Domain One of The AWS Solution Architect Associate exam guide SAA-C03 requires us to be able to Design a multi-tier architecture solution so that is our topic for this section.
We cover the need to know aspects of how to design Multi-Tier solutions using AWS services.
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Learning Objectives
- Learn some of the essential services for creating multi-tier architect on AWS, including the Simple Queue Service (SQS) and the Simple Notification Service (SNS)
- Understand data streaming and how Amazon Kinesis can be used to stream data
- Learn how to design a multi-tier solution on AWS, and the important aspects to take into consideration when doing so
- Learn how to design cost-optimized AWS architectures
- Understand how to leverage AWS services to migrate applications and databases to the AWS Cloud
There are two elements you need to provision when creating your Amazon MSK clusters: Broker instances and Broker storage. A Broker instance is a worker node that helps to manage the Kafka cluster. Your clusters can have multiple brokers, but can also operate as a single node, if necessary. Broker instances can be run within the same availability zone or across many availability zones to create a highly available cluster, something that many architectures will require.
One of the large benefits of using Amazon MSK over a roll-your-own version of Kafka is that Amazon will keep an eye on these broker nodes and replace them if they become unhealthy. Otherwise, you would have to manage all of that yourself. Broker storage is where all of your data will be kept that comes streaming into Amazon MSK.
Within Amazon, this storage is housed within EBS volumes, and gains all the protections that EBS provides, like durability and fault tolerance. You can also encrypt these data volumes using Amazon EBS Server-side encryption and AWS KMS, the Key Management Service. An interesting note about storage however, is that once you have assigned your Broker storage, you can only increase the amount of storage, it can not be decreased. The broker's storage can be autoscaled upwards if you do reach your maximum capacity.
If you already have a Kafka cluster that you are managing yourself, either on-premises or within the cloud, you can migrate over to Amazon MSK. There are many third-party and open-source tools like MirrorMaker which can help replicate the data from your Kafka cluster into Amazon MSK.
Andrew is fanatical about helping business teams gain the maximum ROI possible from adopting, using, and optimizing Public Cloud Services. Having built 70+ Cloud Academy courses, Andrew has helped over 50,000 students master cloud computing by sharing the skills and experiences he gained during 20+ years leading digital teams in code and consulting. Before joining Cloud Academy, Andrew worked for AWS and for AWS technology partners Ooyala and Adobe.