AWS : Case study on NASA…!!!
Hello guys, today I’m back with a new & interesting topic or a case study of, “Use of AWS in NASA”. So today we’ll first see some main & interesting topics like : What is AWS & Cloud Computing with AWS? Why it is a leading cloud platform ? Global network of AWS. Competitors in cloud computing & Advantages of using AWS. Then we’ll see, the use case study : Use of AWS in NASA.
What is AWS ?
Amazon Web Services is a subsidiary of Amazon providing on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis.
Cloud Computing in AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 175 fully featured services from data centers globally. Millions of customers — including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies — are using AWS to lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a secure cloud services platform, offering compute power, database storage, content delivery and other functionality to help businesses scale and grow. Running web and application servers in the cloud to host dynamic websites.
Why do we need AWS ?
Amazon Web Service is made up of so many different cloud computing products and services. The highly profitable Amazon division provides servers, storage, networking, remote computing, email, mobile development, and security. AWS is so large and present in the computing world that it’s far outpaced its competitors.
Why AWS is leading cloud platform in market ?
AWS provides some very important functions, which are stated as below :
- Most functionality :
AWS has significantly more services, and more features within those services than any other cloud provider from infrastructure technologies like compute, storage, and databases to emerging technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, data lakes and analytics, and Internet of Things. This makes it faster, easier, and more cost effective to move your existing applications to the cloud and build nearly anything you can imagine. AWS also has the deepest functionality within those services. - Largest Community :
AWS has the largest and most dynamic community with millions of active customers and tens of thousands of partners globally. Customers across virtually every industry and of every size including startups, enterprises and public sector organizations are running every imaginable use case on AWS. - Most Secure :
AWS is architected to be the most flexible and secure cloud computing environment available today. Backend provided by a deep set of the cloud security tools with 230 security, compliance & governance services & features. AWS supports 90 security standards & the compliance certifications. There are total 117 AWS services that store customer data offer the ability to encrypt the data. - Fastest pace of innovation :
With AWS, you can leverage the latest technologies to experiment and innovate more quickly. As AWS continually accelerating the pace of innovation to invent entirely new technologies you can use to transform your business. Also in 2014, AWS pioneered the server-less computing space with the launch of AWS Lambda, which lets developers run their code without provisioning or managing servers. - Mostly proven operational expertise :
AWS has unmatched experience, maturity, reliability, security, and performance that you can depend upon for your most important applications. For over 13 years, AWS has been delivering cloud services to millions of customers around the world running a wide variety of use cases. AWS has the most operational experience, at greater scale, of any cloud provider.
Global Network of AWS :
AWS now spans 77 Availability Zones within 24 geographic regions around the world, and has announced plans for nine more Availability Zones and three more AWS Regions in Indonesia, Japan, and Spain.
Competitors in Cloud :
As we’ve seen all the points related to the AWS as stated, let’s explore the use case of AWS i.e, “AWS in NASA”.
Use Case : AWS in NASA
As all of us had came this far in this topic, so we’ll first see some important things about the NASA & then we’ll move forward towards our main topic.
Have you ever looked up at night and wondered about the mysteries of space? Or marveled at the expansiveness of our galaxy? You can easily explore all this and more at the NASA Image and Video Library, which provides easy access to more than 140,000 still images, audio recordings, and videos & documenting NASA’s more than half a century of achievements in exploring the vast unknown. For NASA, providing the public with such easy access to the wonders of space has been a journey all its own.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the U.S. Federal Government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.
NASA’s motto is: “For the Benefit of All”.
Why NASA use Amazon Web Services (AWS) ?
Development of the new NASA Image and Video Library was handled by the Web Services Office within NASA’s Enterprise Service and Integration Division. Technology selection, solution design, and implementation was managed by InfoZen, the WESTPrime contract service provider. As an Advanced Consulting Partner of the AWS Partner Network (APN), InfoZen chose to build the solution on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
“Amazon was the largest cloud services provider, had a strong government cloud presence, and offered the most suitable cloud in terms of elasticity,” recalls Sandeep Shilawat, Cloud Program Manager at InfoZen.
