AWS Services Overview

Flashcards covering key AWS services, their definitions, and use cases.

EC2

Virtual servers you manage (OS level) for hosting legacy apps, monoliths, or needing full control.

Lambda

Serverless compute (Code only) for event-driven tasks, short jobs (<15 mins), microservices.

Auto Scaling

Automates the addition/removal of EC2 instances to handle traffic spikes and ensure high availability.

VPC

Your isolated private network for network segmentation and security boundaries.

ELB (ALB/NLB)

Distributes traffic to targets, with ALB for web apps and NLB for high performance.

Route 53

A managed DNS service routing users to endpoints and implement failover strategies.

S3

Object storage for files/blobs used in static websites, backups, and data lakes.

EBS

A virtual hard drive for one EC2 instance providing boot volumes and persistent database storage.

EFS

A shared file system for Linux providing shared storage for multiple Linux web servers.

RDS / Aurora

Managed Relational (SQL) DB for structured data and complex queries.

DynamoDB

Managed NoSQL (Key-Value) DB suitable for high scale and simple schema.

IAM

Identity & Access Management to control user access to AWS resources.

CloudWatch

Monitoring and observability tool for tracking metrics, logs, and alarms.

SQS

A message queue (pull) for decoupling systems and buffering requests.

SNS

Notification Service (push) for sending messages to multiple endpoints.

API Gateway

API Front Door for exposing Lambda/HTTP endpoints to the internet.

AWS Config

Assesses, audits, and evaluates the configurations of your AWS resources.

CloudFormation

Infrastructure as Code for automating deployments and replicating environments.

Systems Manager (SSM)

Fleet management for EC2, covering patch management and access without SSH.

Secrets Manager

Service for storing and auto-rotating database passwords.

KMS

Key Management Service for creating and managing encryption keys.

Organizations

Management service for multi-account consolidation and policy application.

DataSync

An online data transfer service for moving large data to AWS storage solutions.

Storage Gateway

Hybrid cloud storage bridge for integrating on-premises data with cloud storage.

Direct Connect

A physical dedicated fiber connection providing secure and consistent network speed.

VPN

Encrypted tunnel over the internet for secure connections to on-premise systems.

ElastiCache

In-memory caching service for speeding up database reads and storing sessions.

FSx

Specialized shared file systems for Windows or high-performance computing.

Step Functions

Visual workflow orchestrator for managing complex workflows.

EventBridge

Serverless Event Bus for integrating SaaS applications with AWS.

Athena

Serverless SQL query service for running SQL queries on S3 data.

Glue

Serverless ETL service for preparing and cleaning data for analytics.

EMR

Managed Hadoop/Spark cluster for processing large-scale big data.

Kinesis

Real-time data streaming service for ingesting live data.

OpenSearch

Managed search engine for implementing search capabilities.

Snowball

Physical migration device for transferring large amounts of data.

Migration Hub

Dashboard for tracking the status of migration projects.

WAF

Web Application Firewall for protecting against SQL injection and XSS.

Shield

DDoS protection service for safeguarding against Distributed Denial of Service attacks.

GuardDuty

Intelligent threat detection service for identifying compromised instances.

Inspector

Vulnerability scanner for assessing EC2 instances for security threats.

AWS Backup

Service for managing centralized backup policies across AWS services.

R

Memory Optimized instance type for in-memory processing and real-time analytics.

C

Compute Optimized instance type designed for high performance workloads.

M

General Purpose instance type balanced for various workloads.

I

Storage Optimized instance type focusing on high IOPS and low latency.

T

Burstable General Purpose instance type for spiky traffic.

G

Graphics Optimized instance type focused on GPU-intensive tasks.