Getting started in Amazon Web Services (AWS) can be quite overwhelming and confusing, particulary when all the different products they offer come with quite strange and technical names. This guide aims to help simplify the terminology, describe why they’re useful & what you can do with them all.
No matter what you do with AWS you'll probably end up using some of these services as they'll be the base for most apps.
General purpose Virtual Private Servers (VPS) that can be rented by the hour and can be quickly and easily configured to run your own applications.
Cloud based functions you can run on demand without having to worry about provisioning or managing actual servers.
Simplified deployment and fixed cost billing for some AWS resources, including VPS, DNS, storage, databases & load balancers.
Managed relational databases (MySQL, PostgresSQL & MariaDB).
File/Block storage that can be used to store images and other assets for websites, keep backups and share files between services.
Fulltext document search service (like ElasticSearch).
General purpose Virtual Private Servers (VPS) that can be rented by the hour and can be quickly and easily configured to run your own applications.
Cloud based functions you can run on demand without having to worry about provisioning or managing actual servers.
Store manage and deploy docker images like on Dockerhub.
Scalable and reliable way to run and orchestrate container services (such as Docker).
Kubernetes as a service.
Scalable and high performance managed relational databases. (MySQL and PostgreSQL).
Large & scalable non-relational (noSQL) databases.
Managed memcache and redis machines.
Managed relational databases (MySQL, PostgresSQL & MariaDB).
Templates and scripts to programatically create and configure AWS components (such as Databases and EC2 instances).
Quickly deploy and manage applications in the AWS Cloud without worrying about the infrastructure that runs those applications.
Send one-off transactional emails for things like password resets and notifications.
Add user login and password management to your web and mobile apps. Supports ability to log in with Email, Google, Facebook, etc.
Create and manage AWS users and groups, and use permissions to allow and deny their access to AWS resources securely.
Lightsail Block Storage
Lightsail Load balancers
Lightsail RDS databases
Lightsail Virtual servers
An API proxy that lets you connect to different backend and services. Supports RESTful and WebSocket APIs.
Content Delivery Network and edge caching.
Manage domain names and DNS records.
Provision, manage and deploy SSL certificates.
Securely store secrets as key/value pairs. Can automatically rotate secrets.
AWS Firewall services that allows you to block bad requests to Cloudfront protected sites and services.
File/Block storage that can be used to store images and other assets for websites, keep backups and share files between services.