NASA formally launched its Image and Video Library in March 2017.
Key features include:
• A user interface that automatically scales for PCs, tablets, and mobile phones across virtually every browser and operating system.
• A search interface that lets people easily find what they’re looking for, including the ability to choose from gallery view or list view and to narrow-down search results by media type and/or by year.
• The ability to easily download any media found on the site or share it on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.
• Access to the metadata associated with each asset, such as file size, file format, which center created the asset, and when it was created. When available, users can also view EXIF/camera data for still images such as exposure, shutter speed, and lens used.
• An application programming interface (API) for automated uploads of new content — including integration with NASA’s existing authentication mechanism.
Architecture :
The NASA Image and Video Library is a cloud-native solution, with the front-end web app separated from the backend API. It runs as immutable infrastructure in a fully automated environment, with all infrastructure defined in code to support continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD).
NASA is currently using the 10+ services of AWS. To build the solution, InfoZen used the Amazon Web Services. So let’s take a deep dive into those 10+ AWS services used by NASA.
• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), which provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. This enables NASA to scale up under load and scale down during periods of inactivity to save money, and pay for only what it uses.
• Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), which is used to distribute incoming traffic across multiple Amazon EC2 instances, as required to achieve redundancy and fault-tolerance.
• Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), which supports object storage for incoming (uploaded) media, metadata, and published assets.
• Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), which is used to decouple incoming jobs from pipeline processes.
• Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), which is used for automatic synchronization and failover.
• Amazon DynamoDB, a fast and flexible NoSQL database service, which is used to track incoming jobs, published assets, and users.
• Amazon Elastic Transcoder, which is used to transcode audio and video to various resolutions.
• Amazon Cloud Search, which is used to support searching by free text or fields.
• Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), which is used to trigger the processing pipeline when new content is uploaded.
• AWS Cloud Formation, which enables automated creation, updating, and destruction of AWS resources. InfoZen also used the Troposphere library, which enables the creation of objects via AWS Cloud Formation using Python instead of hand-coded JSON — each object representing one AWS resource such as an instance, an Elastic IP (EIP) address, or a security group.
• Amazon Cloud Watch, which provides a monitoring service for AWS cloud resources and the applications running on AWS.
NASA has known that this library of theirs will be an Image and Video Library for the Future, in which all the studies regarding all the topics can be found. Yet NASA is able to make it’s vast wealth of pictures, videos, and audio files previously in some 60 “collections” across NASA’s 10 centers & easily discoverable in one centralized location. So, Let’s see the benefits of this NASA Image and Video Library.
• Easy Access to the Wonders of Space. The Image and Video Library automatically optimizes the user experience for each user’s particular device. It is also fully compliant with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which requires federal agencies to make their technology solutions accessible to people with disabilities. Captions can be turned on or off for videos played on the site, and text-based caption files can be downloaded for any video.
• Built-in Scalability. All components of the NASA Image and Video Library are built to scale on demand, as needed to handle usage spikes.
“On-demand scalability will be invaluable for events such as the solar eclipse that’s happening later this summer both as we upload new media and as the public comes to view that content,” says Bryan Walls, Imagery Experts Deputy Program Manager at NASA.
• Good Use of Taxpayer Dollars. By building its Image and Video Library in the cloud, NASA avoided the costs associated with deploying and maintaining server and storage hardware in-house. Instead, the agency can simply pay for the AWS resources it uses at any given time.
Conclusion :
As we have seen all the concepts in brief about the Amazon Web Services (AWS) like : What is AWS & Cloud Computing with AWS? Why it is a leading cloud platform ? Global network of AWS. Competitors in cloud computing & Advantages of using AWS & also seen the case study which is on the topic, “AWS in NASA”. So, it’s time to wrap up all the things. In advance thanks to all who support & stay tune for the next blog. Thank You.
