We're building an application and host on Amazon. We are a startup company, so it's in a very early development stage. We're trying to build a particular application for multiple customers. The idea is if you have a VPC for each customer you can segregate each client with their own isolated environment. That's what we're building. We're going to build one application that can be personalized for each client.
Perfect for startups and easy to implement but offers a confusing amount of tools
Pros and Cons
- "The solution offers a low footprint. We don't have to come up with a data center ourselves. We basically don't have to own any hardware. We just rent a slice of their platform and we have everything we need."
- "They should really consolidate and make things simpler rather than offer you hundreds of random options. The way everything is arranged really forces users to figure out everything on their own and then, on top of that, to calculate the total costs. There's an infinite number of combinations even just with cost calculations. It's just too much."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
The fact that we as a startup don't have to invest in expensive hardware and a place to house it is very helpful for our small business. It saves us money in the long run in overhead costs and allows us to stay streamlined. There's no heavy investment on the outset and we're really just renting the exact amount of what we need.
What is most valuable?
AWS is a cloud platform. There are hundreds of tools within it. The cloud handles the updates so we never have to worry about looking for the latest version of the solution.
The solution offers a low footprint. We don't have to come up with a data center ourselves. We basically don't have to own any hardware. We just rent a slice of their platform and we have everything we need.
What needs improvement?
The biggest area for improvement is the fact that there are a vast amount of tools. The best way to describe it is this: you have lots of Lego pieces, hundreds of Lego pieces, but they all do something specific. However, it's very difficult to understand the purpose of these tools, how are they fit into our environment, our design ideas, etc. To assemble all of these tools, to make them fit into the architectural vision of the company, is very difficult. This is especially true for a startup that doesn't have unlimited resources for research and study. We cannot comprehend the vast amount of information that Amazon produces.
The pricing is very confusing.
They should really consolidate and make things simpler rather than offer you hundreds of random options. The way everything is arranged really forces users to figure out everything on their own and then, on top of that, to calculate the total costs. There's an infinite number of combinations even just with cost calculations. It's too much.
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For how long have I used the solution?
While the company has been around for three years and has used the solution since its inception, I have only worked here for three months and have a total of three months of experience with the solution.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable. AWS is quite reliable and we haven't had issues. There haven't been bugs, glitches, or crashes. It works well and as expected.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
AWS is extremely scalable. It's designed to be. The sky really is the limit. Users and organizations can expand as much as they like.
We're a small company right now. We're still in the startup phase. We have about 20 people at the moment. We have a dozen developers directly on it now. That said, you probably only need two people for development and maintenance.
We do plan to expand in the future.
How are customer service and support?
Personally I haven't used their support yet. I cannot give more info. I've only been at the company for three months and haven't faced any issues that required me to reach out to technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We are just a startup so the company is young. The founders made the choice to use the database and they've used it since day one.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is both really straightforward and complex. At first, it's simple. However, as you get deeper into the solution and work in all kinds of variations or all kinds of scenarios, things get really complex. The more you have to consider the more complicated it can get. The complexities multiple quickly.
We use Terraform to provision the best infrastructure, which makes our platform really easy to manage in terms of our implementation strategy.
What about the implementation team?
We handled the implementation ourselves. We didn't need to hire on an integrator or consultant to assist us.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The calculating of costs is quite difficult. There are all kinds of variables to consider and it's all very unclear.
It's my understanding that our company is charged a few hundred dollars on a monthly basis.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
My understanding is that this product was used from day one. I don't think other options were considered. However, I was not at the company when AWS was implemented.
What other advice do I have?
We're a startup company. It's a very small company with only 20 people. Everything we use is cloud-based. We're simply a customer of AWS. We don't have a special relationship with the company.
I'd warn others considering using the solution that the environment is vast and complex, and a company will need a lot of tools at their disposal for research and to understand the product. If there are people within the organization who already have experience with the architecture or with similar solutions within the AWS environment, that will help make implementation successful. It's important to bring people who have previous AWS architecture experience into the organization.
I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. It does do everything we need it to do, however, as a small company, figuring it out is a big effort. Making it more streamlined or straightforward in the future would probably give it higher marks.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Sr. Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
CloudWatch provides many plugins to manage various types of logs centrally.
What is most valuable?
Auto Scaling and CloudWatch Logs are the most valuable features. With just a few criteria to scale in/out of, you can save the life and time for DevOps.
