AWS - Getting Started
Note: AWS costs money!! In fact it can cost a lot of money if you're not careful.
Using AWS is the only part of this course that will cost money. We include free and local deployment options in all the tutorials, but as promised, we won't skip the real enterprise-ready production deployments.
AWS has a generous free-tier which we will use where possible.
Again, AWS is not required to complete this course, but it's definitely worth learning for your professional development. Ideally you can use your company's AWS account. If not, you can view the cost as the price for learning a lucrative skill. We will use their free-tier where possible, and always remember to not leave services running when we're not using them.
What is cloud computing​
From AWS's website:
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centers and servers, you can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis from a cloud provider like Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Why AWS​
Ultimately, if you choose any of the top 3 cloud service providers (Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure) you can't go far wrong. They all essentially do the same thing and offer similar services.
AWS just happens to be the most popular, with the greatest market share (figure below) and the most amount of jobs available. There is also a somewhat large learning-curve for cloud platforms, so if you're going to put in the effort, it may as well be on the one that is most likely to pay more immediate dividends.
Fortunately, as they are all so similar, once you learn one, you can transfer that knowledge to another cloud provider pretty easily.