Studio in the Cloud for Digital Content Creation

Description: Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling helps you maintain application availability and allows you to automatically add or remove EC2 instances according to conditions you define. You can use the fleet management features of EC2 Auto Scaling to maintain the health and availability of your fleet. You can also use the dynamic and predictive scaling features of EC2 Auto Scaling to add or remove EC2 instances. Dynamic scaling responds to changing demand and predictive scaling automatically schedules the right number of EC2 instances based on predicted demand. Dynamic scaling and predictive scaling can be used together to scale faster.  

How Pricing Works: Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling features have no additional fees beyond the service fees for Amazon EC2, CloudWatch (for scaling policies), and the other AWS resources that you use. Visit the pricing page of each service to learn more.

Example: In this project, Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling allows the render farm you create to automatically grow and shrink capacity based on your usage. This helps you control render costs since you won't be paying for extra idle capacity that you're not using.

Description: Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) lets you provision a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud where you can launch AWS resources in a virtual network that you define. You have complete control over your virtual networking environment, including selection of your own IP address range, creation of subnets, and configuration of route tables and network gateways. You can use both IPv4 and IPv6 in your VPC for secure and easy access to resources and applications. 

How Pricing Works: For more information, see the Amazon VPC pricing page.

Example: In this project, you'll use Amazon VPC as the container for all the virtual workstations, shared storage and render farm workers that you will create in the tutorials. Because it is isolated from other virtual networks on AWS, the VPC keeps your data secure, while also allowing your users to share resources.

Description: Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provides fully managed, highly reliable file storage that is accessible over the industry-standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. It is built on Windows Server, delivering a wide range of administrative features such as user quotas, end-user file restore, and Microsoft Active Directory (AD) integration. It offers single-AZ and multi-AZ deployment options, fully managed backups, and encryption of data at rest and in transit. Amazon FSx file storage is accessible from Windows, Linux, and MacOS compute instances and devices running on AWS or on premises.  

How Pricing Works: With Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, you pay only for the resources you use. There are no minimum fees or set-up charges. You pay for the storage and throughput capacity that you specify for your file system, and for any backups of your file system. Standard data transfer fees apply for inter-AZ or inter-region access to file systems. For more information, please visit the Amazon FSx for Windows File Server pricing page.

Example: In this project, you'll use Amazon FSx for Windows File Server as the shared storage space for your studio. In the tutorials, you use it to host user profiles, application configuration files, as well as your project data. Amazon FSx is a great fit for production pipelines as it is not only high performance, but also automates many administration tasks, so you have more time for content creation.

Description: AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory, also known as AWS Managed Microsoft AD, enables your directory-aware workloads and AWS resources to use managed Active Directory in the AWS Cloud. AWS Managed Microsoft AD is built on actual Microsoft Active Directory and does not require you to synchronize or replicate data from your existing Active Directory to the cloud. You can use standard Active Directory administration tools and take advantage of built-in Active Directory features, such as Group Policy and single sign-on (SSO). With AWS Managed Microsoft AD, you can easily join Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS for SQL Server instances to your domain, and use AWS Enterprise IT applications such as Amazon WorkSpaces with Active Directory users and groups.

How Pricing Works: With AWS Directory Service, you pay only for the type and size of the managed directory that you use. There is no up-front commitment and no minimum fee. You can delete your managed directory at any time. For more information, please visit the AWS Directory Services pricing page.

Example: In this project, you'll use AWS Managed Microsoft AD to manage user accounts and profiles for your studio. In addition, it is also used to authenticate access to your Amazon FSx file system, which helps keep your data secure.

Description: AWS Secrets Manager helps you protect secrets needed to access your applications, services, and IT resources. The service enables you to easily rotate, manage, and retrieve database credentials, API keys, and other secrets throughout their lifecycle. Users and applications retrieve secrets with a call to Secrets Manager APIs, eliminating the need to hardcode sensitive information in plain text.  

How Pricing Works: With Secrets Manager, you pay based on the number of secrets stored and API calls made. There are no upfront costs or long-term contracts. You simply pay for usage, without incurring costs related to infrastructure, licensing, and personnel required to ensure your secrets are reliably and highly available.

You can try AWS Secrets Manager at no additional charge with a 30-day free trial. The free trial enables you to rotate, manage, and retrieve secrets over the 30-day period. Your free trial starts when you store your first secret.

AWS Secrets Manager carries a charge of $0.40 per secret per month (in the US East (N. Virginia) Region). For more information, please visit the AWS Secrets Manager pricing page.

Example: In this project, you'll use AWS Secrets Manager to store confidential information, like administrator passwords, that are used to connect to other services, such as AWS Directory Service. This allows you to set up your studio, while at the same time keeping that vital information secure.