The CloudWatch Logs feature provides many plugins, so that we are able to manage various types of logs centrally.
How has it helped my organization?
In the era, we used private clouds as network virtualization must be controlled by the IT division, server rooms were in the remote branches and DevOps were distributed in various areas. Now, we can use the same API and the same workflow without considering to centralize the logs.
What needs improvement?
IaaS is sometimes way too complicated to complete one task.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used this solution for around eight months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
So far, the VPC is sometimes not that reliable. Therefore, we have to set up a redundant VPC to make sure the connection is always available.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We do not have any scalability issues until now.
How are customer service and technical support?
I have never used technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, we surveyed OpenStack. However, due to the time, budget and manpower limitations, building a private cloud is not practical in our case.
How was the initial setup?
Managing IaaS was very difficult in the beginning, i.e., tons of jargon to get up and I struggled for months.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Try the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). It is yet another good choice because sometimes, what you need is just a platform and not to build a platform from the infrastructure.
What other advice do I have?
When your division grows to a certain scale and you really need DevOps, then you could move either to a private/public cloud. Otherwise, it is a waste of time and money.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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November 2024
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Program and Project Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
As with all public clouds, there is still a dilemma with security, but provides a rich set of services for IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
AWS is a good platform for non-MySQL, MySQL, and Hadoop databases, but it’s not as good for RDBMS ones like MS SQL. It still has many missing features -- like replication, backup policy, and the ability to store/attach databases from a local drive -- but it has many good features for big data.
Its new AppStream service will pre-process graphics, including 3D renderings, and blast the results to mobile clients. Its Kinesis service for streaming data sets the stage for building big data apps on AWS, the basic architecture for the internet of things. As for its Hadoop capabilities, AWS launched its Elastic MapReduce (EMR) a long time back. It is the best cloud services provider for open source software for databases, operating systems hosting apps, and many other customized applications.
As discussed with many tech professionals, there is still a dilemma with security like there was a decade ago when online e-commerce business started and people weren’t prepared to share their credit card and bank details. Now, as online shopping is common, I am expecting the same trend will grow for public cloud very soon. AWS security is very good and they are following all the required security regulations as much other public cloud providers are doing, as they know any security breach could impact their entire business.
Pricing is another key concern when private cloud is used for big business and multiple growth on data. The price is a big debate and requires lot of analysis, as it is a question for big organizations. But no doubt, AWS is quite good for a small setup as it’s very cost effective and provides an eco-setup.
AWS is quite for good cloud services such as IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. It provides a rich set of services and integrated monitoring tools alongside a competitive pricing model. AWS offers a full range of computer and storage offerings, including on-demand instances and specialized services such as Amazon EMR, and Cluster GPU instances. Amazon Cloud Trail and Amazon CloudWatch services are very good monitoring and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a good administration and security feature for administrators to use.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Security Architect at XVE Security
Cost-effective compared to GCP and has AWS Security Hub and AWS GuardDuty
Pros and Cons
- "The tool's most valuable features are AWS Security Hub and AWS GuardDuty."
- "There are plenty of areas for improvement. For example, the ease of tagging could be improved. The tool could integrate AI tools to identify better and manage costs. Calculating the cost of some services could be more straightforward."
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution for cloud service and analytics.
What is most valuable?
The tool's most valuable features are AWS Security Hub and AWS GuardDuty.
What needs improvement?
There are plenty of areas for improvement. For example, the ease of tagging could be improved. The tool could integrate AI tools to identify better and manage costs. Calculating the cost of some services could be more straightforward.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with the product for six to seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the tool's stability a nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I rate Amazon AWS' scalability a ten out of ten. My company has 200-300 users.
How are customer service and support?
The quality of technical support depends on how much you pay.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used GCP before and switched to Amazon AWS because it was cost-effective.
How was the initial setup?
I rate Amazon AWS' deployment ease as five out of ten. It can take a few weeks to complete.
What about the implementation team?
The deployment process was completed in-house.
What was our ROI?
The solution's ROI is good.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I rate the tool's pricing a six to seven out of ten.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend the solution to others because of our smooth experience. I rate it an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Last updated: Jun 20, 2024
Flag as inappropriateSr. Systems Architect at Orison Tech
Good community support, but the pricing could be improved
Pros and Cons
- "AWS has large community support."
