Essay on Cloud Infrastructure and Services (Amazon Web Services)

Best Practices for Building Solutions for the Café on Amazon Web Services

Based on the available data management platforms with numerous partner solutions, Amazon Web Services is vital in creating a substantial solution for different organizations and companies however small or big. The AWS can provide a reliable framework that can help in the optimization of the entire life-cycle such as collection, analytics, ingestion, processing, short-term storage, and archiving. The components of AWS are based in multiple storing and analyzing multiple data types from different sources that can be unstructured or structured depending on the organization’s model of operation. Having a centralized repository system is vital in creating a 360° view of the operation such supply chain and consumers. AWS also has sophisticated capabilities that can support the business artificial intelligence, machine learning and intelligence tools (Creech and Drozdenko, 2020). Significantly, the web developer can rely on different business practices that are supported by Amazon Web Services in creating a substantial solution to the functionality of the café and its services to the consumers in the market. As supported by the AWS System Manager, the services can significantly add different features that can make it simpler for the consumers to access and use the website.

Some of these practices are based on the specific need and functions within the organization that needs to be implemented to make the company more robust in accessing and providing services to its consumers. The first practice relates to the operational excellence that defines the approaches of running and monitoring systems that delivers business values and continuity to improve the procedures and processes. The leading topics in this particular practice would relate to the response to events, managing and automating changes and defining standards for managing daily operations. The café needs to run, operate, use and recover relevant information technology workload that meets the required level of services within the business context and its stakeholders (Beard and Huijbers, 2021). The AWS provides a definitive approach for the development of the current operating procedures and changes in processes and the required level of training that would lead to a successful adoption of cloud computing as supported by incident and change management.

The web developer would create an AWS-based platform that would vital for the café owners to operate and manage their organizations with ease to the benefit of consumer satisfaction. Its components include service monitoring that focuses on detecting and responding to IT operations café indicators that strives to meet the operating level agreement and service level agreement. Another component is this practice is the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) providing the café with a new monitoring application performance approach in the cloud environment that support the need for the company to meet the needs of the consumers in the market (Creech and Drozdenko, 2020). It is also based in resource inventory management that help the company in managing its virtual IT assets as part of its objective to provide cost efficient and high performing services to its consumers. Change or release management is also valuable components of this practice as it help the café and its team to adopt software development best practices like automation and Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) approaches that would increase the pace of its innovation.

The second practical approach is security which is a reliable cloud computing pillar that focuses on the protection of information and systems of the café. That is based on different activities such as system protection, privilege management, establishing controls to detect security events and confidentiality and integrity of data. The security perspective is vital for the web developers and architectures in creating a structure in the selection and implementation control of the cloud based system for the organization (Creech and Drozdenko, 2020). Based on the procedural guidelines on this practice, the organization can access and identify the areas of non-compliance and effectively plan on the ongoing security initiatives. Different models and system components of security such as Identity and Access Management (IAM) is vital for the organizations to integrate the AWS in identifying the management sources and cycles of authorization and authentication. Detective Controls are also vital a guiding framework that would be vital in identifying any potential security incidents with the organization’s AWS environment. Another component is the infrastructure security that helps the organization to implement control measures that can relevantly comply with the best practices and meet the industry or regulatory obligations (Beard and Huijbers, 2021). Data management and incident responses are vital in defining and executing response to security incidents and data protection.

The third practice is based on the platform perspective that is vital in designing, implementing and optimizing the architecture of the AWS technology with direct support of the business objectives and goals. A vital practice helps in providing strategic guidance for the policies, tools, principles and designs that architectures would use in defining AWS infrastructure. The Platform perspective also entails other factors such as principles and patterns for communicating the organization’s target state environment, implementing new solutions on the cloud, and migrating on-premises workloads to the cloud (Creech and Drozdenko, 2020). Systems and Solution Architecture plays a critical role in defining and describing the system design and the organizational architectural standards. The platform is also based on Compute, Network, Storage, and Database Provisioning that enables the web architectures to develop new processes for provisioning infrastructure in a cloud environment that majorly shift from the operational focus to align to the supply chain with demand of the consumers to an architectural focus aligning services with requirements (Beard and Huijbers, 2021). The application development is vital for the organization in addressing their ability to support their organizational goals with updated and new applications and the implementation of new processes and skills for software development support the advantage of the agility gained by cloud computing.

