Different Ways of Accessing AWS

• Diagram
• Access keys
  • they are generated through the AWS Console
  • Users manage their own access keys
  • They are secret, like a password
• The 3 main ways
  • The management console
  • aws cli
  • aws sdk

The Management Console

• AWS management console link
  • link your credit card when creating your account - you can’t create an AWS account without a credit card
• You can do anything you want - start remote servers, start ml costs, use file storage services & upload files, etc
• Easy to access and navigate, no setup required. Perfect for exploring services & features
• Complex, repeated or large-scale setups can be cumbersome

AWS CLI

Cli

Command driven access instead of a GUI (in your command line shell)

• protected by access keys
• open source

• Direct access to the public APIs of AWS services
• takes some practice & is more advanced
• perfect for executing well known, possibly repeated tasks
• can simplify complex or repeated large-scale setups (you don’t have to click through some various web pages in the GUI, but just do the exact commands you want)
  • you can even automate them using scripts
• An alternative - CloudShell (in the Management Console)

Setup/commands

• download the msi
• aws configure
  • AWS Access Key ID [None]: (enter)
  • AWS Secret Access Key [None]: (enter)
  • Default region name [None]: us-east-1
  • Default output format [None]: json
• `aws iam list-users
  • lists all users in my account
• aws iam list-users --region
• aws sts get-caller-identity

AWS CloudShell

Cloudshell

Browser-based shell built into the AWS management console

• scoped per region, same credentials as logged in user
  • not yet available in all regions (region list)
• free
• image

Features

• You have a full repo!
  • if you create a file and refresh your cloudshell, your files will stay
  • Basic Bash commands
  • you can download/upload files too
• preinstalled tools
  • aws cli, Python, Node.js, Git, make, pip, sudo, tar, tmux, vim, etc
• storage
  • 1GB of storage free per AWS region
• Saved files and settings
  • files saved in your home directory are available in future sessions for the same AWS region
• shell environments
  • seamlessly switch between bash, powershell, zsh

AWS SDKs

Aws

AWS Software Development Kit

• Language-specific APIs (set of libraries)
• Writing code in various programming languages that also sends commands to AWS behind the scenes to use certain AWS services in a certain way
  • JavaScript, Python, PHP, .NET, Ruby, Jaa, Go, Node.js, C++, mobile SDKs, IoT device SDKs, etc
• Programmatic access, infrastructure as code

• Not used in the terminal, but something you embed within your application
• Protected by access keys
• Perfect for automating tasks
• Ex) You can write a script in Python which will start a server, install software(s), start a process, then shut down the server once it’s done. All you have to do is run the script and everything is done manually.
• Simplify complex tasks/setups

AWS Tools for PowerShell

• Use AWS PowerShell if you’re in a Windows environment and want to leverage PowerShell scripting

API calls

• All ways listed above ultimately do the same thing - send commands, HTTP requests to an API provided by AWS
• Use services via HTTP requests to the APIs to make AWS do something
• Request configurations can be challenging (typically don’t use this method)