To access AWS’ cloud computing resources, you will first need to create an account with them on the AWS portal, which is where you can also manage the resources that you have already provisioned via their graphical user interface (GUI). The AWS Free Tier offers a variety of services at no cost for a limited amount of usage, allowing users to explore and experiment with AWS functionalities. It is advisable to utilize these free tier services whenever possible to minimize costs while running services on AWS. You will be able to set them up by reading their official documentation at https://docs.aws.amazon.com/accounts/latest/reference/manage-acct-creating.html.
You can access the GitHub folder for the code that is used in this chapter at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/IoT-Made-Easy-for-Beginners/tree/main/Chapter07/.
Fundamentals of cloud computing with IoT
In your day-to-day life, the term cloud may not be too alien to you. You may have already heard it being used by providers other than AWS if you haven’t heard about AWS, or you may have heard about use cases. The cloud refers to a network of remote servers hosted on the internet, used for storing, managing, and processing data, as opposed to using local servers or personal computers. This technology enables on-demand access to computing resources and services, offering scalability, efficiency, and flexibility in managing IT operations. When first opening the AWS console, it can be overwhelming to see the number of different services that are available, along with the number of configurations that are associated with each service.
In this section, we will discuss the different fundamentals of cloud computing, including the different advantages of cloud computing, cloud computing models, and the deployment models that currently exist.
The main advantages of cloud computing
There are a large number of advantages that come with cloud computing. The following are seven of these advantages that you can leverage:
Cost savings: One of the biggest advantages of cloud computing is that it reduces the costs associated with provisioning IT infrastructure and resources. Given that they offer a pay-as-you-go model that allows customers to only pay for the resources they use, alongside the fact that you do not have to provision and maintain IT hardware and software, you will be saving a lot in costs compared to a traditional deployment that you would set up.
Scalability: Cloud computing allows for ease within scaling resources. They can help provide more resources according to how the business grows, such as increasing storage or computing power when working with different workloads while processing your IoT data.
Accessibility: Cloud computing allows for remote access to resources and applications, allowing employees to work from anywhere as long as they have internet access. Many companies put a lot of money toward moving their workloads to the cloud after the COVID-19 pandemic due to increased amount of work being done from home.
Flexibility: Cloud computing allows for the use of different types of deployment models, such as public, private, and hybrid clouds, which provides customers with the flexibility to choose the option that would best meet their needs.
Reliability: Cloud providers have large, redundant data centers that employ teams of experts who ensure that their services are always available and performant. Note that much of the provisioning based on availability also depends on you, as you will be the user provisioning based on best practices to avoid a single point of failure, while they ensure that they can meet the guarantees for their reliability.
Security: Cloud providers ensure that the security measures that they have protect their customers’ data, applications, and infrastructure and provide them with opportunities to enforce additional services for this as well. This includes firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention, and encryption.
Automation: Cloud computing allows the automation of many IT tasks that traditionally needed to be done manually, such as provisioning, scaling, and maintenance, which helps organizations save time, improve efficiency, and reduce potential human error.
We can now move ahead and look at different cloud computing models in the world of cloud computing.
Cloud computing models
There are three main cloud computing models, as follows:
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): The most basic type of cloud computing, IaaS, is where a provider offers virtualized computing resources such as storage, servers, and networking over the internet. This is based on a shared responsibility model; customers are responsible for managing their software and applications, while the provider manages the physical infrastructure, such as the servers and data centers. An example of this from AWS is the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service.
Platform as a Service (PaaS): PaaS is a model that enhances the capabilities of IaaS by offering users the convenience of creating and executing their software solutions without overseeing the foundational hardware. This includes things such as databases, web servers, programming languages, and tools that are used to create, deploy, and run applications. An example of an AWS offering that provides this is Amazon Elastic Beanstalk.
Software as a Service (SaaS): SaaS is a model of cloud computing that provides customers access to software applications over the internet. The provider manages the underlying infrastructure and the platform, while customers simply access the software through a web browser. Examples of such providers include Salesforce and Microsoft Office 365.
Now, we can build on top of that knowledge by looking at the different deployment models for cloud computing.
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