Amazon Web Services (AWS), is a subsidiary of Amazon.com launched in 2006, which offers a suite of cloud computing services that make up an on-demand computing platform. The most central and best-known of these services arguably include Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, also known as “EC2“, and Amazon Simple Storage Service, also known as “S3“.

Amazon EC2 forms a central part of AWS, by allowing users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications. A user can create, launch, and terminate server-instances as needed, paying by the hour for active servers – hence the term “elastic”.

AWS now has more than 70 services that span a wide range including compute, storage, networking, database, analytics, application services, deployment, management, mobile, developer tools and tools for the Internet of things. Amazon markets AWS as a service to provide large computing capacity quicker and cheaper than a client company building an actual physical server farm.

In this tutorial we will discuss about various AWS services which can be used for free within limited time period.

AWS Free Tier

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Free Tier is designed to enable you to get hands-on experience with AWS Cloud Services. The AWS Free Tier includes services with a free tier available for 12 months following your AWS sign-up date, as well as additional service offers that do not automatically expire at the end of your 12 month AWS Free Tier term.

[NOTE: While creating AWS free tier account, you will have to enter credit card information. But you will not be charged for any service which is provided as free for limited usage.]

There are many products and services which can be used for free within certain usage limits. We will be discussing about 3 most important services here which are EC2, S3 and RDS.

You can see complete list of free service at https://aws.amazon.com/free/.

Amazon EC2

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides 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.

Using free tier account you can create free EC2 instance with below details:

• 750 hours per month of Linux, RHEL, or SLES t2.micro instance usage
• 750 hours per month of Windows t2.micro instance usage
• For example, run 1 instance x 1 month or 2 instances x half a month
• Expires 12 months after sign-up.

Amazon S3

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), provides developers and IT teams with secure, durable, highly-scalable cloud storage. Amazon S3 is easy to use object storage, with a simple web service interface to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere on the web. With Amazon S3, you pay only for the storage you actually use. There is no minimum fee and no setup cost.

For new users below services are provided for free:

• 5 GB of Standard Storage
• 20,000 Get Requests
• 2,000 Put Requests
• Expires 12 months after sign-up.

Amazon RDS

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity while managing time-consuming database administration tasks, freeing you up to focus on your applications and business. Amazon RDS provides you six familiar database engines to choose from, including Amazon Aurora, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL and MariaDB.

For new users below services are provided for free:

• 750 Hours of Amazon RDS Single-AZ db.t2.micro Instance usage
• 20 GB of DB Storage: any combination of General Purpose (SSD) or Magnetic
• 20 GB for Backups (with RDS Magnetic storage; I/Os on General Purpose [SSD] are not separately billed)
• 10,000,000 I/Os
• Expires 12 months after sign-up.

References:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Web_Services
• https://aws.amazon.com

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2. Launch a Linux Virtual Machine on AWS