AWS Cloud Setup

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centres globally. However, this vast ecosystem can be overwhelming. Effective AWS cloud setup requires careful architectural planning, security hardening, and ongoing cost governance. At SoniNow, we specialise in designing and deploying AWS environments that are secure, scalable, and purpose-built for your workloads — whether you are launching a greenfield project or migrating existing infrastructure.

EC2 & Compute Setup

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is the backbone of most AWS environments. Choosing the right instance family, sizing, and configuration has a direct impact on performance and cost.

Instance Selection and Sizing

We begin by analysing your application's CPU, memory, and I/O requirements. For general-purpose workloads, we recommend instances from the t3, m6i, or m7g families. Memory-intensive applications — such as in-memory caches or real-time analytics — benefit from r6i or x2gd instances, while compute-optimised workloads like CI/CD runners or batch processing use c6i or c7g families. We leverage AWS Compute Optimizer to validate our recommendations against actual utilisation patterns.

Auto Scaling and Load Balancing

Static provisioning leads to either overpaying for idle capacity or failing under traffic spikes. We configure Auto Scaling Groups with dynamic scaling policies tied to CloudWatch metrics (CPU, memory, request count per target). These are paired with an Application Load Balancer (ALB) or Network Load Balancer (NLB) to distribute traffic across healthy instances across multiple Availability Zones. This architecture delivers both high availability and cost efficiency — scaling down during off-peak hours automatically.

Amazon S3 Storage

Simple Storage Service (S3) provides industry-leading durability and scalability for object storage. We structure your S3 buckets using a logical hierarchy and apply lifecycle policies to transition infrequently accessed data to S3 Standard-IA or S3 Glacier, reducing storage costs by up to 70% without compromising retrieval speed when needed. For compliance-sensitive data, we enable S3 Object Lock and default encryption with AWS KMS.

VPC Configuration

A well-architected Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is the foundation of network security in AWS. We design multi-tier VPCs with separate public, private, and database subnets distributed across at least two Availability Zones.

Network Architecture

Public subnets host load balancers and NAT gateways; private subnets contain application servers and worker nodes; and isolated subnets house databases and caching layers. We implement flow logs for network traffic analysis and use VPC endpoints (Gateway and Interface endpoints) to keep traffic between your VPC and AWS services like S3 and DynamoDB within the AWS backbone — never traversing the public internet.

Connectivity and Hybrid Cloud

For organisations with on-premises infrastructure, we configure AWS Site-to-Site VPN or AWS Direct Connect to establish private, low-latency connectivity between your data centre and VPC. Transit Gateway is used to interconnect multiple VPCs and on-premises networks in a hub-and-spoke topology, simplifying routing and security policy management.

Security Groups and IAM

Security in AWS follows the shared responsibility model. We implement defence in depth at every layer.

Security Groups and Network ACLs

Security groups act as virtual firewalls for EC2 instances and other resources. Our approach is least-privilege by default: we allow only the specific ports and source IP ranges required for your application to function. For example, a web server security group permits inbound TCP/443 from 0.0.0.0/0 and TCP/22 only from your bastion host or VPN CIDR. Network ACLs provide an additional stateless layer at the subnet boundary for defence in depth.

Identity and Access Management

IAM policies govern who can access which resources and under what conditions. We design IAM roles with fine-grained permissions — a WebServerRole might have read-only access to an S3 bucket and write access to CloudWatch Logs, and nothing more. IAM Roles Anywhere extends these same principles to workloads running outside AWS. Where practical, we replace long-lived access keys with IAM roles assigned directly to EC2 instances, Lambda functions, and ECS tasks.

AWS WAF and Shield

For internet-facing applications, we deploy AWS WAF to protect against common web exploits such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting. AWS Shield Standard is included automatically; for higher threat profiles, we enable AWS Shield Advanced for DDoS mitigation and 24/7 access to the AWS DDoS Response Team.

Cost Optimization

AWS provides enormous flexibility, but without governance, costs can spiral. We implement a structured cost optimisation framework that spans all five pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

Right-Sizing and Savings Plans

We perform regular right-sizing analyses using AWS Cost Explorer and Compute Optimizer, identifying instances that are over-provisioned or under-utilised. Compute Savings Plans or EC2 Instance Savings Plans are applied to steady-state workloads, delivering up to 72% savings compared to On-Demand pricing. For predictable batch or ephemeral workloads, we use Spot Instances with a fallback strategy — achieving 90% discounts while maintaining availability.

Storage and Data Transfer Optimisation

Beyond S3 lifecycle policies, we review Elastic Block Store (EBS) volume types — converting gp2 volumes to gp3 for up to 20% lower cost and higher baseline performance. Data transfer costs are minimised by consolidating workloads within the same region and Availability Zone where appropriate, and by using CloudFront as a content delivery edge.

Governance and Budgets

We set up AWS Budgets with alert thresholds at 50%, 80%, and 100% of projected spend. AWS Organizations with Service Control Policies (SCPs) enforce cost-safe guardrails — for example, preventing the launch of expensive instance types in non-production accounts. Tagging strategies (e.g., Environment, Project, CostCenter) enable chargeback and showback reporting through Cost Explorer and third-party tools.

Migration and DevOps Enablement

An AWS setup is not a one-time event — it is the launchpad for modern DevOps practices. We integrate your new AWS environment with AWS CodePipeline and CodeBuild for CI/CD, Amazon ECR for container image storage, and AWS CloudFormation or Terraform for infrastructure-as-code (IaC). This ensures that your cloud foundation is repeatable, auditable, and ready for rapid iteration.

Whether you are setting up your first AWS account or refactoring a sprawling multi-account organisation, SoniNow's AWS specialists bring the architectural depth and operational experience to build a cloud foundation that is secure, cost-efficient, and built to scale.