AWS Services Overview

Flashcards covering definitions and primary use cases for various AWS services.

EC2

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

Lambda

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

Auto Scaling

Automatically adds/removes EC2 instances for handling traffic spikes and ensuring high availability.

VPC

Your isolated private network used for network segmentation and security boundaries.

ELB (ALB/NLB)

Distributes traffic to targets with ALB for web apps (HTTP) and NLB for high performance (TCP).

Route 53

Managed DNS service for routing users to endpoints and implementing failover strategies.

S3

Object storage (Files/Blobs) used for static websites, backups, and media storage.

EBS

Virtual hard drive for ONE EC2 instance, used for boot volumes and persistent database storage.

EFS

Shared file system for Linux, providing shared storage for multiple Linux web servers.

RDS / Aurora

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

DynamoDB

Managed NoSQL (Key-Value) database designed for high scale with simple schema and millisecond access.

IAM

Identity & Access Management service controlling who can access resources with defined user roles.

CloudWatch

Monitoring & observability service for tracking metrics, logs, and alarms.

SQS

Message Queue service (Pull) that allows decoupling systems and buffering requests.

SNS

Notification service (Push) for sending messages to multiple recipients via various protocols.

API Gateway

API front door exposing Lambda/HTTP endpoints to the internet.

CloudFormation

Infrastructure as Code service for automating deployments and replicating environments.

Systems Manager (SSM)

Fleet management for EC2 providing patch management and config storage.

Secrets Manager

Service for credential storage, enabling auto-rotation of database passwords.

KMS

Key Management Service used for creating and managing encryption keys.

Organizations

Service for multi-account management, centralizing billing and applying policies across accounts.

DataSync

Online data transfer service for moving large amounts of data from on-prem to AWS.

Storage Gateway

Hybrid cloud storage bridge enabling frequent access to files on-prem while backing up to the cloud.

Direct Connect

Physical dedicated fiber connection for high security and consistent network speed.

VPN

Encrypted tunnel over the internet, providing secure connections to on-premises infrastructure.

ElastiCache

In-memory caching service (Redis/Memcached) for speeding up database interactions.

FSx

Specialized shared file systems for high performance or Windows environments.

Step Functions

Visual workflow orchestrator for managing complex Lambda functions and state machines.

EventBridge

Serverless event bus connecting AWS with SaaS applications.

Athena

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

Glue

Serverless ETL service for preparing and transforming data.

EMR

Managed Hadoop/Spark cluster for processing massive amounts of big data.

Kinesis

Service for real-time data streaming used for live ingestion of various data types.

OpenSearch

Managed search engine service for adding search capabilities and log analytics.

Snowball

Physical data migration device for moving petabytes of data without internet.

Migration Hub

Dashboard for tracking migrations and discovering server dependencies.

WAF

Web Application Firewall to protect applications from common web exploits.

Shield

Service providing DDoS protection against distributed denial-of-service attacks.

GuardDuty

Intelligent threat detection service for identifying compromised instances using machine learning.

Inspector

Vulnerability scanner for assessing EC2 instances for security vulnerabilities.

AWS Backup

Centralized backup service for managing backups across multiple AWS services.

R Family

Memory Optimized instance type, suitable for in-memory applications.

C Family

Compute Optimized instance type, ideal for high performance and compute-intensive tasks.

M Family

General Purpose instance type balancing compute, memory, and networking.

I Family

Storage Optimized instance type, designed for high IOPS and data-intensive applications.

T Family

Burstable General Purpose instance type for variable workloads.

G Family

Graphics Optimized instance type, suitable for machine learning and gaming.