sobota, 10 października 2015

Setting-up an account with Amazon Web Services for your cloud computing needs



On this blog I will publish information and tutorials for beginners on how to start doing your large scale computation in the cloud. I will focus mainly on Amazon Web Services since it is the largest cloud computing provider.
The target audience are MS Windows users with none experience in Linux systems who need to handle large scale computation or data processing in the cloud and do not have time to spend several hours finding out how to do the things right. 

So let's start the blog with some notes about setting up an Amazon Web Services account.

In order to start your journey with cloud computing you need to register at Amazon Web Services (AWS)  at https://aws.amazon.com/.

Please note the following:

  • A credit card is required for registration - however you will not be billed until you use paid-for the resources.
  • If you do not have a credit buy a prepaid one! For example, in my country (Poland, BZ-WBK bank) a virtual credit card can be bought for as little as $1.5 and is being emailed almost immediately after the payment is made. You are not required to have any funds at your credit card up to the point when you actually decide to use some non-free AWS services. If you have similar options in your country and you have checked that they work with AWS - please let me know I will update this post.
  • If you are affiliated with an academic institution please remember to apply for a free computations coupon at https://aws.amazon.com/education/awseducate/apply/. If you are a student you can get either USD 35 or 100 of credit depending on whether your university participates in the AWS for education program or not.
  • Amazon takes a great effort in order to ensure that a user is actually aware when taking an action that results in billing. Hence, there is almost no chance that you will spend the money accidentally.