AWS Tutorials: Getting Started With Cloud Computing

You can’t avoid learning about AWS if you want to take your infrastructure and applications to the cloud. Luckily, this provider is developer-friendly and comes with great support for beginners.

Follow these AWS tutorials to explore the services it provides and set up your AWS account.

What Is AWS?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive package of on-demand cloud computing services from Amazon. There are over 200 services available for any kind of developer, from individuals to enterprises and governments.

AWS billing on a pay-as-you-go basis. You have only to pay for what services and resources you have used during the billing duration.

Compared to on-premises and self-hosting solutions, AWS offers many advantages.

Functionality

AWS has an extensive range of services. From storage and hosting to analytics and machine learning, chances are the function you are looking for is already provided by AWS.

These services are tightly integrated into each other, allowing you to seamlessly deploy many of them in your applications.

Many organizations have taken advantage of this portfolio and gone all-in. They completely remove the need for basing their IT operations on their own servers or other third-party providers. You can take the same step and move your infrastructure into AWS to realize great gains in reliability, efficiency, and agility.

Flexibility

You can configure your services based on your own needs. Scaling your application when it grows is easy with AWS. Setting up a new virtual computing server can be done with a few clicks or commands.

There is no need to commit to a predefined plan. Services like S3 charge you based on the amount of bandwidth you have used. You can always purchase additional or adjust existing services to meet your requirements. 

Security

You don’t have to bother with the administrative tasks under the hood, as AWS engineers will take care of them for you. This includes the crucial work of making sure your hardware and software are hardened and protected from security threats.

Clients of AWS include organizations working in industries such as finance, healthcare, and the military. They have strict security and privacy standards for their sensitive data, all of which AWS can satisfy with its robust security.

Register An AWS Account

Go to the home page of AWS and select Create an AWS Account.

Enter your email address into the Root user email address field and a username into AWS account name. Click Verify email address.

Go to your email inbox and open the email just sent from AWS. Enter the code you find there into the registration form and select Verify.

Set up your root password. Remember that this is different from your Amazon account password, even though you use the same email for both accounts.

Follow the instructions and provide AWS with your personal information, such as name and billing method.

After selecting Complete sign up, you may need to wait a few minutes for AWS to activate your account. The confirmation email will be sent to your address when the account activation is complete.

Go to AWS Management Console to log in to your account with the root username and password you have just created.

Secure Your AWS Account

The root user you created in the previous step has full access and control of your AWS account. This special entity is allowed to carry out all actions, including closing your account or changing its payment methods.

That is why we recommend you enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) in your account and add extra users with fewer permissions for daily tasks.

Set Up MFA

Additional authentication factors give your AWS more layers of protection on top of your password. Even when malicious actors manage to get your login details in their hands, they can’t log in to your account without those factors.

AWS supports authenticator apps (such as Google Authenticator and Microsoft Authenticator),  FIDO security keys, and other TOTP hardware tokens.

Virtual authenticator apps are the simplest way to set up an extra factor for your AWS account.

Go to the Management Console, then search for and select IAM in the search bar. IAM stands for Identity and Access Management, the AWS service that can help you authenticate logins and set up permissions for users of your account.

In Security recommendations, select Add MFA > Activate MFA > Virtual MFA device > Continue.

Follow the instructions on the screen to add a virtual MFA device to your account, then select Assign MFA to finish the process.

Add Extra IMA Users

It is important to note that a single AWS account can have one root user and several IAM users.

You can give these IAM users specific permissions, avoiding using the root user for unnecessary tasks. This practice also allows other members of your team or organization to gain certain privileges when needed.

You will need a group to which you will assign your IAM users first.

In your account’s IAM console, select User groups > Create group. Enter the group name and give it the required permissions, such as AdministratorAccess. Select Create group.

Go to the IAM console and select Users > Add users. Enter the username for this IAM user and tick the Access key – Programmatic access box. This will give you a pair of access and secret keys with which you can access the user from management tools outside a web browser.

In the next screen, add the user to the group you created in the previous step. For now, you don’t need to add any tags. Select Create user and save the access key ID and secret access key AWS provides.

Install AWS CLI

AWS CLI is the official command-line interface management tool developed by Amazon for AWS accounts. You can use it to access the users in your account from a terminal app in your system.

Linux

Run these commands:

curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip"
unzip awscliv2.zip
sudo ./aws/install

macOS

Download the pkg file from Amazon and run it to install AWS CLI on your Mac computer.

Windows

Download the MSI installer and run it to install AWS CLI on your Windows machine.

After installing AWS CLI, run this command to verify the installation:

aws --version

It should print out the version of AWS CLI and your operating system. For example:

aws-cli/2.8.3 Python/3.9.11 Linux/6.0.2-arch1-1 exe/x86_64.arch prompt/off

AWS Tutorials

• How To list all of the files of an S3 bucket with the AWS CLI
• List all Resources in an AWS Account
• S3 Action does not Apply to any Resources Error
• The Security Token included in the Request is Invalid

Summary

AWS makes cloud computing accessible, even to individual developers. It can help you put more focus on creating your applications and providing your services and worry less about managing the infrastructure. Check out our AWS tutorials to learn more about this cloud platform.