Amazon Web Services

Northwestern provides access to Amazon Web Services (AWS)via the Internet2 NET+ AWS offering. NET+ AWS offers the following benefits:

• Direct billing to chart strings in NUFinancials
• Discounts of 5% for AWS services
• A waiver of AWS data egress fees for most applications

Alternatively, NIH-funded researchers may use AWS under the terms of the NIH STRIDES program, which includes the following benefits:

• Direct billing to chart strings in NUFinancials
• A waiver of AWS data egress fees for most applications
• 9% discount on all AWS services except S3 and Marketplace
• 14% discount on AWS S3 storage services (except Glacier Deep Archive)
• Free access to enterprise-level AWS support

In order to realize these benefits, AWS accounts owned by Northwestern units must be created via the Public Cloud Account Request (for new accounts) or moved into the Northwestern account structure (for existing accounts).

Accessing AWS

Please see https://www.it.northwestern.edu/support/login/aws.html for instructions for accessing the AWS console.

 
Sandbox Access

Northwestern IT operates a “sandbox” AWS account that provides faculty and staff an environment to learn about and experiment with AWS products and services. It is provided free of charge, though Northwestern IT will work with users to keep spending to a minimum.

All access to the sandbox account and resources created within it expire after 30 days.

The AWS sandbox account is a shared resource meant for experimentation and learning and cannot be used as a dev/test or production environment. Additionally, it is a shared environment so users must be considerate of each other and not modify or delete resources created by others.

AWS sandbox account access can be requested by contacting the AWS Cloud Operations Group.

AWS Academy

Amazon's AWS Academy program is for instructors wishing to offer AWS certification-aligned course materials or sandbox "Learner Labs" environments to students for classroom instruction. For more details, please refer to the AWS Academy website. The program is available to faculty members and instructors who complete an AWS Academy self-paced learner course and agree to teach at least one course per year using AWS Academy resources.

Contact awscloudops@northwestern.edu to request to be nominated for the program.

Getting Support

Northwestern IT does not directly support AWS services but facilitates support via our AWS reseller, DLT. If you require support from AWS, email awscloudops@northwestern.edu and include details of the issue. The Northwestern IT AWS Cloud Operations team will open a support ticket on your behalf.

Service Quota Increases

It is not currently possible for Northwestern users to directly request certain service quota increases in the AWS console. If you need to request a service quota increase, email awscloudops@northwestern.edu and include the details of the request, including the account ID, region, service limit, desired new value, and a justification for the increase. The Northwestern IT AWS Cloud Operations team will open a ticket to request the service quota increase on your behalf.

Community Support

Members of the Northwestern Cloud Community of Practice may be able to answer your questions. See below for information about joining the Cloud Community of Practice.

Resources

The following are resources available to Northwestern community members using or considering AWS accounts.

Northwestern Cloud Community of Practice

All IT practitioners across Northwestern with an interest in cloud computing are invited to join the Cloud Community of Practice. Staff members currently working with cloud resources or responsible for workloads in the public cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform) are especially welcome to share their experiences, questions, and challenges with the group. The primary channel for this community is the Teams space: CoP -Cloud. Membership is open to anyone with a Northwestern NetID.

Education and Training Opportunities

The Northwestern Cloud Community of Practice maintains a list of in-person and online training opportunities and resources here: https://sites.northwestern.edu/cloud/resources/education-and-training/.