Services
AWS cloud resources are available through services, APIs accessible through the AWS console or programtically. As an introduction, common service categories and offerings are briefly explored here.1 2
Service offerings and pricing may differ between regions. This should be taken into account when designing cloud applications. A complete listing of AWS services by region is available here
Compute
Compute services enable users to run and host programs and applications.
| Name | Logo | Description |
|---|---|---|
| EC2 | 
|
Elastic Cloud Compute: Provisioning and managing of virtual and private physical servers |
| ECS | 
|
Elastic Container Service: Executing containerized applications on custom infrastructure |
| EKS | 
|
Elastic Kubernetes Service: Managed Kubernetes clusters |
| Lambda | 
|
Code execution in ephemeral environments without need for provisioning/managing underlying infrastructure |
Storage
AWS offers various data storage services of the following types:
- Object Storage: Stores objects, composed of data and user metadata.
- Block Storage: Data is stored within a block of memory3
- File Storage: Storage provided via a file system.
| Name | Logo | Description |
|---|---|---|
| S3 | 
|
Simple Storage Service. Object storage where data can be uploaded to uniquely named data buckets under a unique key |
| EBS | 
|
Elastic Block Storage. Provides SSD and HDD block storage for EC2 servers |
| EFS | 
|
Elastic File Storage. Serverless remote storage via the NFSv4 protocol |
Database
While databases can be configured by leveraging both compute and storage services, AWS offers database services to facilitate proviioning, managing, and monitoring such systems. These offerings include the following database types:
- In-Memory: Intended to store frequently accessed values for increased read-performance.
- Relational: Tabular row data, similar to data stored in spreadsheets. Data typically well-defined.
- NoSQL: Data stored in documents (key-value pairs) that may not necessarily have a well-defined schema.
- Time Series: Data is indexed in such a manner so that is easy to query and analyze within a given date range.
| Name | Logo | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Elasticache | 
|
Managed Redis and Memcached in-memory databases |
| RDS | 
|
Relational Database Service: For provisioning relational database systems (MySQL, Postgres, etc.) |
| DynamoDB | 
|
Key-value NoSQL database |
| DocumentDB | 
|
MongoDB-esque NoSQL database |
| Timestream | 
|
Enables querying for data within a certain date range. |
While listed under the analytics category, AWS offers Redshift, a Postgres-esque columnar database, for querying larger datasets. It is intended as a data warehousing solution rather than a general-use database.
Networking & Content Delivery
Networking & Content Delivery services allow cloud developers to define virtual networks, firewall rules, and CDNs to improve latency.
| Name | Logo | Description |
|---|---|---|
| VPC | 
|
Define virtual private networks within a given IP range |
| Cloudfront | 
|
Managed CDN network for content delivery in different regions of the globe |
| Route53 | 
|
Amazon’s DNS service |
Security, Identity, & Compliance
Security, Identity, & Compliance services assist with securing and auditing access to both AWS account resources and cloud applications.
| Name | Logo | Description |
|---|---|---|
| IAM | 
|
Ensures authorized access to AWS cloud resources |
| Cognito | 
|
Provides identity and login managmenet for cloud applications |
| Secret Manager | 
|
Manages storage and access of private application values (i.e. database credentials, private application keys, etc.) |
Management and Governance
Management and Governance services are responsible for providing visibility into finacial, application, and user activity in the AWS cloud.
| Name | Logo | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudwatch |
|
Application and service logging |
| Cloudtrail |
|
Audit trail of cloud account activities |