Other Services

Other Services

AWS Opsworks

  • Chef and Puppet are open source platforms and allow to perform server configuration automatically
  • They work great with EC2 and on-premise VM
  • AWS Opsworks = Managed Chef and Puppet
  • Alternative to AWS SSM

Chef and Puppet

  • They help with managing configuration as code which helps in having consistent deployments
  • Work on Linux/Windows
  • We can automate: user accounts, cron jobs, ntp, packages, services, etc.

Elastic Transcoder

  • Convert media files (video + music) stored in S3 into various formats for tables, PCs, smartphones, TVs, etc.
  • Features:
    • Optimize bite rate
    • Create thumbnails
    • Create watermarks
    • Create captions
    • DRM
    • Provides progressive download
    • Encryption
  • 4 components of Elastic Transcoder:
    • Jobs: what does the work of the transcoder
    • Pipeline: queue that manages the transcoding job
    • Presets: templates for converting media from one format to another
    • Notifications
  • Pay for what we use, scales automatically, fully managed

Workflows

Step Functions

  • Serverless visual workflow to orchestrate Lambda functions
  • All the flow is represented by a JSON state machine
  • Features: sequences, parallel functions, conditions, timeouts, error handlings
  • Step functions can integrate with EC2, ECS, on-premise servers and API Gateway
  • Maximum execution time is 1 year
  • Possibility to implement human approval features
  • Use cases:
    • Order fulfillment
    • Data processing
    • Web applications
    • Any other workflow

AWS SWF - Simple Workflow Service

  • Coordinate work amongst applications
  • Code runs on EC2 (not serverless)
  • 1 year max runtime
  • Has the concept of activity step and decision step
  • Has a builtin human intervention step as well
  • Step Functions is the recommended service to be used for newer applications, except:
    • If we need external signals to intervene in the process
    • If we need child processes that return values to parent processes

AWS WorkSpaces

  • It is a managed, secure cloud desktop
  • Great to eliminate management of on-premise VID (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure)
  • It is on-demand, pay per usage
  • It is secure, encrypted and provides network isolation
  • Integrates with Microsoft Active Directory

AWS Appsync

  • Store and sync data across mobile and web apps in real time
  • Makes use of GraphQL
  • Client code can be generated automatically
  • Provides integration with DynamoDB/Lambda
  • Proves real-time subscriptions, offline data synchronization (replacement for AWS Cognito Sync)
  • Provides fine grained security