Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive cloud computing platform that offers a broad set of services like computing power, storage, databases, machine learning, and more. Whether you're a developer, business, or aspiring cloud engineer, AWS provides an excellent way to dive into cloud computing without having to spend a dime, thanks to its Free Tier.
In this blog, we'll explore how you can leverage AWS's Free Tier to gain hands-on experience with its cloud infrastructure. Whether you're building a prototype, testing ideas, or simply learning, the Free Tier is a valuable resource for all levels. Let's dive into some key AWS Free Tier services and how you can make the most out of them.
What is AWS Free Tier?
The AWS Free Tier is a program that allows users to use AWS services for free, up to certain limits, for 12 months from the account creation date. After the 12-month period, or if usage exceeds the free usage limits, the standard pay-as-you-go service charges apply. The Free Tier is designed to help new users and startups get started with AWS without incurring costs right away.
There are three types of Free Tier offerings:
- Always Free: Services that are available for free indefinitely, subject to usage limits.
- 12-Month Free: Services that are free for 12 months after signing up.
- Trials: Services available for a limited time (usually 30 days) after activation.
Key AWS Free Tier Services to Explore
Let's take a look at some of the most popular AWS Free Tier services you can explore:
1. Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)
- Free Tier Limit: 750 hours per month of a t2.micro or t3.micro instance for 12 months.
- What You Can Do: EC2 is AWS's virtual server offering. With 750 hours per month, you can run a Linux or Windows-based virtual machine for the entire month at no charge, perfect for hosting small web applications, testing, or learning server management.
2. Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
- Free Tier Limit: 5GB of Standard Storage, 20,000 GET requests, and 2,000 PUT requests.
- What You Can Do: S3 is a scalable object storage service. You can store files like images, videos, backups, and logs. You can also experiment with versioning, lifecycle policies, and data encryption without incurring costs.
3. Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service)
- Free Tier Limit: 750 hours per month of db.t2.micro instance for MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, or SQL Server.
- What You Can Do: If you're building applications that require a relational database, RDS is a great option. With the Free Tier, you can run a database for testing or development purposes. You can even set up multi-AZ deployments to learn about high availability in databases.
4. AWS Lambda
- Free Tier Limit: 1 million free requests and 400,000 GB-seconds of compute time per month.
- What You Can Do: Lambda lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. You pay only for the compute time you use. Use it to experiment with serverless architectures, create event-driven applications, or set up cron jobs.
5. Amazon CloudFront
- Free Tier Limit: 50GB data transfer out and 2,000,000 HTTP/HTTPS requests per month.
- What You Can Do: CloudFront is AWS's Content Delivery Network (CDN). With the Free Tier, you can distribute content like images, videos, and web assets worldwide with low latency and high transfer speeds. It's perfect for testing how CDNs work and optimizing your website's performance.
6. Amazon DynamoDB
- Free Tier Limit: 25GB of storage, up to 200 million requests per month, and 2.5 read and write capacity units.
- What You Can Do: DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database service. You can build and scale applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. The Free Tier allows you to explore DynamoDB’s features, including automatic scaling and on-demand backups.
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