- "The billing should be more competitive."
What is our primary use case?
We are both a user and a provider of services to some of our clients. We are not official partners, but we provide regular services to set up our clients' infrastructure on AWS. We deploy their projects there with their own account so that we can hand over technical ownership whenever they need it. As a result, they can continue to provide their services to other consultants. we offer these services to set up their systems and their services.
We use Amazon AWS mostly for typical hosting for applications, some emails, queuing services, and databases most of the time.
What is most valuable?
I am not sure what features they'd like.
AWS has large community support. You are never stuck with anything if something doesn't work in time.
What needs improvement?
We don't have any issues for the time being, because I intend to use this in a limited, not exhaustive, manner. For the time being, we're fine with whatever we're doing.
The billing should be more competitive.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon AWS for more than two years.
As AWS is online we are always using the most current version. We have some virtual machines that you create based on the version when you initialize them, but the services that you use on a daily basis are always the most recent version.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have a limited number of users and use standard services.
How are customer service and support?
There have been no issues. The support is good.
There are no issues at the moment.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We were hosting on bare metal servers. Then we moved on to VPS servers, which were managed by our technical staff. And now we're utilizing cloud services.
That technical management part for the multiple VPS, as well as for ourselves and our client, is taking a long time to maintain and everything. As a result, we went to manage services.
These are some additional options. I've seen that Azure has the best cloud dashboard, but the billing and other features are very difficult to use. The same as any other cloud service. The documentation is far superior.
How was the initial setup?
The installation is straightforward.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Cloudflare and other services are developing more affordable solutions. They provide a much cheaper alternative to Amazon's S3 storage buckets. That's something that could be improved.
This should be comparable to the other options on the market.
Billing for cloud services can be difficult at times. In the VPS, you only have quota-based billing management, but in the cloud, it's as if every bit and byte and every I/O operation is metered, and your bills can be surprisingly high when you've published something that can attract a lot of traffic, which is one catch.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We researched Microsure and Google Firebase, but we are not using these solutions.
What other advice do I have?
I'm not an expert. I don't have any advice at the moment, but whenever they're looking to host some applications, when there's a lot of traffic or bandwidth, they should think about it carefully.
I would rate Amazon AWS a seven out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Technical Architect at USEReady
It covers a lot of services, including computing, networking, storage, IoT, and management
Pros and Cons
- "We use AWS for multiple purposes, such as developing APIs and API integration using API Gateway. We use API Gateway, Python Combinator, Lambda Glue, and ETL Process. We have used EMR for big data processing. If we need a tool for computing, we go with the Lamda DMS. There are many services available in AWS that meet our needs."
- "AWS has room for improvement on the Kubernetes side. I would like to go a little deeper into the Kubernetes target, Elastic, inner system, and all that. The EKS, target, and all these areas need to be improved, but that is not my key area because I am mostly working on the application side."
What is our primary use case?
We use AWS for multiple purposes, such as developing APIs and API integration using API Gateway. We use API Gateway, Python Combinator, Lambda Glue, and ETL Process. We have used EMR for big data processing. If we need a tool for computing, we go with the Lamda DMS. There are many services available in AWS that meet our needs.
What is most valuable?
The feature that's most valuable depends on your use case. Elasticsearch is good for testing and DynamoDb for database applications. There are so many things I could name, but you have to go with the service that is right for the use case you are looking for.
What needs improvement?
AWS has room for improvement on the Kubernetes side. I would like to go a little deeper into the Kubernetes target, Elastic, inner system, and all that. The EKS, target, and all these areas need to be improved, but that is not my key area because I am mostly working on the application side. However, I sometimes still need to work with Kubernetes container management.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using AWS for the last seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
AWS has "11 9s" service availability, which means the service is available 99.99999999999 percent of the time.
How are customer service and support?
I would rate AWS support four out of five. They're good. I can activate cases on the technical calendar through AWS development support. I've gotten a lot of support through AWS Blue.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The deployment complexity depends on which template you're using: AWS Terraform or CloudFormation. It's easiest to deploy services via Terraform, so you can go with that. That is the most straightforward way, and you can do all automation within Terraform.
What other advice do I have?
I rate AWS nine out of 10. Everything is moving to the cloud now, and AWS covers a lot of services, including computing, networking, storage, IoT, and management, and they are good in every way.
