Chapter 1 from Amazon Web Services in Action by Michael Wittig and Andreas Wittig.

What is Amazon Web Services?

1.1. What is cloud computing?

1.2. What can you do with AWS?

Hosting a web shop

Running a Java EE application in your private network

Implementing a highly available system

Profiting from low costs for batch processing infrastructure

1.3. How you can benefit from using AWS

Innovative and fast-growing platform

Services solve common problems

Enabling automation

Flexible capacity (scalability)

Built for failure (reliability)

Reducing time to market

Benefiting from economies of scale

Global infrastructure

Professional partner

1.4. How much does it cost?

Free Tier

Billing example

Pay-per-use opportunities

1.5. Comparing alternatives

1.6. Exploring AWS services

1.7. Interacting with AWS

Management Console

Command-line interface

SDKs

Blueprints

1.8. Creating an AWS account

Signing up

Signing In

Creating a key pair

1.9. Create a billing alarm to keep track of your AWS bill

Summary