Another practical approach is the governance perspective that involves the integration of information technology for organizational governance. The process is vital in that it provides a reliable guidance in identifying and implementing best practices for IT governance and supporting business processes with technology. It is based on different components such as portfolio management, program and project management, license management and business performance measurement. License Management is vital in creating a definitive method that is vital for the procurement procure, distribution and management of the licenses needed for IT software, services and system. Business performance measures are vital for the organization in describing their measurement approaches and the impact of cloud computing on business objectives (Creech and Drozdenko, 2020). Portfolio management is also relevant in providing a mechanism that organizations can use to manage its IT based on their desired business outcome. The portfolio comes with a responsibility and functions that helps in determining cloud-eligibility for workloads when prioritizing which services to move to the cloud. Further, project and program management is vital for the organization in managing technological projects through the methodologies that rely on the advantages of the cost and agility management benefits to cloud services.

The implementation business practices would be based on the need to be business oriented where the web designers are working in line with move to have a new move that is different from the business strategies and information technologies to form a business model that could integrates IT strategies. Agile IT strategies are significant for the origination to support their financial outcomes and need to adjust their technical capabilities and business strategies as define by the prevailing changes in business environment. That can be supported by different frameworks such as IT finance that can address the organization’s capacity to identify, locate, plan and manage its budget based on the use-based cost model of cloud services. It can also be based on the IT strategies that are vital in the taking advantage of the cloud-based IT framework to deliver value and end-user adoption to the company (Amazon Web Service, 2020).

Services that are designed to migrate the Café Data into Amazon Web Services (AWS)

There are different services that can provide the company with a comprehensive and smooth application to the organization performance through the cloud based system. An example of such services is the Amazon Web Service Data Migration Service which plays a leading in helping the organization to move to cloud system. AWS Database Migration Service is a vital tool for the organization or companies to use while transferring their databases to the Amazon Web Services more securely and quickly. With this system, the source database remains operating during the migration to minimize downtime applications and the reliance on database. The system can move the organizations data to and from widely used commercial and open-source databases (AWS, 2021). Another component is the AWS Migration Hub that provides a single location that can track the process and application migration within most parts of AWS and partner solutions. The application of AWS Migration Hub enables the company to choose the AWS and the partnering migration tools that works best for their organization while maintaining their visibility status into the migration process. For instance, the organization can use different services such as AWS Server Migration Service and its partner migration tools like RiverMeadow Server Migration Saas, ATADATA ATAmotion and CloudEndure Live Migration in migrating a database in virtualized web servers and the likes (AWS, 2021).

Another service is the AWS Application Discovery Service that can support the enterprise consumer plan migration projects through the collection of information concerning their on-premises data centers. Planning data center migration can relate to adverse workload that is intensively interdependent. It is the role of AWS Application Discovery Service to collect and present data behavior, usage and configuration from the organization’s servers to help the developers in understanding the entire workload (AWS, 2021). The collected date can be retained in an encrypted format within the AWS Application Discovery Service data store. The company can export the data as a CSV file that can be used in estimating the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of running on AWS and to plan your migration to AWS. AWS Server Migration Service is another service that would help the café to migrate its database to the AWS in a more secure and safe approach. In this approach, the developers are enabled to automate, schedule, and track incremental replications of live server volumes that makes it simple for the firm to coordinate large-scale server migration process (AWS, 2021). It is agentless services make it simple and faster for the firm to migrate thousands of on-premises workloads to AWS.

AWS DataSync is also valuable in the process of data transfer to make it easier for the organization to automate data movement between on-premises storage and Amazon S3 or Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS). It automatically handle different task that are related to the transfer of data may have an effect in reducing the migration burden or IT operations such as running instances, managing script, handling encryption network optimization and data integrity validation. The organization can use DataSync in transferring its data at a speed of about 10 times than that of open-source tools. It relies on the on-premises software agent in connecting the organization’s existing file system and storage through the Network File System (NFS) protocol, hence eliminating the need to write scripts or modifying the café’s applications to work with AWS APIs (AWS, 2021).

