Amazon AWS Reviews

I'm not the developer, so I cannot judge the services provided by AWS, but we run our mobile banking application on AWS. Database-wise, it's heavily based on Elasticsearch, so this is probably one of the main features that we find most valuable. Aside from that, I'm not familiar with which AWS services we are using.

It's too early to say what needs to be improved, as we went live only at the beginning of this year. We started last year and went live at the beginning of this year, so it's still a work in progress. In terms of additional features we'd like to see, the one thing that comes to mind is better integration with Oracle. We have a lot of Oracle databases, and there is no other option to either migrate to PaaS, stay on-prem, or use Oracle Private Cloud. So better integration with Oracle is something we are looking into. It's the same story with AWS or Azure. 

We introduced AWS in production last year, so it's a relatively new development.

Setting up AWS was pretty easy. It was straightforward to set up, and it took us a year to develop and migrate our mobile banking solution to the AWS cloud. Our migration experience was quite positive.

The pricing of AWS was attractive for us, so that's something that's okay at least for this transaction-based system. However, we still have some concerns about more data-driven applications or those that involve a lot of heavy uploading and downloading. So our whole data warehouse is still something that would not go into the cloud because of the pricing model. So if you stayed pretty much in the cloud, that's fine.

I would rate Amazon AWS seven out of 10. We're really satisfied.

I use it to run our production workload.

I like the auto-scaling functionality and compliance requirements, whichever they are requesting. 

I also appreciate new setup services, which allow customers to easily manage their entire AWS infrastructure through code, and the managed services that handle the heavy lifting for us.

AWS could benefit from being more cloud-agnostic. This means allowing customers to easily migrate their workloads and applications built on AWS services to other hyperscalers if needed. Currently, the architecture feels closed, making it difficult for customers to move to different cloud providers seamlessly.

One of the issues I'm facing is that my RDS SQL Server version 5.8 is reaching its end of life, and I need to upgrade it to a customer-wanted version. I want to do this on Graviton instances, but Graviton only starts with version 8.0 and currently doesn't support the 5.8 series. 

We've raised a Priority Feature Request (PFR) with AWS to have this functionality added for at least three months. This would give us enough time to upgrade our database to the 8.0 version without any issues.

I have been using it for the last two and a half years. 

The product is very stable and robust. I haven't experienced any issues so far.

The scalability and elasticity are key advantages of AWS compared to other providers. This is one of the main reasons why hyperscalers like AWS are preferred.

If we need to add or remove workloads, the performance remains consistent.

More than 70% of our workforce uses this solution. So, there are more than 40 end users. 

In situations beyond my expertise, I've contacted the engineers. They've been helpful in resolving issues, providing support with freezes, and offering guidance whenever needed.

The quality of the customer service and support depends on the engineer I interact with. 

However, in most cases, including my own, around 75% of the time, the engineers I've encountered have been knowledgeable, supportive, and flexible. 

While individual experiences may vary based on specific learning, I would generally rate the support as good.

Positive

The specific reason my company chose this product was that whatever use case we were expecting, everything was readily available on the AWS cloud. We didn't want to reinvent the wheel. 

We just wanted to choose the right services that would be cost-effective, optimized, meet customer requirements, and offer elasticity, scalability, flexibility, and security. 

So, when we compared AWS to other cloud vendors like Azure or Google, AWS performed significantly better. Based on that, our leadership recommended going with AWS, and the business and technical teams supported that decision. So, by taking into account all the inputs from various departments, we decided to go with AWS.

Setting up AWS was easy. I used Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with YAML codes to deploy the infrastructure quickly.

It took me about half an hour to spin up the VPC, security policy, launch instances, attach the Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes, connect to the S3 VPN endpoint, and configure cloud-native services like CloudWatch and CloudTrail. 

However, it took me almost a week to prepare the IaC code beforehand. This code can be easily reused and modified for future deployments with any minor changes required by the customer's use cases.

The pricing depends on the workload. For example, if your workload involves Windows technologies, AWS may not be the most cost-effective option. In that case, you might be better off with Azure. 

But if you're working with open-source technologies, then AWS can be a good choice. They have their own process called RabbitMQ, which is an on-premises architecture where you can recompile all your applications to run on your own infrastructure. This can significantly reduce your costs compared to other hyperscalers like Google, Oracle, or Azure.

