APIs and Tool sets connecting to some
services in AWS Region such as Amazon S3 or DynamoDB over AWS private and high bandwitdh network
backbone.
Edge Locations some time known as POP
AWS Edge locations are third-party data centers made to ensure minimal latency while delivering
services. It is essentially a small setup.
When you look at the situation more closely, what's happening is that when a user is sending a request,
instead of receiving a response from the primary server, it routes to the nearest edge location and
provides the response from there, making it quick.
Technically speak, its a site that host a web service that speeds up distribution of web content such as
html, css or image files even to end users.
The web service in question is CloudFront which cache copies of customer data or content for fast
delivery to users at any location.
Cloud Front delivers content thru a worldwide network of data centers called edge locations. Edge
locations are located in major cities around the world.
When user request content that you're serving with CloudFront, the request is routed to the edge
location that provides the lowest latency.
Edge Location use case
How it works?
For instance, if your data is housed in an S3 bucket in Australia, some of your traffic comes from Canada.
In this example, AWS will start caching your data in one of the edge locations in Canada, so when a
request arrives from there, it'll be delivered from the cache edge location in Canada, avoiding the need
for the request to come to Australia. As a result, it will lower the latency, resulting in a better excellent
user experience.
With this feature, you also get increased reliability and availability bcos copies of files are now held (or
cached) in multiple edge locations around the world
<Configure CloudFront: step 1 - specify origin servers, like an Amazon S3 bucket or your own HTTP
server, from which CloudFront gets your files which will then be distributed from CloudFront edge
locations all over the world.>
<Optionally, you can configure your origin server to add headers to the files, to indicate how long you
want the files to stay in the cache in CloudFront edge locations. By default, each file stays in an edge
location for 24 hours before it expires. The minimum expiration time is 0 seconds; there isn't a maximum
expiration time.>
Who Uses AWS Edge Locations?A set of services that use edge locations and are take latency
into consideration are:-
CloudFront: It makes use of edge locations to cache versions of the data it provides, allowing the content
to be delivered to users more quickly.
Route 53: It delivers DNS responses from edge locations, allowing DNS queries to be resolved more
quickly.
AWS Shield and Web Application Firewall: It screens traffic in edge locations to prevent undesired traffic.
Benefits Edge Locations
Quick Response: With it being located very close to the place the request comes from, the Edge location
is able to deliver a fast response as static content is delivered.
Minimal Access Time: Since the edge locations can offer quick response, this directly helps reduce the
access time for the user.
Low Latency Rate: Edge location is physically closer to the user than the primary server. Thus, it has a
lower latency rate.
Broader Reach: Edge locations, which are often housed in colocation facilities, increase the scope of the
AWS network. They have ample bandwidth and connections to other networks and service providers,
and this provides AWS with a wide range of connectivity, even domestic ISPs.
Multiple Edges
Multiple edge locations can be found in India. There are approximately 17 such locations– 4 each in
Hyderabad and New Delhi, 3 each in Bangalore and Mumbai, 2 in Chennai, and 1 in Kolkata. Globally,
there are approximately 44 AWS edge locations.
AWS Local Zone and Edge location features
On a bigger picture: Local Zone can serve whole lot more services such as EC2, storage, or database
services to end user providing the much needed low-latency reuiqrements, local data processing and
consistent AWS experience. Wherelse Edge location serves as content caching only function especially
with static web content or infrequently changed data.
AWS Well-architeted framework
Third question from our CTO
how can we build our cloud infra according to best practices? or in another words how to do things in
the right way.
Answer lies in <nxt slide>
AWS architect responsibilities
A solution architects plan, research, and build. An SA will always ensure customers are following best
practices, guidance, and recommendations to develop cloud solutions that are secure, resilient, efficient,
and managed with operational excellence. To do this, SAs need a mix of business, technical, and people
skills, as well as an understanding of the always-evolving, technical training that may benefit their team.
The technical knowledge to develop good cloud strategy, assist with cloud migration, review workload
architectures, and provide guidance on how to address high-risk issues.
AWS Well-architected framework pillars
And so, in 2009, AWS decided and built what we call the AWS well architected framework that will help
customers in building secure, reliable, cost efficient, high performance, and operationally sound
applications on AWS .
A well architected framewrk is a set of best practices that comes from years of experience. I mean AWS
has been in the industry since 2006 creating IT solution, facing issues; fixing issues; collaborating with
customers to find solution and do lots of different things. Hence with that massive amount of
experience, we are able to produce set of whitepapers such as guides, samples, hands-on lab, FAQs that
aligns to what we called the pillars of Well-architected framework
Those pillars is what you see right here in the slide - security, cost optimization, reliability and so on. So
lets deep into each.
The security pillar focuses on protecting information and systems. Key topics include confidentiality
and integrity of data, managing user permissions, and establishing controls to detect security events.
The cost optimization pillar focuses on avoiding unnecessary costs. Key topics include
understanding spending over time and controlling fund allocation, selecting resources of the right type
and quantity, and scaling to meet business needs without overspending.
The reliability pillar focuses on workloads performing their intended functions and how to recover
quickly from failure to meet demands. Key topics include distributed system design, recovery planning,
and adapting to changing requirements.in another word build solution that is resilient for long period.
the performance efficiency pillar focuses on structured and streamlined allocation of IT and
computing resources. Key topics include selecting resource types and sizes optimized for workload
requirements, monitoring performance, and maintaining efficiency as business needs evolve.
Operaitonal excellense pillars factors in ideas that you are not going to do just once. In many
cases when you are working with technology; it is commonly in a repeating process. And so applying
those best practices in iterative fashion is where operation excellent really shine. Talks about idea of
learning from past action, documenting different things and all. Essentially been aware of idea of; you
may do things for more than once. And so that place things like automation or working with things from
different point of view and applying those best practices continuously
And then the last addition to the framework is the sustainability pillar. To understand this, we live
in a world where we share things with other ppl. Understand that our works may have impact on other
things or environment. With sustainability we want to ensure we do it the right way with the global
community
So now you may ask, there are just too much information to absorb. Is there a help to make you
understand this framwork better. answer to that <nxt slide>
AWS Well-Architected Tool
There is what AWS Well-Architected Tool is for
Its is a self-service tool and best of all its available at no cost. This tool is designed to help architects and
their managers review AWS workloads without the need for an AWS solutions architect (SA).
In another word it provide the mechanism for regularly evaluating your applcation workloads,
identifying high-risk issues and record improvements.
All the information or results produced from this tool are securely stored in your account - accessible
thru the management console.
Alternatively ; you can share this result with your SA or partner in your area for collaboration on the
review or remediation steps
Prsent Solutions
Now that we have gone thru the module content, I believe we can asnwer the questions post by out
CTO at the start of the module.
Q1. Wwhat are the benefits of using AWS services:
answer: Use AWS services to increase agility while decreasing complexity and risk.
Q2. How is the AWS global infrastructure organized?
answer: AWS global infrastructure is organized into AWS Regions. These Regions contain
Availability Zones. You can also use AWS Local Zones and edge locations.
Q3. How can we build our cloud infrastructure according to best practices?
answer: Use the Well-Architected Framework, which helps cloud architects build secure, high-
performing, resilient, and efficient application infrastructures.
