Feeling AWSome
Recently I had an AWESOME opportunity to attend a free all-day event in Denver literally called AWSome Day hosted by Amazon. During this event I learned a ton that is too much to share in a single blog post so you are better off just attending the event yourself if you have the opportunity (It’s free so don’t make any more excuses!). Instead, allow me at least talk about the highlights and the core of what I got out of it.
AWS stands for “Amazon Web Services” which offers a myriad of tools that dynamically or elastically shift to meet the changing demand of any given user experience. A really good example of this was that of a University which for the duration of a semester may see a small trickle of interest in enrollment which does not need a whole lot of resources so AWS automatically adjusts itself to only give what the users and servers need to meet that level of demand. But come time for open enrollment and there is an immediate surge of applications and interest that floods the servers. One can even schedule AWS ahead of time to rev up and be 100% ready for that kind of surge. AWS takes changing behavior and intuitively adjusts itself so that resources and costs are well-regulated saving time and money. This is a big deal for not just large corporations but small ones to.
What makes AWS Day truly awesome is that it’s free. That’s right, Amazon believes their web services is so important they are offering an entire day’s worth of an opportunity to tell you exactly how great it is and answer your questions and concerns. For the most part, at least in Denver, a single AWS trained professional spoke on the many facets that exist in AWS from EC2 Cloud Computing, to S3 Cloud Storage, to Analytics, to Delivery. AWS really can handle just about anything. In between sessions there were also an entire group of AWS evangelists and gurus standing by to answer specific questions about what AWS can do for any person, company, or project.
What I was able to get out of AWS Day personally was a better understanding of how to carry out cloud computing and cloud storage. Along with a fresh outlook on web services, I was given a broad scope of what AWS is specifically capable of while gaining a profound appreciation of “The Cloud”. Of course, I could expound on these discoveries in great detail, but honestly you’re not going to gain the same experience unless you attend the event. I’m certainly no expect because of my own attendance, but I learned a lot about the lingo, general work flow, and a few best practices when it comes to managing a web service such as the Principle of Least Privilege or PoLP. I also learned that S3 Cloud storage can be implemented with MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and Amazon has a very powerful querying tool know as Athena which is an Interactive SQL service that is serverless. It can process unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data sets using ANSI SQL.
So what’s next? There might be a strong temptation to go off and become AWS certified, but until I can get more of my hands on the products and services that AWS can offer, I may hold off on that venture. On May 1st again in Denver AWS will start an Initiate Series which is the next step after attending AWS Day. What if you and myself can’t make it? Amazon does have lots of online resources if one is not able to attend these kinds of free events. Additionally there is an AWS Public Sector Summit taking place in Washington DC.
Attending AWS Day really was like drinking from a fire hydrant, but sometimes it takes a flood of knowledge to clear the mind and inspire great ideas. With the power of AWS I hope to take those ideas and not just conceptualize but also carry them out towards being truly awesome.
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