So, it would be worth my money to go with Amazon AWS at the end of the day. However, if it's a Windows-based workload, I wouldn't recommend AWS.

You can just go ahead with AWS with your eyes closed. You won't regret it.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

In recent years, we have use AWS primarily for its serverless capabilities. It has the ability to scale up from one to 10,000 vCPUs for a few brief seconds. The vCPUs perform intensive calculations with deep learning (artificial intelligence calculations), which is not possible via traditional computing approaches.

AWS helped us reduce costs from CapEx to OpEx. Some of the introduced one-year and three-year reservations helped us reduce costs early on. With time, we learned how to minimize our at REST capacity, allowing us to scale up and scale down in near seconds. 

Serverless computing: This can be more cost-efficient just regarding computing resources than renting or purchasing a fixed quantity of servers, which involves periods of underutilization or nonuse. It can even be more cost-efficient than provisioning an autoscaling group, because even autoscaling groups are typically designed to have underutilization to allow time for new instances to start up.

Also, a serverless architecture means developers and operations specialists do not need to spend time setting up and tuning autoscaling policies or systems. The cloud provider is responsible for ensuring that the capacity meets the demand.

AWS Marketplace: Somehow Amazon associated their marketplace as a place to find images of various installs (preconfigured software) and was late in the game enabling and promoting SaaS-based solutions. Thus, the AWS marketplace has near zero awareness in the mind of the prospect to find solutions to various problems plaguing them. 

No stability issues.

No scalability issues.

They are mainly generalists without access to the operating system. As such, they can provide container level insights,not necessarily at the application level.

I have used AWS for the last eight years since 2010. Previously, we used various VPS, dedicated servers, and Amazon's solutions, which were crude but a promise for something beyond the traditional infrastructure options. 

It was straightforward.

No vendor team was necessary.

We are reducing costs year-over-year.

Much faster than other solutions at a super low cost.

One of the best-kept ways to reduce costs is to develop it on serverless technologies with AWS Lambda, SNS, DynamoDB, and S3. Business example: By deploying our websites on Amazon S3 instead of the traditional Apache web servers, we eliminated many of the compute costs. Our WordPress site is served by a static S3 bucket. One of the benefits of this is our sites are superfast, especially with CloudFront. CloudFront makes the S3 hosted sites available across the world in milliseconds, reducing network hops and costs similar to that of Akamai. 

Just imagine the headaches associated with Apache web servers, MySQL databases, and Nginx reverse proxies? 

The use cases depend on the projects. The project that I am currently working on uses Rekognition heavily. It also uses S3 and EC2. My previous project was using it for the text-to-speech feature.

The ecosystem offered by the product has almost everything. A couple of weeks ago, I was trying to build a server with RabbitMQ for real-time communication in an environment. Amazon already has a service called Amazon MQ. We don’t need to configure the server ourselves because we already have one integrated into the ecosystem. It’s easy to install the server in our system. We can run it in ten minutes instead of waiting three to four days.

The initial setup is not easy at all.

I have been using the solution for six to seven years.

The solution is stable. I never had any issues with Amazon. It works all the time, 24/7.

I have contacted support. It was just a couple of calls. We weren’t able to reach the server. There was some issue at the country level in Iceland. The problem was not with Amazon specifically.

We will have to learn to setup the tool. Someone with no experience would not be able to do it. In some companies, there is a person that works only with Amazon. The person will be profiling the company to work with the service center infrastructure inside Amazon.

The solution should improve the pricing. The area that I work for is expensive. The product is cheap when we start using it. It provides AWS Free Tier. However, it is not the same when you work continuously with Amazon. We end up paying a lot at the end of every month. 

The pricing depends on the traffic because they charge by the traffic. They do not charge us based on servers. The price also depends on the services we use. It would be different if we used S3.

The product is not the best option for a small company. If someone is trying to use Amazon for the first time and already has an NPP running, they can use it. If someone has used Amazon, they would already know what they are going to deal with. The cost is a concern for me. Some people are trying to leave Amazon and are searching for other options. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We use several tools that are part of AWS, which are onboarded to our infrastructure.

