A Guide to AWS Architecture

AWS architecture refers to the design and implementation of cloud-based solutions leveraging Amazon Web Services (AWS). It encompasses a vast array of services and technologies, from compute and storage to networking, security, and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), empowering businesses to build, deploy, and scale applications with unprecedented agility and efficiency. Before we go further into this blog, consider our AWS for Solutions Architects ebook for a more nuanced deep dive.

Advantages of AWS Architecture

• Scalability and Flexibility
  
• Automatic resource scaling through Auto Scaling features
• Elastic Load Balancing capabilities
• Dynamic adjustment of computing resources based on demand
• Pay-as-you-go model allowing cost-effective infrastructure management
  
  
• Global Infrastructure:
  
• Over 38 global data centers strategically located
• High availability with 99.99% uptime guarantee
• Redundancy and disaster recovery capabilities
• Multi-region deployment options
  
  
• Comprehensive Service Portfolio:
  
• Extensive range of services including: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Supports diverse business and technical requirements
  
  

Disadvantages of AWS Architecture

• Complexity Challenges:
• Steep learning curve for new users
• Vast service portfolio can be overwhelming
• Requires specialized technical expertise
• Potential for misconfigurations due to complexity
  
  
• Cost Management Issues:
• Complex pricing structure
• Potential for unexpected expenses
• Requires continuous monitoring and optimization
• Risk of over-scaling and unnecessary spending
  
  
• Vendor Lock-In Risks:
• Proprietary services make migration difficult
• High transition costs to alternative platforms
• Dependency on AWS-specific tools and technologies

Compute

• Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud): Provides scalable virtual machines (VMs) for various workloads, from web servers to high-performance computing.
• AWS Lambda: Enables event-based computing that gives developers the means to run codes without provisioning, or managing the servers.
• Amazon ECS (Elastic Container Service) and Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service): Container orchestration services for deploying and managing containerized applications.
  
  

Storage

• Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service): Object storage for a wide range of use cases, including data lakes, web hosting, and backup/recovery.
• Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store): Block-level storage volumes for use with EC2 instances.
• Amazon Glacier: Archival storage for infrequent access data.
  
  

Networking

• Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud): This allows for isolated and customizable virtual networks within the AWS cloud.
• Amazon Route 53: A highly scalable and reliable DNS service.
• Amazon Direct Connect: It provides dedicated network connections between your on-premises network and AWS.
  
  

Database

• Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service): Offers managed relational databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle.
• Amazon DynamoDB: A NoSQL database service for high-performance applications.
• Amazon Redshift: A data warehousing service for business intelligence and analytics.
  
  

Security

• AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management): Controls access to AWS resources through users, groups, and roles.
• AWS KMS (Key Management Service): Manages and controls cryptographic keys.
• AWS Security Groups: Act as virtual firewalls to control network traffic to and from EC2 instances.
  
  

AI/ML

• Amazon SageMaker: A fully managed platform for building, training, and deploying machine learning models.
• Amazon Rekognition: A service for image and video analysis.  
• Amazon Comprehend: A natural language processing service for text analysis and understanding.  

Visualization of AWS architectures using diagrams is essential to understand the interactions between different components and to plan your deployments effectively. Common architectural patterns include:

3-Tier Architecture

This classic model divides an application into three distinct layers:

• Presentation Layer: Handles user interactions, displays information, and collects user input. This layer typically includes web servers, load balancers, and client-side applications.
• Business Logic Layer: Processes user requests, performs application logic, and interacts with data. This layer encompasses application servers, microservices, and business logic components.
• Data Access Layer: Interacts with databases and other data stores to retrieve and store data. This layer includes databases (e.g., Amazon RDS), data warehouses (e.g., Amazon Redshift), and data stores (e.g., Amazon S3).
  
  

Advantages:

• Relatively simple to understand and implement.
• Well-suited for many traditional applications with clear separation of concerns.

Real-world Examples:

• E-commerce websites
• Online banking applications
• Customer relationship management (CRM) systems

Multi-Tier Architecture in AWS

This advanced model extends the 3-tier approach by introducing additional specialized layers, enhancing scalability and security:

• Presentation Layer: Handles user interactions, displays information, and collects user input. This layer may include web servers, load balancers, and client-side applications (e.g., Amazon EC2 with Elastic Load Balancing).
  
  
• Application Logic Layer: Processes user requests, performs application logic, and interacts with intermediate services. This layer encompasses application servers, microservices, and specialized logic components (e.g., AWS Lambda, Amazon ECS).
  
  
• Service Layer: Provides reusable services and APIs to the application logic layer, such as authentication, authorization, or message queuing (e.g., AWS IAM, Amazon SQS, Amazon SNS).
  
  
• Caching Layer: Stores frequently accessed data to improve performance and reduce database load (e.g., Amazon ElastiCache).
  
  
• Data Access Layer: Interacts with databases and other data stores to retrieve and store data. This layer includes databases (e.g., Amazon RDS, Amazon DynamoDB), data warehouses (e.g., Amazon Redshift), and data stores (e.g., Amazon S3).
  
  

Advantages:

• Enhanced scalability and flexibility for complex applications.
• Improved security through granular control and isolation of layers.
• Increased performance through specialized caching and service layers.
• Allows better control over the flow of traffic.
  
  

Real-world Examples:

• Large-scale enterprise applications with complex workflows.
• Financial trading platforms requiring high performance and security.
• Streaming media services with caching and content delivery networks.
• Complex API driven applications.

The AWS Well-Architected Framework provides a consistent approach for customers and partners to evaluate architectures and implement designs that will scale with your application needs over time. It's built around five pillars, each focusing on a different aspect of building robust and efficient systems in the AWS cloud:  

Operational Excellence

• Focuses on running and monitoring systems to deliver business value and continually improve supporting processes and procedures. 
  
