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AWS Core Services Overview: The Building Blocks of the Cloud
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AWS Core Services Overview: The Building Blocks of the Cloud
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a massive ecosystem with over 200 products.
But at its foundation are a few core services that many developers and companies use to build, deploy, and scale applications in the cloud.
This guide highlights the essential AWS services grouped by category, the ones you’re most likely to use in real-world projects.
Compute Services
- Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) → Virtual servers in the cloud for full control over your compute environment.
- AWS Lambda → Serverless compute that runs code on demand without managing servers.
- AWS Fargate → Run containers without managing EC2 instances.
- Amazon ECS / EKS → Container orchestration for Docker and Kubernetes workloads.
- AWS Elastic Beanstalk → Simplified app deployment and management platform.
Storage Services
- Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) → Scalable object storage for files, media, and backups.
- Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) → Block-level storage for EC2 instances.
- Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) → Shared file storage across multiple EC2 instances.
- AWS Backup → Centralized backup and recovery for AWS data.
Database Services
- Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) → Managed relational databases including PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB.
- Amazon DynamoDB → Fully managed NoSQL key-value and document database.
- Amazon ElastiCache (Redis / Memcached) → In-memory caching for fast data access.
- Amazon Aurora → High-performance, fully managed relational database compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Networking and Content Delivery
- Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) → Isolated virtual network for your AWS resources.
- Amazon Route 53 → Scalable DNS and domain name management service.
- Amazon CloudFront → Content Delivery Network (CDN) for global performance optimization.
- Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) → Automatically distributes traffic across multiple targets for fault tolerance.
DevOps and Management Tools
- AWS CloudFormation → Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to automate resource provisioning.
- AWS CloudWatch → Monitoring and observability for metrics, logs, and alerts.
- AWS CodePipeline → CI/CD automation for continuous integration and delivery.
- AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management) → Secure user and permission management across all services.
Machine Learning and Analytics
- Amazon SageMaker → Build, train, and deploy machine learning models at scale.
- AWS Glue → ETL (extract, transform, load) service for analytics pipelines.
- Amazon Athena → Query data stored in S3 using SQL without setting up a database.
- Amazon QuickSight → Cloud-native business intelligence and visualization tool.
Conclusion
These core AWS services form the foundation of most cloud architectures, from simple web apps to global-scale enterprise systems.
These services make it easier for developers to build secure, scalable, and resilient applications in the cloud.