Heads up! To view this whole video, sign in with your Courses account or enroll in your free 7-day trial. Sign In Enroll
Preview
Start a free Courses trial
to watch this video
AWS is a large collection of services, and each service has its own name and acronym. This video will explore some of the basic services that AWS offers, and give you some useful information about where to learn more about each one.
New Terms:
- S3 — Simple Storage Service. Used to store and retrieve information. Pricing is based on how much data you store, and how long it is stored for.
- EC2 — Elastic Compute Cloud. Used to rent virtual computers that can run programs and process information. Pricing is based on the space of the computer(s), and the time that they are running.
- EC2 instance — A single virtual computer in EC2. Does not come with storage capacity, but can be used with other storage services like S3.
- Free Tier — A promotion that Amazon runs to incentivize people to try AWS. For the first 12 months that you have an AWS account, Amazon will let you try several services in AWS for free, including S3 and EC2.
Pricing:
Amazon Documentation:
So far, we've been talking about AWS
like it's just one thing, but it's not.
0:00
AWS is actually a whole
constellation of services
0:04
which can be used together or separately.
0:07
Each service in AWS has it's own name and
they all do different things and
0:10
cost different amounts.
0:14
In this video, we'll talk about the two
biggest most popular services in AWS.
0:16
S3 and EC2.
0:20
S3 stands for simple storage service, and
0:23
it's probably the simplest
service that AWS offers.
0:26
As the name implies,
S3 is used for storage.
0:29
You put data into it, and
then take it back out again.
0:32
That's all.
0:35
Nothing particularly complicated.
0:36
S3 will hold whatever data you want for
as long as you want.
0:38
As we discussed in the last video,
the cost for
0:41
using S3 is based on
space multiplied by time.
0:44
The more data you store, and the longer
you store it, the more it will cost.
0:47
But don't worry, S3 is remarkably cheap.
0:52
You could store 100 GB in S3 for a year.
0:55
And it would cost less than $50.
0:58
Then there's EC2.
1:00
EC2 stands for elastic compute cloud, and
it's used for processing and computation.
1:02
With EC2, you basically rent
a computer from Amazon and
1:08
you can run whatever programs
you want on that computer.
1:11
This computer is called an instance, and
1:14
it works a bit differently
from your computer at home.
1:16
For starters, an EC2 instance
doesn't come with a hard drive.
1:18
In order to read and write data on an EC2
instance, you need to connect it to one of
1:22
the data storage services that
AWS provides, such as S3.
1:26
The cost for using EC2 is also
based on space multiplied by time.
1:30
For EC2, the space part of the equation
is based on factors like processor speed,
1:34
write speed, available RAM, and so on.
1:39
The time part of the equation is based
on how long the instance is running.
1:43
You can also run multiple
instances simultaneously.
1:47
You can run one instance for
eight hours or two identical instances for
1:50
four hours and it costs the same amount.
1:54
It's important to point out that
the cost is based on time not activity.
1:57
An EC2 instance that is
working as hard as it can
2:01
costs the same amount as an EC2 instance
that is sitting idle doing nothing.
2:05
Amazon keeps on charging for
the instance as long as it's running.
2:10
So if you're not using an instance,
you can shut it down to save money.
2:13
EC2 can be very cheap, or very expensive,
depending on how you use it.
2:17
Fortunately if you're new to AWS,
Amazon will let you try it out for free.
2:21
For the first year after you sign up for
an AWS account, Amazon will let you store
2:26
a little bit of data on S3 and
run a small EC2 instance for no charge.
2:30
Pretty cool, right?
2:35
Amazon is hoping that you'll start using
AWS, even for free, so that they can start
2:37
charging you money after your free
trial expires at the end of one year.
2:41
Check out the teacher's notes for
more information.
2:44
There's a lot more to AWS than just S3 and
EC2,
2:48
but those two services are the most
important ones to know.
2:51
In the next stage of this course,
we'll dive into S3 and
2:55
learn how to use it to store and
retrieve files.
2:58
We won't be spending any more
time on EC2 in this course, but
3:00
don't worry, there's another course for
that coming up in the future.
3:03
You need to sign up for Treehouse in order to download course files.
Sign up