We have five or six EC2 instances that make up our AppDynamics component of the link. We are using Paperclip for restoring files, and we use other scripts as well. These are tools that we use from day-to-day.

Using AWS is really helpful for saving costs. We used to have to budget a lot for hardware costs, but now we have EC2 instances that are based on the requirements. For example, if you want one CPU then the cost is based on that, whereas if you require more, then it is automatically included.

There should be seminars and online training sessions available from AWS because a lot of people who are not using it would benefit from having the basic knowledge or basic hands-on experience. If they gain experience with it, then they will be happy to use it in the future.

Training could be in the form of more documentation or training videos. Any increase would make this solution easier to handle.

I have been using Amazon AWS for almost two years.

We use AWS on a daily basis and it is really stable.

We have more than 10,000 users on AWS and we are definitely planning to increase usage. We are the MNP and we have close to one million users in our India location.

Currently, we are introducing our web support and once we need infrastructure to be installed, we will create more instances.

The technical support is really good because whenever we we need help, we just raise a ticket and we get a solution.

I know a little bit about  Azure and GCP, but I am only really familiar with AWS. From our perspective, 60% of users implement AWS.

The initial setup is straightforward. We have the guidelines and documents from AWS, so it is easy for us. AppDynamics is also supporting us for the installation of their components. 

The time required for deployment is not long. Creating an EC2 instance only takes between 15 and 20 minutes.

We no longer need a team for the installation. When we first started, they guided us, and now we have the experience that allows us to do it on our own.

AWS and its cloud platform are getting to be well known through social sites and other sources. It is definitely a product that we recommend. We have experience with it and encourage other people to use it as well.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

It is primarily for cloud hosting. If you're developing a solution for a customer who wants it on the cloud, then AWS and Microsoft Azure are two major choices. There are other providers too, but AWS is quite user-friendly.

We use AWS for scalable cloud hosting and computing services. We store all our customer data on Amazon EC2 Instances.

We haven't had any security problems, and Amazon offers automated vulnerability audits. This helps us test our solutions for vulnerabilities and show customers that our systems are secure.

Security, quick deployment, and scalability are the top three features for me.

Like every other customer, I'd suggest pricing is the one feature everyone wants AWS to improve. 

I have been using it for five years. 

It is a stable solution. 

It is a scalable solution. We've worked with about five customers so far. 

We haven't needed technical support.

Sometimes, customers ask for AWS solutions, but we offer choices based on their needs. Price and geographical preferences can influence their decision. Sometimes, the customers can go for a cheaper product.  We don't force them, but we make recommendations.

The quickest way to set it up is the most beneficial feature. We can set up resources quickly and scale them as needed, starting small and growing as requirements increase. That's very helpful. It saves us a lot of time. 

The initial setup is straightforward if you spend some time learning it. They're improving the user interface, which helps.

My team takes care of the implementation. They find it easy to deploy. We haven't faced any issues so far.

It's not very pricey, but it could be cheaper. There are other options like GoDaddy and HostGator.

There are various options, and some can be cheaper than paying a full license.

Read the documentation carefully before starting. Preparation saves time in the long run. For example, the ease of integrating different AWS services depends on your expertise.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We're a native AWS customer and a provider as well. We have multiple solutions running in there, and we are also doing infrastructure as a code and infrastructure as a service. For example, we can offer you lower prices than the price that you would pay for an AWS instance because we are an official partner of Amazon. So, we are taking all the advantages of what we currently have with AWS. 

It is being used for ECM. In terms of deployment, from an AWS perspective, it is partly self-developed based on Terraform, and we are also using services like S3, S9, and all the things we have in AWS for DNS, but it is highly automated. When a customer comes in and says that they need an instance clustered with certain options and a certain amount of service, it's usually firing up one line of code, and then everything gets set up, including the infrastructure.

We're working with its newer version.

Scalability is one of the biggest benefits we have.

We have a very good approach internally with what we have developed. It involved overcoming some hurdles regarding the single point of truth or single point of configuration, which is sometimes not that easy for AWS. There are dashboards and you have your web service, but bringing all these together and orchestrating is sometimes quite difficult.

My estimate is six years, but it might be way earlier. We ramped up way early with AWS on the market and developed together with them.

