Cloud Wars: from sign-up to VM (2/6) | Amazon Web Services

Chapter 3, Part 2: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Introduction

Welcome to the continuation of the third installment of Paul’s Tutorial Series! As mentioned in my previous article, this tutorial is all about exploring cloud providers.

More specifically, I wanted to look at first user experience across them, so I decided to sign-up to 6 cloud providers, and capture my experience spinning up a free-tier VM right after sign up.

The (6) cloud providers I tested are, in alphabetical order:

This means that this third chapter of my tutorial series will have 6 parts, one for each cloud provider.

While I walk you through every part of this chapter, I will measure the following:

Configuration of the default VM offered in free tier
Approximate number of clicks needed from post-signup page to having a VM up and running
Number of screens needed in a replay to publish this tutorial
Spin-up time
Usability score (from my perspective, in a scale of 1 to 5)

Today’s Tutorial: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Let’s dive into AWS, by clicking on the image below:

AWS is, as expected, super solid. Maybe it’s because everyone is used to it, but the walk through is simple and the launch time efficient:

Config of default free tier VM	1 vCPU / 1GB RAM
Approximate number of clicks from signup to VM	10-15
Number of replay screens	17
Spin-up time	< 10s
Paul’s usability score (1-5)	4