Overview

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally. For University of Oregon faculty and staff, AWS is the recommended cloud provider for all non-Microsoft workloads. This guide provides a high-level overview of the benefits of using AWS and the process for getting your own UO-managed AWS account.

Key Benefits of AWS for the UO Community

Accelerate Research and Innovation

For university researchers, the ability to move quickly is essential to advancing discovery. With AWS, you can automate entire workflows using serverless functions, such as triggering data processing the moment results are uploaded, without ever having to manage servers. In addition, cost-effective archival storage ensures long-term retention of research data, keeping valuable results secure and accessible over time. These capabilities not only remove technical barriers and free researchers to focus on their core mission, but also represent just a glimpse of the broader advantages AWS brings to the research community.

Build Resilient and Highly Available Services

For departments running essential public-facing websites or critical internal applications, downtime is not an option. AWS provides the fundamental building blocks to create highly available systems that can automatically withstand data center failures. By architecting solutions across multiple Availability Zones (AZs), you can ensure continuity of service for your users and protect the university’s mission from unexpected disruptions.

Scale to Meet Any Demand

Whether you’re a researcher providing access to a popular dataset that suddenly sees a massive increase in download requests, or a department whose website experiences peak traffic only during event registration, AWS allows your infrastructure to grow and shrink dynamically. This elasticity ensures you have the power you need during peaks and are not paying for idle resources during lulls, making it a perfect fit for the variable workloads found across the university.

Ease the Path to Compliance

For researchers and departments handling regulated data, AWS provides a secure foundation that can ease the path to compliance with frameworks like NIST 800-171 and HIPAA. AWS manages the security of the cloud, and the UO Cloud Team provides a baseline secure environment. You are responsible for security in the cloud, but AWS provides the tools and services needed to encrypt data, manage access, and audit activity to meet stringent compliance requirements. This shared responsibility model helps you build secure and compliant applications more easily.

AWS and You

Getting Your UO AWS Account

Access to AWS is provisioned through a centralized request process. This ensures that all accounts are created with the necessary security guardrails and billing configurations from the start.

To request an account, please fill out the Cloud Account Request Form in the UO Service Portal.

Automated Billing

All UO-managed AWS accounts are centrally billed. When you request your account, you will provide a budget index, among several other key pieces of information. All usage-based charges incurred by your account will be automatically billed to this index on a monthly basis. Our team provides additional tools and guidance to help you monitor your spending and set up budget alerts to avoid unexpected costs.

Next Steps

Once your account has been created, you’re ready to start building. Here are some recommended next steps:

• Set up the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) to manage resources from your terminal.
• Learn about Managing Your Budget to keep costs under control.
• Read our Introduction to Infrastructure as Code to learn how to manage your AWS resources in a repeatable and automated fashion.