Assignment 6 - Cloud Services Part 1¶

Goal¶

Learn and experiment with a new-to-you cloud service. Both this week and next week I’m looking for you to:

Select a new cloud service you haven’t used before.
Get it up and running.
Write about what it is, and how you got it working.

Some suggestions:

Create a web server (Use EC2 or Elastic Beanstalk)
Create a database (RDS)
Set up your own name server (Route 53)
Learn how to set up storage, and serve files via the cloud (S3)
Monitor services (CloudWatch)
Learn how to set up load balancers

Details¶

If you haven’t already, sign up for [Amazon Web Servives](https://aws.amazon.com/). You can also use [Microsoft Azure](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/) if you’d rather. I’m familiar with AWS, but not Azure. So if you want any help, use AWS.

Select one of the cloud services to learn more about.

If you’ve used cloud services before, there’s probably a service you haven’t had a chance to explore before.

If you haven’t used cloud services, I’d suggest trying EC2 first. EC2 allows you to create your own virtual server. You can work with Linux or Windows. RDS is another good choice as it allows you to set up your own database. These two are likely the “bread and butter” services.

Elastic Beanstalk helps you set up a web service on EC2, and is another good choice.

Grading¶

Introduction (30% of the grade)
- Describe what the service is.
- Describe how it could be used.
- Reflect on how you could use it personally.
Demonstration (40% of the grade)
- Show what you were able to create. Screen shots are encouraged. (Use the Windows “Snipping Tool”, Snag-It, or similar.)
Tutorial (30% of the grade)
- Talk about the basics of getting the service up and running.

Cost of Services¶

While these services require a credit card, if you are careful you can select “free tier” services and not have to pay for it.

It is very important to shut down the services after you are done using them. You don’t want any surprise charges.