KBriscoe BSACB 531 Competency 1 Assesment AWS Evaluation Report

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1 Amazon Web Services (AWS) Evaluation Report University of Phoenix IT Architecture In The Age Of Cloud/ BSACB/531 Competency 1 Will Wilson 3/7/2023 Grade: MA

2 Amazon Web Services (AWS) Evaluation Report Global Technology Retailers (GTR) is actively evaluating the enterprise infrastructure architecture to decide on cost-effective solutions for the on-premises data centers. Currently, the data centers must be close to the retail stores with connectivity to servers in each retail location. After reviewing the rising cost of replacing outdated servers and ongoing maintenance, the executive team wants to evaluate solutions to reduce costs and eliminate the overhead of multiple data centers. The executive team considered Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the most viable option. Before implementing AWS as the enterprise solution, the team wants to understand the advantages, disadvantages, benefits, ongoing costs, and design options that best fit the company’s growth. Rationalization for Cloud Computing GTR has looked at the five-year escalating cost of IT infrastructure and wants to understand how cloud computing can contribute to cost reduction. Cloud computing offers many advantages over servicing physical data centers. Cloud computing is defined as infrastructure-as- a-service (IaaS). IaaS offers users the possibility of rapidly deploying virtualized resources across the Internet. Cloud computing eliminates the burden of retrofitting, maintaining, and replacing physical servers. A cloud platform offers diverse solutions and configurations that can meet the needs of GTR. After surveying the IT infrastructure, we have identified the top five benefits of moving the current infrastructure to the cloud: 1. Elasticity provides economic solutions by managing capacity according to processing requirements.

3 2. Scalability can respond to application utilization requests by increasing the resources available to help prevent latency. 3. High Availability provides 99.9% uptime by using availability zones to ensure resources are continuously provided by the Cloud Service Provider without disruption of activity. 4. Global accessibility means that cloud computing is available in all five countries where retail stores operate. 5. Security and compliance are needed to comply with international regulatory standards and data privacy and protection. While the top five advantages and opportunities of moving infrastructure to the cloud, there are other factors to consider. A survey of our application portfolio is necessary to decide the type of cloud deployment and design consideration that will work with any legacy applications, data storage, and local area network (LAN) and wide area network (WAN) infrastructure to handle a cloud-based solution. Resilient Architecture The architecture and design will enable the cloud infrastructure to be on a global level. Shifting IT infrastructure to the cloud is driven by cost savings, with a forward-looking forecast allowing retail services to extend to more customers across the US and more countries. Designing and deploying a resilient architect design must meet the demands of the growing online retail presence, to support the warehouse and retail inventory supply chain, and the retail in-store applications, such as financial transactions. Building and designing a resilient cloud architecture depends on ensuring cloud systems have high availability, fault-tolerance, and the ability to recover quickly from disruptions or

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4 failures. The goal of resilient cloud architecture is to ensure that critical systems and services have high availability to users, even in the event of hardware failures, software bugs, or other unexpected events. The resilient cloud architecture can involve the hardware, such as storage, and the applications that are built in the cloud. In addition to the hardware and applications that leverage cloud technologies, network design must be taken into consideration. Many cloud service providers have zones where the data centers are located. For example, suppose the zone selected for our cloud implementation is not available due to a power outage or network failure. In that case, it will automatically switch to an available operating zone and our applications will continue to function. It will be seamless for the end users. Other key considerations in designing and building a resilient cloud architecture are redundancy, automatic failover, load balancing, monitoring and alerting, and high availability. These design factors help with ensuring continuous and seamless delivery. Redundancy and automatic failover incorporate the use of multiple servers and network connections. The failure of one of the critical components will switch to a functioning component without human intervention. To support optimal performance, load balancing helps to distribute workloads across multiple instances. Unlike a traditional on-premises data center where limited resources are available and can cause significant latency, support teams can identify resource utilization and make the proper adjustments through monitoring and alerting. Detecting potential failures or high resource utilization prevents service disruptions and helps keep all systems in operation. High availability is a vital business need. Data replicates across multiple zones. Users working in different states or different countries will have access to the data. Because of

5 replication, data loss is minimized due to redundancy and failover. Data loss can be costly to any business. Purpose of AWS Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a pioneer in the cloud computing platform domain. “In 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) began offering IT infrastructure services to businesses in the form of web services -- now commonly known as cloud computing.” AWS (2023). AWS offers cloud computing as an alternative to traditional on-premises data centers by alleviating the upfront capital expenses with scalability to meet the needs of the business. It also offers different pricing models, such as pay-as-you-go without long-term commitments, or saving plans based on 1-year or 3-year terms. AWS also offers a variety of configurations to easily host infrastructure in the cloud, such as the type of operating system, availability regions, and payment options. The pricing estimator tools can help with budget forecasting. AWS can help any size business find cost-effective solutions that are scalable and reliable to host services in the cloud. AWS and Resilient Architectures AWS core offerings can help businesses and organizations design and build resilient architecture. It is important to understand the current state of the infrastructure, applications, and dependencies. A complete, updated configuration management database (CMDB) helps identify attributes such as applications, the type of operating systems, memory, CPU requirements, database dependencies, load balancers, and firewall security. Understanding the configuration items (CIs) in the CMDB helps design and build a cloud infrastructure based on the current technical landscape that is scalable and reliable that can adapt to the changing business needs.