It is very scalable. Our customers are from every corner you can imagine. There is no specific type of customers we are serving.

We have a direct relationship with AWS. We are not running with the usual support with AWS. We have other possibilities and are directly integrated. 

It is easy. With our solution, it's really a piece of cake. Even my seven-year-old would be able to set up a cluster with high availability, as long as I tell her what to enter.

It is quite expensive in my very personal opinion. Going on-prem in a data center is, for sure, not as expensive as going to AWS, but when it comes to a point where you are raising and growing, it simply makes a lot of sense to stay in AWS. It is awesome in that way. I am not aware of any extra costs.

Azure is something that we are currently looking into as a second option, but there are no concrete actions planned.

It boils down to two points. The first point would be to have correct planning. You need to know what you want to do and you need to be familiar with what you can do in AWS. The second very important point is that you need very stable and very good monitoring of your AWS instances. This is mandatory because if you fire up a very expensive environment and forget it over weeks, you need to pay for that. I've seen a lot of companies struggling to get an overview of all these AWS machines. It starts by tagging and so on.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

I use Amazon AWS to host services for my clients, as well as creating SMTP services for them. These are the main two use cases. AWS offers a wide range of services, but I do not use them all.

AWS has a lot of flexibility, which is great.

Recently tried the boot on the desktop, which is where you create a virtual desktop, on a laptop for example. You provide this, and you can use a laptop on the cloud and have everything safe, without having to purchase an expensive laptop.

When I tried with another company, from Azure, which uses the same thing, that with the boot as desktop they had some work needed to make some changes to the AWS desktop. They are not as flexible or powerful as a platform as Azure on this subject.

Previously, they had great VoIP software that they used in AWS, and when I created an account, they didn't have the option to assign too many numbers, local numbers, that could be used for hosting.

In terms of improvement, they should try to give more emphasis to the VoIP system.

I have been working with Amazon AWS for the last two years.

You can deploy and create any number of virtual machines to meet your needs.

Amazon AWS is very stable.

When I'm setting up SMTP servers for clients. They use SMTP as the main platform, but for example, on their CRM, and to be honest, I never go back to that to check for any issues from the day one that I finish the task and provide everything to the CRM developers to proceed with the integration.

We have over 60 companies in our portfolio, and I would estimate that half of them use AWS services.

Going through the chats has left me a little disappointed. It's taking far too long, and I have to come back with questions. The reason could be that they have too many departments internally, so they assign a ticket from one department to another, and it takes a long time to complete the task and provide an accurate solution.

I'm using both Microsoft Azure and AWS at the same time.

I am a Microsoft Azure certified technician, and some of my clients have asked me about some potential within the product. Based on my research, I discovered that this project can be easily designed using AWS rather than Microsoft Azure. This is why I'm learning more about AWS. It is similar to that of Microsoft Azure, and I'm using it, that we can, say, shut down Microsoft Azure completely and then send all of my clients to AWS.

Half of them are AWS, half are Microsoft Azure, and sometimes there are internal IT departments, which need to follow this path, to create the architecture on Microsoft Azure or AWS based on their architecture.

They are difficult to set up. Before you can start using AWS, you must first read the documentation and learn a lot about it.

I would rate the initial setup a three out of five.

It is not very easy, and difficult to complete some of the tasks.

They have a pay-as-you-go subscription. You pay only for the time you use the service. By service, I mean that they are not frequently used by clients. It's the best idea because they are very expensive to them because if it's a small company and you have the option of pay as you go as a solution, it would be less expensive, and better for the company in terms of saving money.

However, if some large clients, for example, use AWS as a hosting provider and compare their prices with other hosting providers, other hosting providers are more affordable. 

I believe that a pay-as-you-go solution is very inexpensive, but not for monthly or fixed prices.

I am a partner and reseller.

I would advise them, before they use the account before they open an account with Amazon, to do their account around just to learn a bit about that solution and then start using it, because it will take a long time to understand how that platform works, how you're going to create a VM on there, how you can create an SMTP.

It is not a simple procedure that we point to and then follows some steps to complete. You must be familiar with information technology. You must have at least basic IT knowledge of a hosting site. This is a platform, and before they begin using it, they must check a number of things and understand how they will proceed.

I would rate Amazon AWS a seven out of ten.