AWS — Cloud Computing
Ever thought how Netflix is able to stream movies, series with such precision, without any lag, with great quality. How the Clash of Clans runs faster and can scale large audiences all over the world. The answer lies behind cloud computing. So what is cloud computing how are companies like Netflix, OLA, racing events like FORMULA 1, GENERAL ELECTRIC, AIRTEL WYNK, etc.. are getting benefited.
What is cloud computing?
Cloud computing is the delivery of different services through the Internet. These resources include tools and applications like data storage, servers, databases, networking, and software. They mainly serve resources to companies in need and help in the growth of the company.
There are different kinds of companies that provide these cloud services they are Amazon, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, IBM, SAP, etc…
But of all these one that is different and has done a great performance in this area is Amazon’s AWS. It has more than half of the market share in Cloud services.
There are different kinds of cloud services, they are
- SaaS ( Software as a Service)
- IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)
- PaaS (Platform as a Service)
Software as a Service:
Software as a Service provides a completed product that is run and managed by the service provider. With a SaaS offering, the user of this service do not have to think about how the service is maintained or how the infrastructure is managed; the company only needs to think about how can they use that particular piece of software.
Example: Google GSuite (Apps), Dropbox, Salesforce, Cisco WebEx
Infrastructure as a Service:
Infrastructure as a Service contains the basic building blocks for cloud IT and typically provide access to networking features, computers (virtual or on dedicated hardware), and data storage space. Infrastructure as a Service provides companies with the highest level of flexibility and management control over IT resources.
It allows customers to outsource their IT infrastructures such as servers, networking, processing, storage, virtual machines, and other resources. Customers access these resources on the Internet using a pay-as-per use model.
Example: AWS EC2, Rackspace, Google Compute Engine (GCE), Digital Ocean
Platform as a Service:
Platforms as a service remove the need for organizations to manage the underlying infrastructure (usually hardware and operating systems) and allow companies to focus on the deployment and management of their applications. This helps companies be more efficient as they don’t need to worry about resource procurement, capacity planning, software maintenance, patching, or any of the other undifferentiated heavy lifting involved in running their application.
Example: AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Windows Azure, Heroku, Force.com, Google App Engine
There are 3 clouds provided,
Private Cloud
A private cloud is where you host on your own data center or intranet. You own, manage, update, and upgrade your own cloud ecosystem of server, networking, software, or platform resources. Protecting it all with your own firewall and security solutions.
Public Cloud
A public cloud is where the provider supplies you with access to their data center infrastructure. They are responsible for all management, maintenance, security, and upgrades.
Hybrid Cloud
A hybrid cloud is where you opt to use a mix of both public and private cloud solutions. You are responsible for managing how the two services interact, especially the security of data passing between both public and private cloud setups.
Now let's see how companies are getting benefited using AWS cloud computing services.
NETFLIX
Netflix is the world’s leading internet television network, with more than 100 million members in more than 190 countries enjoying 125 million hours of TV shows and movies each day. Netflix uses AWS for nearly all its computing and storage needs, including databases, analytics, recommendation engines, video transcoding, and more — hundreds of functions that in total use more than 100,000 server instances on AWS.
AWS enables Netflix to quickly deploy thousands of servers and terabytes of storage within minutes. Users can stream Netflix shows and movies from anywhere in the world, including on the web, on tablets, or on mobile devices such as iPhones.
Initially, Netflix has its own Content Delivery Network (CDN) known as Netflix Open Connect which is used to deliver videos globally in an efficient manner. When Netflix was using their own data centers, it faced a lot of outages. So they thought going into AWS can help them as they have servers all across the globe, The service provided is based on PAY AS YOU USE. which helped NetFlix to cut down the capital requirement during off peak hours.
Netflix uses Amazons scalability, Elasticity, global availability of servers, and its cloud services to give the end-users a great experience. Netflix serves over one billion hours of content a month to its users. They have over a thousand requests per second. All this is achieved by using AWS.
EC2: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale cloud computing easier for developers. Amazon EC2’s simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon’s proven computing environment.
S3: (Simple Storage Service) is a scalable, high-speed, low-cost web-based service designed for online backup and archiving of data and application programs. It allows us to upload, store, and download any type of files up to 5 TB in size. This service allows subscribers to access the same systems that Amazon uses to run its own web sites. The subscriber has control over the accessibility of data, i.e. privately/publicly accessible.
Each data is stored in object-based storage, If we want to access that data we use that object.
Amazon Lambda:
AWS Lambda is a serverless computing service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Users of AWS Lambda create functions, self-contained applications written in one of the supported languages and runtimes, and upload them to AWS Lambda, which executes those functions in an efficient and flexible manner.
The Lambda functions can perform any kind of computing task, from serving web pages and processing streams of data to calling APIs and integrating with other AWS services.
One example of lambda can be described as below
Cloud front:
Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) provided by Amazon Web Services. By using a CDN, companies can accelerate delivery of files to users over the Internet while also reducing the load on their own infrastructure. CloudFront is AWS’s own CDN solution that integrates with other AWS products, so it’s convenient for companies already running on AWS.
It retrieves data from the Amazon S3 bucket and distributes it to multiple datacenter locations.
So in this way, NetFlix uses all the services provided by AWS in their architecture and leading the entertainment industry in the world.
Do you know how much does NetFlix pay for AWS for their services?
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According to Netflix’s profile on Intricately, Netflix spends about $17 million per month on cloud services. Of this $17 million, ~$9.6 million is spent on AWS.
For reference, https://www.intricately.com/articles/netflix-aws-spend.
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