Another service enabled system for the transfer form non-could to cloud-based system is the AWS Snowmobile which is an exabyte-scale data transfer service relying on the move extremely large amounts of data to AWS. This can be vital for the café as it continue to grow and advance its consumer base, services and premises to a larger market share. The service can allow the users to transfer up to 100 PB per Snowmobile hence making it easier for the company to move massive volumes of data to the cloud, such as video libraries, image repositories, or even a complete data center migration (AWS, 2021).

Recommendable set of tools and options for controlling access to Amazon storage services 600

Managing access is based on the need to grant permission to others to performance the resources operations through writing of access policy in the organization through the AWS accounts and users as third parties. An instance is where an organization can grant permission to user within the AWS accounts to other users and accounts. Amazon S3 has created different security tools and features that helps guiding and controlling the access to the Amazon storage services. Proper application of such tools is vital in maintaining the integrity of organization’s data and helps ensure that its resources are accessible to the intended users and restrict such access to unauthorized users (Pachava, 2020).

While creating a new bucket, Block Public Access is the best S3 tool that the organization can use to provide access the relevant users. The S3 Block Public Access provides its services based on four settings that can help the organization in avoiding inadvertently exposing their S3 resources. The organization can use the setting sin the account and apply it to all the buckets and the access points within the organizations AWS accounts. By default, the Block all public access setting can be used in the account control the new buckets created in the Amazon S3 console to ensure no unauthorized user accessed the system (Pachava, 2020). The creation of such buckets can also be protected by Grant access with IAM identities that is relevant in setting up accounts to be used by new teams with require a prerequisite application of S3 access. IAM identities provide increased capabilities, like the ability to apply permission hierarchies to different objects within a single bucket and to require users to enter login credentials before accessing shared resources.

While storing and sharing data, Versioning and Object Lock for data integrity is a reliable approach that can be used as the Amazon S3 in managing the buckets and objects. Its features are vital in preventing accidental changes to the critical data of the organization to enable the company to roll back any unauthorized actions. Such adaptability criteria is relevant when there are multiple users which have full write and execute permissions accessing Amazon S3 console. Cross-Region Replication for multiple office locations is also another vital security measures and tools that relevant when creating buckets that are accessed by numerous locations and offices within the organization. Cross-Region Replication is vital in ensuring that all the users have access to the required resources with the bottom-line need to increase its operational efficiencies. It also offers the increased availability through object copies within the S3 buckets with different AWS Regions. The tool is considered expensive and can increase the storage costs (Pachava, 2020).

Another compressive tool to manage and control access to the AWS storage is the Block Public Access settings relevant for permissions for secure static website hosting. It is relevantly used during the process of bucket configuration that will be used as a publicly accessed static website. It is vital to create and provide s3:GetObject actions while writing the bucket policy for the organization’s static website. That is vital in that it helps the organization to ensure that users cannot view all the objects in its bucket or add their own content (Pachava, 2020).

References

Amazon Web Service. 2020. AWS Cloud Adoption Framework: Accelerating your organization’s path to successful cloud adoption. [Online] Available at: https://aws.amazon.com/professional-services/CAF/ Accessed July 7, 2020.

Amazon Web Service. 2020. Access control best practices. [Online] Available at: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/access-control-best- practices.html. Accessed July 7, 2020.

AWS. 2021. Migration and Transfer. [Online] Available at: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/aws-overview/migration-services.html

AWS. 2021. AWS Database Migration Service. https://aws.amazon.com/dms/ Accessed July 7, 2020.

Beard, Z. E and Huijbers, R. April 1, 2021. Best practices for developing cloud applications with AWS CDK. [Online] Available at: [Online] Available at: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/best-practices-for-developing-cloud-applications- with-aws-cdk/. Accessed July 7, 2020.

Creech, A and Drozdenko, V. April 16, 2020. Applying managed instance policy best practices. [Online] Available at: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mt/applying-managed-instance- policy-best-practices/. Accessed July 7, 2020.

Pachava, S. July 16, 2020. Learn and use 13 AWS security tools to implement SEC recommended protection of stored customer data in the cloud. [Online] Available at: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/learn-and-use-13-aws-security-tools-to- implement-sec-recommended-protection-stored-customer-data-cloud/. Accessed July 7, 2020.