PrintIn this course, we will be making heavy use of Amazon Web Services, or AWS for short. AWS is currently the premier cloud computing vendor, both in terms of the breadth of the cloud computing services offered, and in terms of ease of use. Learning to use AWS is one of the skills you will be acquiring in this course.
Amazon recently changed the way in which they administer educational grants (previously they were $100 credits issued to instructors for sharing with students). Now students need to register for these grants individually and the amount has been reduced to $35. We've conducted surveys of previous classes and $35 should be sufficient for you to complete the class without paying anything extra yourself and Penn State is negotiating with Amazon to become an institutional member of the Educate program but this is ongoing. You need to immediately sign up for AWS, and then go to Apply for AWS Educate and apply.
Go to Amazon.com and click on "Sign Up." There are currently four steps to signing up for AWS, none of them takes long but you do have to entrust Amazon with a great deal of personal information.
First, you need to create your account. You can either use your existing Amazon account if you have ever bought something from Amazon, or use a new account. Please make careful note of the password you select when setting up your account, you will be needing it. It is characteristic of Amazon Web Services that things work the way they are supposed to, but you don't get a lot of hand-holding. So, if you lose your password, I'm not sure it would be easy to recover it, and you will need to fill out a form with personal information.
Second, you will need to provide payment information, including a credit card number. Please note that after you sign up, and apply for the Educate grant you should (on a timeline Amazon will advise you of) receive $35 of AWS usage thanks to the Educate program mentioned above. This should be enough for you to complete the course and avoid any credit card charges if you are careful and follow the course instructions about explicitly stopping your instances (virtual machines) when you are not using them. You are responsible for any of the fees incurred if your usage exceeds the grant amount. The current step of signing up is free, but you should be aware that your credit card will be charged immediately upon going over your credit amount when you do start to use AWS services. As part of this step, you'll be asked to select a support plan. The Basic (Free) support is all you need for this class.
Third, there is an identity confirmation step during which you will receive a phone call and enter a code. This ensures you are a human. Amazon does not use the phone number provided here for other purposes.
Finally, you will confirm that all is well. Please make a note of your AWS account number by going back to amazon web services and then clicking on the Account name in the top right corner and choosing "My Account" from the dropdown list. Your account ID number should appear close to the top of the page that comes up. Use the ID on the Educate apply link above and complete the form, and you will, in turn, receive a code that you can redeem for $35 of credit. You redeem this code by logging into AWS, clicking on your username in the top right hand corner, selecting Billing and Cost Management, then Credits from the column on the left. Enter the code in the appropriate location, complete the Captcha verification and click Redeem.
If any of these directions is confusing or inaccurate, please post a question or comment to the Technical Discussion Forum in Canvas.