2023**ADD ME ON DISCORD: aedifica#0385**

Hey,

So I heard of something called Amazon AWS and that it apparently was like a computer in the cloud or something so I thought that sounded cool and I also saw it was free so I got one and I don't know what I got myself into.

I have absolutely NO clue how to use it. I'm really scared bc I signed up using a $25 gift card and I don't know if it's gonna charge me randomly and I don't know how to deactivate and theres so many words and idk ;-;

Like I did a thing and I got to a desktop but idk what I did to get to it lol


Anyway, if you could explain it to me and help me with it because I'm dumb, that would be great. Thanks!

Hey,

I saw your question and I thought I'd give my bit on it. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a product of Amazon and they provide cloud and hosting services "on demand" for anyone who wants to use them. Companies like Netflix use AWS for a lot of their hosting as Amazon can provide huge amounts of computing power for them, without Netflix having to invest hugely on data farms all around the globe.

AWS works in a kind of neat way. You get a certain allowance per month, depending on what package you choose. For example, one of AWS's most notable products is EC2, which allows users to rent virtual servers on which you can run your own computer applications.

Most of the EC2 packages are very reasonable in price. You can get a Linux server with half a gig of ram for around $0.0063 per hour. So to do the maths, that's about 0.1515c a day, working out at around $4.536 per month. Which is fairly reasonable. With this you are given a Linux server which is perfect for running Minecraft, or Apache, nGinx or anything like that. The cool thing about AWS is that they only charge for the amount you use, hence "on demand". You link your card online and they only bill you if you go over a certain limit. You of course can upgrade to more expensive servers, for example you can rent a 256gb of ram server for $3.80 per hour, which is a huge amount of money per month, in or around $2700! But if you need it (maybe your a huge server network), they've got it.

From what I can see above, it looks like you have accessed a windows server through a VM software or through AWS themselves. It is exactly like the computer you are on right now, but it isn't stored where you are, it is in an Amazon data farm, and it always on. You can now go about installing programs on it, whether it be a Minecraft server, a Web Server, or whatever you want!

For more information on how to use AWS to run a Minecraft server see here:
http://www.aaronbell.com/how-to-run-a-m ... mazon-ec2/

FYI, Linux is the OS you should use for all this. It is built so well and is what the majority of servers around the globe use.

Hope this helps!

2023My friend made it out to be something completely different, and I don't know why I listened to him. Now I'm stuck trying to figure out how to cancel my plan.

I'm not saying my explanation of it is the end-all answer. I could certainly be misunderstanding/not fully grasping what this description on the wiki is saying. Not sure what your friend said it was, but that's the understanding I got from Wikipedia. Just wanted to make that clear.

Because I'm dumb ok? >.<

My friend made it out to be something completely different, and I don't know why I listened to him. Now I'm stuck trying to figure out how to cancel my plan.

Also, it hasn't charged me any money apparently (I checked) It needed my CC info but the only thing it did was charge $1 and then pay me back.

Why would you pay money to sign up for something if you don't even know what it does/what to do with it? lol

They way I'm understanding it, it's a service intended for people/companies who require a large amount of computing power for various tasks that don't have the resources to build their own server farm or only need it for a limited amount of tasks that don't justify building a server farm. Maybe you could use it to render large images or video? That's the only practical use I can think of outside of something related to web/application development that might apply to a pretty average person.