6 AWS offers many design tools based on the type of industry. Since GTR is a global business, the availability zones of AWS are a major consideration for the design to ensure regulatory compliance. According to AWS retail solutions, the posted benefits can improve insights through next-generation intelligence, drive optimizing operations to improve IT efficiency, and transform engagement to deliver consistent experiences. For example, GTR’s website might use one or two reserve instances to cover its normal customer demand but also allow autoscaling to automatically start on-demand instances during periods of unusually high demand. Advantages and Disadvantages of AWS Advantages AWS offers many advantages to help decision-making to move the infrastructure to a cloud platform. AWS offers new and innovative services that meet the needs of a small business or an enterprise. Focusing on the core services offered by AWS, one advantage of AWS is the cloud infrastructure can supply secure and uninterrupted cloud operations through autoscaling and load balancing. This core capability can provide GTR with continuous computing with increasing and balancing resources as the demand increases. The second advantage of AWS is the cost-effective solutions. The pay-as-you-go option is only paying for the resources used. However, GTR can save over 65% - 70% by choosing a 1- year or 3-year terms. The savings apply to the core services offered by AWS such as Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Lambda, Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancing, and Elastic Beanstalk. The last advantage is the availability zones. Since GTR has retail stores in five different countries, and in ten different states in the US, it is important the cloud platform is accessible in

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7 the various geographical locations. AWS currently operates in fourteen global regions and four U.S. regions. The global regions will meet the needs of GTR to implement cloud infrastructure. Disadvantages Although AWS can be a cost-effective solution, GTR must be aware of unexpected costs. The unexpected cost can occur through under-utilized or idle resources. Another unexpected cost for AWS services is a managed firewall. The basic firewall is at no cost, however, to leverage the advanced firewall features is an additional cost. The advanced firewall features include intrusion detection, traffic mirroring, and traffic filtering. This is an important feature to include to protect our data and network from potential threats. The second disadvantage is security and compliance. AWS offers security features, but GTR must incorporate additional security features to protect data, accounts, or encryption. With a large online retail presence, GTR must be Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI- DSS) compliant that “is intended for all entities that store, process, and/or transmit cardholder data (CHD) and/or sensitive authentication data (SAD) or could impact the security of the cardholder data environment (CDE).” PCI Security Standards Council, LLC, (2022). It is important GTR meets regulatory requirements and AWS can meet and/or exceed the necessary standards. The last disadvantage is ensuring cloud platform capabilities are available in the global regions of GTR’s retail stores. When designing and building an AWS platform, we must ensure core resources, capabilities, and scalability is available in our global regions. Even if capabilities are in the global availability zones, the pricing may vary.

8 AWS offers a variety of features and capabilities; it is important due diligence goes into the design model to understand the benefits and potential risks before adopting a cloud infrastructure. Competitor Comparison Table Strengths Cautions AWS Provides a highly reliable, scalable, cost-effective infrastructure. AWS is a pioneer in cloud computing offering the most mature products and services.  Wide range of infrastructure applications, products, and services;  Cost-effective pricing model  Flexibility and scalability;  Maturity in cloud platform offerings;  Rapid deployment from on- premises to the cloud;  Available to support large organizations.  Limited number of resources launch in a single region and account wide;  Limited hybrid availability options. Microsoft Azure A cloud platform that helps build, run, and manage applications providing tools and frameworks to choose from.  Highly integrated with Microsoft products and services;  Strong global presence;  Over 200 product offerings;  Over 90 compliance offerings;  Services designed for a hybrid; cloud design with multilayered security;  Continuous innovation to support development;  Complex licensing model;  Lift-and-shift to Azure cloud platform strategies are not straight-forward;  Limited support for non- Microsoft technologies;  Mid-range cost for memory optimized computing. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Provides digital transformation through application and infrastructure modernization to drive innovation. The platform can help businesses make real-time decision using analytics from a global perspective.  Integrates easily with Google’s products and services;  Developed Kubernetes standard utilized by other cloud providers.  Limited features and service;  Based on Google proprietary technologies;  Limited programming languages availability;  Fewer global data centers;  Open source focused and risk of integration with other services;  Higher cost for memory optimized computing.

9 Conclusion GTR’s strategic plan includes reducing IT spending. The area identified where costs have consistently increased is IT infrastructure. As a cost savings, exploring moving on-premises infrastructure to a cloud-based platform. While there are many cloud-based platforms that offer similar capabilities such as scalability, flexibility, high availability, and security, the difference between the cloud platforms is the costs and the availability zones where GTR operates. Based on the research of other cloud solutions, AWS provides the necessary resources to accommodate and support a design and build to move the infrastructure to the cloud for all GTR locations and online stores.

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10 References Amazon Web Services. (2023). About AWS . https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/ Azure Microsoft. (2023). What is Azure? https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/cloud- computing-dictionary/what-is-azure/ Dent, K. (2023). AWS vs Azure vs Google: The battle for cloud supremacy. https://www.jeffersonfrank.com/insights/aws-vs-azure-vs-google-cloud-provider- comparison Google Cloud. (2023). Why Google Cloud . https://cloud.google.com/why-google-cloud/ PCI Security Standards Council. (2022, August). PCI Quick Reference Guide. Understanding the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard version 1.2. https://listings.pcisecuritystandards.org/documents/pci_ssc_quick_guide.pdf Piper, B., & Clinton, D. (2019). AWS certified solutions architect study guide associate (saa- c01) exam (2nd ed.). Wiley.

KBriscoe BSACB 531 Competency 1 Assesment AWS Evaluation Report

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