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Amazon Web Services (AWS) started out as a rather small undertaking that allowed a developer to create applications that queried all things Amazon. You could perform queries, obtain sales data, and even upload offerings for sale. However, the focus was on Amazon. That’s not the case today! Now you can manage an entire company using AWS. The offerings are varied, more than any one organization is likely to need, and the focus is no longer on Amazon, but on your company and your company’s needs.

Of course, you might wonder why Amazon deserves special attention given that there are many other cloud providers (such as Google, Microsoft, and IBM) available today. According to a recent ComputerWorld article (http://www.computerworld.com/article/3102904/cloud-computing/four-us-companies-rule-the-worlds-cloud-infrastructure.html), Amazon currently owns 31 percent of the cloud computing market, which means that your organization stands to benefit from Amazon’s huge installed base of customer-tested services. According to CIO magazine, AWS is so popular that companies like Gartner that track statistics for it have had to change their charting methods just to keep AWS on the charts when compared to the competition. AWS For Admins For Dummies helps you understand not only why you need these services to remain competitive but also how to use them to gain the maximum effectiveness and efficiency for your organization.

Following the progress of AWS over the years gives me a unique perspective of the services it offers today, which is why you need AWS For Admins For Dummies if your job is to administer your organization’s offerings and perform tasks like getting a cloud-based setup started. Just digging through the offerings and figuring out what you need is likely to prove daunting, which is why this book offers you clear-cut paths and helps you overcome the hype to do something useful in a short time.

About This Book

The purpose of AWS For Admins For Dummies is to help you figure out what you need and create a basic functional setup that enables you to become productive sooner than later. This book separates the programming aspects of AWS from the administrative aspects, so you don’t have to read reams of developer-specific information to find the one item you really need as an administrator. Of course, this book isn’t just for administrators, but for anyone who needs to get a basic AWS setup configured for any need. DevOps and developers can use this book as well, even though it does focus on administrative tasks.

AWS For Admins For Dummies is designed to make things simple. That’s why it focuses on using the AWS consoles to perform tasks whenever possible and resorts to the command-line interface only when necessary. By following the procedures in this book, you can set up and configure a computing environment quickly and easily.

This book also helps you separate hype from reality. The Amazon documentation would often have you believe that everything works perfectly in AWS, which clearly can’t happen. Every piece of software, even cloud software, has quirks and issues that you need to know about. Most important, this book helps you understand when moving to the cloud might be a bad idea because of a number of issues that even the media is less than thrilled to tell you about. Rather than be lured by the hype, you’ll be best served by knowing when a cloud environment actually does meet your needs, rather than set you up for problems at some point or, worse yet, prove useless.

To help you absorb the concepts, this book uses the following conventions:

❯❯ Text that you’re meant to type just as it appears in the book is in bold. The exception is when you’re working through a step list: Because each step is bold, the text to type is not bold.

❯❯ Words for you to type in that are also in italics are meant as placeholders; you need to replace them with something that works for you. For example, if you see “Type Your Name and press Enter,” you need to replace Your Name with your actual name.

❯❯ I also use italics for terms I define. This means that you don’t have to rely on other sources to provide the definitions you need.

❯❯ Web addresses and programming code appear in monofont. If you’re reading a digital version of this book on a device connected to the Internet, you can click the live link to visit a website, like this: http://www.dummies.com.

❯❯ When you need to click command sequences, you see them separated by a special arrow, like this: File ⇒ New File, which tells you to click File and then click New File.

Foolish Assumptions

You might find it difficult to believe that I’ve assumed anything about you – after all, I haven’t even met you yet! Although most assumptions are indeed foolish, I made certain assumptions to provide a starting point for the book.

The first assumption is that you’re familiar with the platform you want to use, because the book doesn’t provide any guidance in this regard. This book doesn’t discuss any platform-specific issues. You really do need to know how to install applications, use applications, and generally work with your chosen platform before you begin working with this book.

You also need to be familiar with your browser and understand how to interact with browser-based applications. Sprinkled throughout are numerous references to online material that will enhance your learning experience. In addition, most of the tasks you perform with AWS require that you work in your browser.

This book is pretty much platform independent. However, none of the procedures are tested using small mobile devices, such as a smartphone (and some are almost guaranteed not to work on a small device). Differences in appearance will emerge when using a smaller device – that is, a control that appears as a button on a larger device could appear as a link or other control on a smaller device. You need access to the sort of setup that an administrator will use to create and configure online setups, which means a larger tablet, notebook, or, better yet, a full desktop system. The various individuals working on this book used desktop systems running the Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X platforms using a number of common browsers.

Icons Used in This Book

As you read this book, you encounter icons in the margins that indicate material of special interest (or not, as the case may be!). Here’s what the icons mean:

Tips are nice because they help you save time or perform some task without a lot of extra work. The tips in this book are time-saving techniques or pointers to resources that you should try so that you can get the maximum benefit when performing AWS-related tasks.

I don’t want to sound like an angry parent or some kind of maniac, but you should avoid doing anything that’s marked with a Warning icon. Otherwise, you might find that your configuration fails to work as expected, you get incorrect results from seemingly bulletproof processes, or (in the worst-case scenario) you lose data.

Whenever you see this icon, think advanced tip or technique. You might find these tidbits of useful information just too boring for words, or they could contain the solution you need to get an AWS service running. Skip these bits of information whenever you like.

If you don’t get anything else out of a particular chapter or section, remember the material marked by this icon. This text usually contains an essential process or a bit of information that you must know to work with AWS, or to perform cloud-based-setup tasks successfully.

Beyond the Book

This book isn’t the end of your AWS learning experience – it’s really just the beginning. I provide online content to make this book more flexible and better able to meet your needs. That way, as I receive email from you, I can address questions and tell you how updates to AWS or its associated add-ons affect book content. In fact, you gain access to these cool additions:

❯❯ Cheat sheet: You remember using crib notes in school to make a better mark on a test, don’t you? You do? Well, a cheat sheet is sort of like that. It provides you with some special notes about tasks that you can do with AWS that not every other person knows. You can find the cheat sheet for this book by going to www.dummies.com and searching AWS For Admins For Dummies Cheat Sheet. The cheat sheet contains really neat information such as figuring out which service you want to use.

❯❯ Also, check out the blog posts with answers to reader questions and demonstrations of useful book-related techniques at http://blog.johnmuellerbooks.com/.

Where to Go from Here

It’s time to start your AWS adventure! If you’re completely new to AWS, you should start with Chapter 1 and progress through the book at a pace that allows you to absorb as much of the material as possible. Chapter 2 is especially important because it helps you understand what Amazon means by free-tier services. You should also read Chapter 3, even if you have experience with AWS, because it provides information about the services discussed in the book.

Readers who have some exposure to AWS can move directly to Chapter 4. You can always go back to earlier chapters as necessary when you have questions. However, you do need to understand how each technique works before moving to the next one. Every technique and procedure has important lessons for you, and you could miss vital content if you start skipping too much information.