They face competition from GCP and Azure, but Azure is entirely a Microsoft stack, so people will go with that when they're working with Microsoft solutions. It is a little cheaper than AWS. In the end, the cloud you choose depends on the use case. It's up to the customer.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Implementer
Senior Sales Account Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Organization visibility, great support, and highly scalable
Pros and Cons
- "We have many projects where we can resolve a lot of issues with Amazon AWS. It has given customers a lot of visibility with their data. Many customers do not know what they can learn from their data and I provide them with this using useful information using Amazon AWS."
- "The difficulty of the implementation depends on the project. We have a lot of very complicated and complex project which make the implementation more difficult. However, a small project can be very simple to implement. In general, over 90% of the project tend to be complex implementations."
What is our primary use case?
We used Amazon AWS when we work on a lot of projects in different situations or scenarios. We have done migrations from on-premise to cloud computing, projects involving data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
Many of our customers use the website application that is hosted by Amazon AWS.
What is most valuable?
We have many projects where we can resolve a lot of issues with Amazon AWS. It has given customers a lot of visibility with their data. Many customers do not know what they can learn from their data and I provide them with this using useful information using Amazon AWS.
The Redshift features are very useful for large amounts of data.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon AWS for approximately two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Amazon AWS is scalable and it is very important for our customers.
We have a lot of customers using this solution and our largest customer has approximately 16,000 users using the solution.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support is very good.
How was the initial setup?
The difficulty of the implementation depends on the project. We have a lot of very complicated and complex project which make the implementation more difficult. However, a small project can be very simple to implement. In general, over 90% of the project tend to be complex implementations.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We are on an annual subscription for Amazon AWS.
What other advice do I have?
We create some processes to resolve some questions the customers have. They want to improve and have more visibility of their data, and how to extract information about their data. We help them with this problem.
Amazon AWS is the most important provider in the market. They have helped many of my customers.
I rate Amazon AWS a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Integration Architect at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
The learning curve is shorter, but it needs better tools for monitoring performance and use
Pros and Cons
- "I like AWS for its scalability, reliability, and availability, and it's much more mature and user-friendly compared to some other cloud providers. The learning curve and time for deployment are also shorter."
- "Amazon needs to develop better tools for troubleshooting network traffic, application insights, performance, and even some aspects of integration mapping. I'm hoping AWS implements something like Azure's Network Watcher and a log analytics solution where a can pull logs from various services and present them in a single dashboard. I want to summarize the performance and usage of every service and application."
What is our primary use case?
You can design and customize solutions with AWS. It has so many options, including storage, computing, database, notification, and messaging solutions. It depends on what the application team designs.
What is most valuable?
I like AWS for its scalability, reliability, and availability, and it's much more mature and user-friendly compared to some other cloud providers. The learning curve and time for deployment are also shorter.
What needs improvement?
Amazon needs to develop better tools for troubleshooting network traffic, application insights, performance, and even some aspects of integration mapping. I'm hoping AWS implements something like Azure's Network Watcher and a log analytics solution where a can pull logs from various services and present them in a single dashboard. I want to summarize the performance and usage of every service and application.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
All cloud solutions are scalable. It depends on the design, but most of them scale well. There are tens of thousands of users working on the solution.
How are customer service and support?
Amazon technical support is great.
How was the initial setup?
Deploying AWS could be straightforward or complicated depending on the use case. If it's a simple application, you can deploy it within a day. If it's very complex and your team isn't experienced, it can take months.
The amount of maintenance needed depends on your application and how you define support and maintenance. Some staff will handle things internally and others will be responsible for the cloud applications.
What was our ROI?
I would say AWS is balanced. Cloud solutions are not cheap, and the ROI could vary widely according to your usage.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The cost depends on the usage and applications. If you're hosting thousands of applications, you'll be paying tens of thousands of dollars. In addition to usage fees, you have to factor in the costs of development teams and the staff you need to support the applications. These are the three costs you need to kind of calculate to decide on the budget.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate AWS 7.5 out of 10. There are a lot of options in this space, and Microsoft is also good. We are evaluating the data on each. We would rate Azure close to eight, so they're both great solutions.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Learn More: Questions:
- Gartner's Magic Quadrant for IaaS maintains Amazon Web Service at the top of the Leaders quadrant. Do you agree?
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