Today, when choosing a cloud server, it is preferable to opt for mainstream service providers such as Google Cloud and Amazon Cloud. These major internet companies have launched their own cloud service products, which provide a relatively comprehensive ecosystem and can meet the application needs of individuals and businesses.
We only need to fulfill most of our cloud business requirements with one cloud service provider. As mentioned before, Amazon Cloud offers free cloud service products for new individual and business customers, with over 100 free trial services available, ranging from a few months to a year, and even some with permanent free service packages.
In the previous articles, we compared the free cloud trial qualifications provided by Amazon Cloud to those of other cloud service providers, and found that Amazon Cloud offers a more generous package.
In this article, we will also compile a list of 10 cloud service products from Amazon Cloud that are worth using in our daily lives. It is not practical to list all the hundred-plus cloud products, so we will focus on the 10 products that I personally find useful.
1.EC2 Cloud Servers
Amazon Cloud provides basic EC2 cloud server services with dozens of data centers worldwide to choose from. The payment model is based on flexible pricing. We can open different configurations according to our needs. We can also upgrade or delete servers as needed. Billing is based on usage duration, which helps improve our budget utilization efficiency.
EC2 cloud servers offer a free trial period of up to 12 months, although there are configuration limitations (1 core, 1GB package). The free package does not incur additional charges. If we upgrade later, there will be additional charges for the expanded and upgraded portions.
2.Lightsail Virtual Servers
Lightsail virtual servers, also known as lightweight servers, provide free three-month cloud server services. Compared to EC2 servers, Lightsail virtual servers offer one-click application deployment, 1 core, 2GB configuration, 3TB monthly data transfer, and larger bandwidth than EC2. They support one-click SSH and one-click RDP access services and can be used for website building and cloud application configuration.
3.Amazon RDS Cloud Database
Amazon RDS provides free RDS database services for one year, including managed relational database services for MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, or SQL Server. It offers 20GB of general-purpose database storage and 20GB of database backup services, suitable for data separation and independent cloud database storage management.
With Amazon RDS, we can use the database directly without the need for self-building, and enjoy one year of free usage. Cloud databases provide comprehensive database management and backup services, making them more convenient and stable than self-built databases.
4.Amazon S3 Object Storage
Object storage, such as Amazon S3, is widely used for private and public data storage, including data backups and content delivery to improve business access speed.
Amazon S3 offers 5GB of free storage for 12 months, which is permanently free. For lightweight usage, it supports 20,000 GET requests and 2,000 PUT requests, making it suitable for basic business purposes
5.CloudFront CDN Service
Whether for local or international businesses, relying solely on cloud servers and networks cannot guarantee optimal speed for all users. Therefore, content delivery network (CDN) services are commonly used. Amazon Cloud also provides CloudFront CDN service, offering a permanent free tier of 1TB. If your business volume is not large, the free quota is sufficient. If you exceed the free traffic, additional billing is required to purchase paid traffic packages.
6.Amazon SES
Amazon SES is an email tool that helps ensure effective email delivery for businesses. It supports dedicated, shared, or custom IP address deployments.
We can use Amazon SES to send up to 62,000 messages to any recipient per month from Amazon EC2 instances or through AWS Elastic Beanstalk, along with 1,000 inbound messages per month.
7.Amazon CloudWatch
Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring service based on Amazon Cloud. It is suitable for monitoring and alerting of cloud-based products such as Amazon Cloud Servers and databases.
With Amazon CloudWatch, we can visually view performance data, create alarms, and correlate data to understand and resolve root causes of performance issues in AWS resources. It is particularly useful for managing multiple servers, requiring quick response and problem resolution through timely alerts.
8.Amazon WorkDocs
Amazon WorkDocs is a fully managed service for secure content creation, storage, and collaboration.
With Amazon WorkDocs, we can easily create, edit, and share content, and access it from anywhere on any device because it is centrally stored on AWS.
Amazon WorkDocs enables effortless collaboration, easy content sharing, rich feedback, and collaborative document editing. It allows integration with existing systems and provides rich APIs for developing custom applications. Amazon WorkDocs is built on top of AWS, ensuring the protection of our content on the world’s largest cloud infrastructure.
9.Free Server Migration Service
The AWS Application Migration Service automates the process of converting our source servers to run natively on AWS, minimizing time-consuming and error-prone manual procedures. It also simplifies application modernization through built-in and custom optimization options. It assists us in quickly migrating data, including supporting cross-region migration, ensuring data security and efficiency.
10.Amazon EFS
Amazon Cloud offers free EFS (Elastic File System) storage service for twelve months to each registered user, with 5GB of free storage per user.
EFS can automatically scale as needed without the need for pre-provisioning storage capacity. It adjusts performance and capacity automatically based on the size and access pattern of the file system.
EFS supports multiple Amazon EC2 instances accessing the same file system simultaneously. This allows data sharing among multiple instances and enables file sharing between different availability zones or VPCs.
EFS can replicate data automatically across multiple availability zones to provide high availability and durability. Even in the event of failures or failovers, the data remains accessible.
