Amazon EC2 + SharePoint Integrations

In this article, I will be discussing Amazon EC2 and SharePoint integration in details. Amazon EC2 is a web service provided by Amazon.com that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers. It consists of various types of EC2 instances such as t1.micro, m1.small, etc. Amazon EC2 provides customers a web services interface for creating and stopping instances and attaching storage devices to them. It also allows you to configure security groups and network settings and manage the contents of the virtual hard disks. Most importantly, you can set up your own AMI (Amazon Machine Image. based on an existing image on S3 (Simple Storage Service), which you can then launch your own instance of that image.

SharePoint is a Microsoft product used for collaboration and document management. It was originally created by Microsoft as a product named “Office SharePoint Server” or “MOSS”. SharePoint is now one of the main products of the Microsoft Office System product family. It is used by organizations to provide a common platform for management, development, storage and retrieval of company documents and related information. Using SharePoint, employees are able to collaborate with each other on projects and access information they need from any computer connected to the network. The main purpose of SharePoint is to store and organize all the data and documents so that people working in an organization can easily access them anytime and anywhere they want. It enables users to share information and resources. It helps in increasing productivity among employees and thus helps in better management of organization.

Amazon EC2 is integrated with SharePoint in the following ways:

Integration of Amazon EC2 and SharePoint

First, we create a new AMI instance. After creating a new AMI instance, we upload it to AWS S3 storage service and give it an appropriate name. Later on, we launch another AMI instance from the S3 storage service using a specific name. After launching a new instance, we connect our new instance to SharePoint Online using Windows PowerShell Cmdlets. We use PowerShell cmdlets along with SharePoint REST API to automate tasks such as creating new sites, uploading content, updating properties, viewing files, etc. Moreover, an administrator can connect SharePoint 2013 to AWS S3 storage service using PowerShell Cmdlets and he/she can also automate tasks such as copying files between SharePoint 2013 site collections and AWS S3 storage service, uploading content to SharePoint 2013 site collections directly from AWS S3 storage service, etc., using PowerShell Cmdlets. Also, an administrator can use PowerShell Cmdlets to automate various tasks related to managing EC2 instances as well as manipulating SharePoint content using AWS S3 service.

Benefits of Integration of Amazon EC2 and SharePoint

The benefits gained by using Amazon EC2 and SharePoint integration are as follows:

1. FlexibilityWith this integration, you can run SharePoint 2013 workloads on Amazon EC2 instances running Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012 operating systems. You can choose an AWS region closest to your users while still maintaining compliance requirements for data residency. For example, you can choose US East Region if you want your users to access your content from US locations only.2. Cost savingsBy integrating amazon ec2 with sharepoint, you can save cost because you no longer need to buy expensive hardware and invest in over-provisioning capacity that is not used at any given time. You can achieve cost savings by paying only for what you actually use instead of paying for complete infrastructure where you have included extra capacity for future use that may or may not materialize.3. AutomationBy integrating Amazon EC2 with SharePoint, you can automate many actions and get rid of manual intervention which helps reduce errors and saves time as well. Using PowerShell cmdlets you can automate many things including creating new sites, uploading content to site collection directly from AWS S3 storage service, copying files between Web Application Pools using remote PowerShell commands, etc., which makes administration much easier as there is no need for manual intervention by IT administrators; everything can be automated by PowerShell cmdlets.4. ScalabilityBy integrating Amazon EC2 with SharePoint you get scalability because you don’t need to worry about scaling up or scaling down your application infrastructure; everything is taken care of by the platform which manages the capacity automatically based on workload demand. You don’t need to worry about buying expensive hardware for future expansion or making space available on your storage servers; everything is taken care by the platform itself in terms of capacity provisioning without any human intervention/interference required by IT administrators.5. High AvailabilityWith this integration, you get high availability because everything is managed by AWS infrastructure itself; it takes care of managing load balancing across multiple instances, auto-scaling up/down based on workload demand and providing redundancy across multiple instances. You don’t need to worry about setting up redundant hardware or building complex software solutions to achieve redundancy; everything is taken care by AWS infrastructure itself.

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