  
• Key areas include automation, responding to events, and learning from failures.
  
  
• Practices involve using code to define your infrastructure, automating deployments, and implementing robust monitoring and alerting.
  
  

Security

• Focuses on protecting information, systems, and assets while delivering business value through risk assessments and mitigation strategies. 
  
  
• Key areas include identity and access management, data protection, and incident response.
  
  
• Practices involve implementing the principle of least privilege, encrypting data at rest and in transit, and using security automation.
  
  

Reliability

• Focuses on the ability of a system to recover from infrastructure or service disruptions, dynamically acquire computing resources to meet demand, and mitigate disruptions such as misconfigurations or transient network issues.
   
• Key areas include foundations, change management, and failure management.
  
  
• Practices involve designing for redundancy, implementing automatic scaling, and testing recovery procedures.
  
  

Performance Efficiency

• Focuses on using computing resources efficiently to meet system requirements, and maintaining that efficiency as demand changes and technologies evolve. 
  
  
• Key areas include selection, review, monitoring, and trade-offs.
  
  
• Practices involve selecting appropriate resource types, using serverless technologies, and optimizing data storage and retrieval.
  
  

Cost Optimization

• Focuses on avoiding unnecessary costs. Cost optimization includes understanding and controlling where money is being spent, selecting the most appropriate and right number of resource types, analyzing spend over time, and scaling to meet business needs without overspending. 
  
  
• Key areas include expenditure awareness, cost-effective resources, and matching supply and demand.
  
  
• Practices involve implementing cost allocation tags, using reserved instances, and right-sizing resources.

AWS architecture is designed to be scalable, reliable, and secure, enabling users to build and deploy applications with ease. The process typically involves a series of steps, from the initial user request to data storage.

User Request

The process begins when a user initiates a request, typically through a web browser or a mobile application. This request is sent over the internet to the user's domain, which is usually managed by a service like Amazon Route 53. Route 53 directs the user's request to the appropriate endpoint, which could be an Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) or directly to an Amazon EC2 instance.

Load Balancing

If an ELB is used, it distributes incoming traffic across multiple EC2 instances. This ensures that no single instance is overwhelmed, improving the application's availability and performance. Load balancing also allows for automatic scaling, where additional instances can be added or removed based on traffic demands. The ELB monitors the health of the EC2 instances and routes traffic only to healthy instances.

Application Execution

The EC2 instances, which act as virtual servers, host the application logic. When a request is received, the application processes it according to its programmed functionality. This might involve running code, performing calculations, or interacting with other AWS services. For serverless architectures, AWS Lambda functions might execute the application logic instead of EC2 instances, triggered by events.

Data Storage

The application often needs to store or retrieve data. This is typically done using AWS data storage services like Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) for structured data, Amazon DynamoDB for NoSQL databases, or Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) for object storage. The application interacts with these services to read, write, or update data as needed. Data is stored securely and can be accessed efficiently, ensuring data integrity and availability.

• Increased Agility: Deploys and scales applications rapidly according to changing business demands.
  
  
• Improved Innovation: Focuses on core business objectives by offloading infrastructure management to AWS.
  
  
• Enhanced Customer Experience: Deliver applications with high performance, availability, and reliability.
  
  
• Reduced Costs: Optimize resource utilization and minimize operational expenses.
  
  
• Competitive Advantage: Gain a competitive edge by leveraging the latest cloud technologies.

No Physical Network Devices Needed

• Abstraction: AWS eliminates the need for managing physical network devices like routers, switches, and firewalls. This reduces operational overhead and simplifies infrastructure management.
  
  
• Virtualization: Networking is handled through software-defined networking (SDN), allowing for flexible configuration and management of virtual networks (VPCs).
  
  
• Simplified Management: AWS provides intuitive interfaces and APIs for configuring network settings, such as subnets, routing tables, and network access control lists (NACLs).
  
  
• Focus on Application: By abstracting away physical infrastructure, you can focus on building and deploying applications rather than managing hardware.
  
  

Security Considerations for AWS Web Hosting

• Shared Responsibility Model: Understand the shared responsibility model, where AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, and you are responsible for the security in the cloud.
  
  
• Security Groups and NACLs: Utilize security groups and network access control lists (NACLs) to control inbound and outbound traffic, implementing the principle of least privilege.
  
  
• IAM (Identity and Access Management): Implement robust IAM policies to manage user access and permissions, ensuring that only authorized users can access resources.
  
  
• Encryption: Encrypt data at rest and in transit using AWS Key Management Service (KMS) and SSL/TLS certificates.
  
  
• Regular Audits: Conduct regular security audits and vulnerability assessments to identify and address potential security risks.
  
  

Availability of AWS Data Centers

• Global Infrastructure: Leverage AWS's global infrastructure, with data centers located in multiple regions and Availability Zones, to ensure high availability and disaster recovery.
  
  
• Availability Zones: Deploy applications across multiple Availability Zones within a region to protect against single points of failure.
  
  
• Regions: Utilize multiple AWS regions for geographic redundancy and disaster recovery, ensuring business continuity in the event of a regional outage.
  
  
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Take advantage of AWS's service level agreements (SLAs) for high availability and reliability, ensuring that your applications meet business requirements.
  
  
• Content Delivery Networks(CDNs): Use services like Amazon CloudFront to distribute content globally, improving performance and availability for end-users.

NetCom Learning offers a wide range of AWS training programs, empowering you to attain high-level skills and knowledge required for being an AWS Architect. Our expert instructors deliver hands-on coaching and teach you the ins and outs of Architecting on AWS while helping you prepare for AWS certifications.