AWS Services Overview and Key Concepts

AMI (Amazon Machine Image)

A template that contains a software configuration (operating system, application server, and applications) for EC2 instances.

Instance type

Specifies the hardware of the host computer used for the EC2 instance.

Key pair

A set of security credentials that are used to connect to your EC2 instances.

Network settings (VPC, subnet, security group)

Configuration that determines how your EC2 instance connects to the internet and other resources.

Storage configuration

Defines how storage is allocated and managed for EC2 instances.

User data (for bootstrapping)

Scripts or commands that are run on an EC2 instance at launch.

Reserved Instances

A pricing model that provides a significant discount compared to on-demand pricing for EC2 instances when you commit to using them for a one- or three-year term.

Savings Plans

A flexible pricing model that provides significant savings on your AWS usage in exchange for a commitment to a consistent amount of usage.

Spot Instances

EC2 instances that can be purchased at a discount compared to on-demand pricing, suitable for flexible workloads.

CloudWatch

A monitoring service for AWS cloud resources and the applications you run on AWS.

Auto Scaling

A service that automatically adjusts the number of EC2 instances in response to demand.

Graviton instances

EC2 instances powered by AWS Graviton processors, designed for cost-effective performance.

S3 Standard

Storage class for frequently accessed data in Amazon S3.

S3 Intelligent-Tiering

Storage class for data with unknown or changing access patterns.

S3 Standard-IA

Storage class for infrequently accessed data that requires quick retrieval.

S3 One Zone-IA

Storage class for infrequently accessed data stored in a single availability zone.

S3 Glacier

Storage class for archival data with retrieval times ranging from minutes to hours.

S3 Glacier Deep Archive

The lowest-cost storage class for data archiving, with retrieval times in hours.

S3 Lifecycle Management

Automatically transitions objects to cheaper storage or deletes them based on defined rules.

S3 Versioning

Keeps multiple versions of an object to protect against accidental overwrites or deletions.

Block Storage (EBS)

High-performance storage used with EC2, functioning like a hard drive.

Object Storage (S3)

Stores data as objects, is scalable, and accessed via HTTP APIs.

RDS (Relational DB)

A managed relational database service that supports structured, SQL-based data.

DynamoDB

A NoSQL database service that provides low-latency key-value store capabilities.

Aurora

A high-performance managed relational database service compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Redshift

A fully managed data warehouse service designed for large-scale data analytics.

ElastiCache

An in-memory caching service that supports Redis and Memcached for low-latency applications.

Neptune

A fully managed graph database service.

DocumentDB

A managed document database service that is compatible with MongoDB.

Operational Excellence

One of the five pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework, focusing on monitoring and operations.

Security

One of the five pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework, focusing on IAM, encryption, and VPC.

Reliability

One of the five pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework, focusing on multi-AZ deployments and Auto Scaling.

Performance Efficiency

One of the five pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework, focusing on right-sizing instances and caching.

Cost Optimization

One of the five pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework, focusing on using Spot instances and storage tiers.

Amazon ECS

A fully managed container orchestration service for Docker containers.

Amazon EKS

A managed Kubernetes service that simplifies running Kubernetes on AWS.

Fargate

A serverless compute engine for containers that works with both Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS.

AWS Lambda

A serverless compute service that runs code in response to events and scales automatically.

Elastic Beanstalk

A platform-as-a-service (PaaS) for deploying web applications without managing the underlying infrastructure.

Amazon EFS

A scalable, elastic file storage service for Linux workloads needing shared access.

Snowcone

Small, portable

Snowball Edge

Large-scale edge computing and transfer

Snowmobile

Petabyte-scale data transfer (entire data centers)

Application Load Balancer (ALB)

HTTP/HTTPS, Layer 7

Network Load Balancer (NLB)

TCP/UDP, Layer 4

Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB)

Integrates with third-party appliances

AWS Trusted Advisor

Provides real-time best practices in five categories: cost optimization, security, fault tolerance, performance, and service limits.

EC2

AWS Compute service

Lambda

AWS Compute service

S3

AWS Storage service

EBS

AWS Storage service

RDS

AWS Database service

CloudTrail

Auditing API calls and account activity

Amazon Auto Scaling

Automatically adjusts capacity to maintain performance and optimize cost.

AWS CloudFormation

Infrastructure as code — defines and provisions AWS resources using templates.

AWS Storage Gateway

Hybrid cloud storage service that connects on-prem environments to AWS storage.

AWS GuardDuty

Threat detection using ML and threat intelligence to monitor AWS accounts.

Amazon Macie

Data security and privacy service that uses ML to discover and protect sensitive data (e.g., PII in S3).

SQS (Simple Queue Service)

Decouples components, message queue

SNS (Simple Notification Service)

Pub/sub system for pushing messages to multiple subscribers

AWS Cloud Advantages

Pay-as-you-go, Scalable and elastic, Reliable and secure, Global reach, Cost-effective

AWS Shared Responsibility Model

AWS: Security of the cloud (hardware, software, infrastructure); Customer: Security in the cloud (data, IAM, OS patches)

AWS Support Plans

Basic - Free, billing support; Developer - Email support during business hours; Business - 24/7 support, Trusted Advisor; Enterprise - All above + Technical Account Manager

AWS Global Infrastructure

Regions, Availability Zones (AZs), Edge Locations (for CDN via CloudFront)

Security Groups

Instance-level firewall, stateful

NACLs

Subnet-level, stateless

VPN

Internet-based encrypted connection

Direct Connect

Dedicated private connection with higher performance

IaaS

Infrastructure (e.g., EC2)

PaaS

Platform (e.g., Elastic Beanstalk)

SaaS

Software (e.g., Google Docs)