AWS is the world's number one cloud market. With 200+ different services, it answers almost every software-infrastructure need. But faced with these 200 services, most newcomers get stuck on the question of "where to start."
01. Main Service Categories
The 5 critical categories:
- Compute (EC2, Lambda, ECS)
- Storage (S3, EBS, Glacier)
- Database (RDS, DynamoDB, Aurora)
- Networking (VPC, CloudFront, Route53)
- Security (IAM, KMS, GuardDuty)
These 5 categories cover most scenarios.
02. EC2 vs Lambda
EC2: a classic server; you manage it. Lambda: serverless; you drop in the code, AWS handles execution. Simple workloads are very economical on Lambda; continuously running servers are more suitable on EC2.
03. S3: Object Storage
S3 is a foundational building block even for billion-dollar companies. File storage, backup, static web hosting, big data lakes — all on S3. Durability is 11 nines (99.999999999%).
04. RDS: Managed Database
With RDS, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server and Oracle databases are managed by AWS. Backup, patching, high availability — all on AWS. You're freed from managing your own database server.
05. Pricing Complexity
AWS's biggest source of complaints is pricing. Pay as you go, but every service has a different unit of measure. AWS Cost Explorer and budget alerts must absolutely be set up.