Getting Started with IAM Roles for EC2 Instances

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) helps you securely control access to Amazon Web Services and your account resources. IAM can also keep your account credentials private. With IAM, you can create multiple IAM users under the umbrella of your AWS account or enable temporary access through identity federation with your corporate directory. In some cases, you can also enable access to resources across AWS accounts.

Without IAM, however, you must either create multiple AWS accounts—each with its own billing and subscriptions to AWS products—or your employees must share the security credentials of a single AWS account. In addition, without IAM, you cannot control the tasks a particular user or system can do and what AWS resources they might use.

 

 

AWS has recently launched IAM Roles for EC2 Instances. A role is an entity that has a set of permissions that can be assumed by another entity. Use roles to enable applications running on your Amazon EC2 instances to securely access your AWS resources.You grant a specific set of permissions to a role, use the role to launch an EC2 instance, and let EC2 automatically handle AWS credential management for your applications that run on Amazon EC2. Use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to create a role and to grant permissions to the role.

 

 

IAM roles for Amazon EC2 provide:

  

• AWS access keys for applications running on Amazon EC2 instances
• Automatic rotation of the AWS access keys on the Amazon EC2 instance
• Granular permissions for applications running on Amazon EC2 instances that make requests to your AWS services

  

The below video demonstrates basic workflow of:

 

 

 

For more help, refer the AWS documentation for IAM here.

 

For other AWS Documentations, please refer to the quick links provided in the Blogger's right-side panel.

 

 

Infographic : Evolution of Computer Languages

All the cloud applications you use on the Internet today are written in a specific computer language. What you see as a nice icon on the front end looks like a bunch of code on the back end. It’s interesting to see where computer languages started and how they have evolved over time. There are now a series of computer languages to choose from and billions lines of code. Check out the infographic below to see the computer language timeline and read some fun facts about code along the way.







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Infographic: Demystifying AWS - Revealing Behind the scenes usage

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the biggest public cloud around, yet what goes on behind the scenes remains a mystery.

Read on for a good Infographic by newvem blog !

"For heavy users, such as enterprise level CIOs, AWS’s “Reserved Instances” are a cost effective model to scale their cloud activity and benefit from the full service offering that Amazon provides.

The infographic is based on analysis made by our Reserved Instance Decision Making Tool. This advanced analytics tool can help enterprise CIOs to capture the added value and benefit by:

• Ensuring that reserved instances meet cost and performance expectations.
• Identifying consistent onOn-demand Demand usage that can be shifted to reserved Reserved instances.
• Tracking Reserved Instance expiration dates and recommend actions for renewal and scale up and down.

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AWS New Whitepaper: Mapping and GeoSpatial Analysis in the Cloud Using ArcGIS

Great new whitepaper by Jinesh Varia...


Esri is one of the leaders in the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) industry and one of the largest privately held software companies focused on mapping and geospatial applications in the world with offices in more than 100 countries. Both public and private sector organizations use Esri technology to analyze and manage their geographic information and make better decisions – uses range from planning cities and improving the quality of life for residents, to site selection, customer analytics, and streamlining logistics.

Esri and AWS have been working together since 2008 to bring the power of GIS to the masses. The AWS Partner Team recently attended the 2012 Esri International User Conference with over 14,000+ attendees, 300 exhibitors and a large number of ecosystem partners. A cloud computing theme dominated the conference.
Esri and AWS have co-authored a whitepaper, "Mapping and GeoSpatial Analysis Using ArcGIS", to provide users who have interest in performing spatial analysis using their data with complimentary datasets.

The paper discusses how users can publish and analyze imagery data (such as satellite imagery, or aerial imagery) and create and publish tile cache map services from spatially referenced data (such as data with x/y points, lines, polygons) in AWS using ArcGIS.

Download PDF: Mapping and GeoSpatial Analysis Using ArcGIS

The paper focuses on imagery because that has been the most challenging data type to manage in the cloud, but the approaches discussed are general enough to apply to any type of data.

It not only provides architecture guidance on how to scale ArcGIS servers in the cloud but also provides step-by-step guidance on publishing map services in the cloud.

For more information on GeoApps in the AWS Cloud, see the presentation -
The Cloud as a Platform for Geo below:
GeoApps in the AWS Cloud - Jinesh Varia from Amazon Web Services


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