Appendix. AWS primer
This appendix provides a brief primer on Amazon Web Services to get you up to speed with the AWS environment and services.
Please note that, because Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is not currently available in AWS Free Tier, the procedures in this book necessarily involve creating live resources in your Amazon Web Services account, which can incur some charges.[1] Don’t worry—we will tell you as soon as you can safely delete a given resource. In addition, you can also set alerts on your spending in order to be notified whenever the charges go above a certain threshold.[2]
1 For detailed pricing information on the AWS Kinesis Data Streams service, see https://aws.amazon.com/kinesis/streams/pricing/.
2 You can read how to set spending alerts on your AWS usage here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awsaccountbilling/latest/aboutv2/billing-getting-started.html#d0e1069.
Amazon Kinesis is a fully hosted service, available only to users of the Amazon Web Services platform. Don’t worry if you haven’t worked with AWS before. This appendix introduces the key building blocks of AWS and will help you get set up on the platform.
To get the most out of this book, you need an AWS account. If you don’t have one, you can sign up by clicking the Get Started for Free or Create a Free Account button on the AWS homepage:
https://aws.amazon.com/