Run an App Services

No matter what you do with AWS you'll probably end up using these services as everything
else interacts with them.

EC2
Should have been called
Amazon Virtual Servers

Use this to
Host the bits of things you think of as a
computer.

It's like
http://www.linode.com","It's
handwavy, but EC2
instances are similar to the
virtual private servers you'd
get at Linode, DigitalOcean
or Rackspace.

IAM
Should have been called
Users, Keys and Certs

Use this to
Set up additional users, set up new AWS Keys and policies.

S3
Should have been called
Amazon Unlimited FTP
Server

Use this to
Store images and other assets for websites. Keep backups and share les
between services. Host static websites. Also, many of the other AWS services
write and read from S3.
S3 in Plain English (/aws-s3-in-plain-english)
S3 Buckets of Objects (/aws-s3-buckets-of-objects)

VPC
Should have been called
Amazon Virtual Colocated
Rack

Lambda

Use this to
It's like
Overcome objections that "all our stu is on
If you're familar with
the internet!" by adding an additional layer of networking: VLANs
security. Makes it appear as if all of your AWS
services are on the same little network
instead of being small pieces in a much bigger
network.

Should have been called

AWS App Scripts

Use this to
Run little self contained snippets of JS, Java or Python to do discrete tasks.
Sort of a combination of a queue and execution in one. Used for storing and
then executing changes to your AWS setup or responding to events in S3 or
DynamoDB.
Lambda in Plain English (/aws-lambda-in-plain-english)

Web Developer Services

If you're setting up a web app, these are mostly what you'd end up using. These are similar to
what you'd nd in Heroku's Addon Marketplace.

API Gateway
Should have been called
API Proxy

Use this to
Proxy your apps API through this so you can
throttle bad client tra c, test new versions,
and present methods more cleanly.

It's like
3Scale

Use this to
Be your app's Mysql, Postgres, and Oracle
database.

It's like
Heroku Postgres

Use this to
Buy a new domain and set up the DNS
records for that domain.

It's like
DNSimple, GoDaddy, Gandi

Use this to
Send one-o emails like password resets,
noti cations, etc. You could use it to send a
newsletter if you wrote all the code, but that's
not a great idea.

It's like
SendGrid, Mandrill,
Postmark

Use this to
Make your websites load faster by spreading

It's like
MaxCDN, Akamai

RDS
Should have been called
Amazon SQL

Route53
Should have been called
Amazon DNS + Domains

SES
Should have been called
Amazon Transactional Email

Cloudfront
Should have been called
Amazon CDN

out static le delivery to be closer to where

your users are.

CloudSearch
Should have been called
Amazon Fulltext Search

Use this to
Pull in data on S3 or in RDS and then search it
for every instance of 'Jimmy.'

It's like
Sphinx, Solr, ElasticSearch

Use this to
Be your app's massively scalable key valueish
store.

It's like
MongoLab

Use this to
Be your app's Memcached or Redis.

It's like
Redis to Go, Memcachier

DynamoDB
Should have been called
Amazon NoSQL

Elasticache
Should have been called
Amazon Memcached

Elastic Transcoder
Should have been called
Amazon Beginning Cut Pro

Use this to
Deal with video weirdness (change formats, compress, etc.).

SQS
Should have been called
Amazon Queue

Use this to
Store data for future processing in a queue.
The lingo for this is storing "messages" but it
doesn't have anything to do with email or
SMS. SQS doesn't have any logic, it's just a
place to put things and take things out.

It's like
RabbitMQ, Sidekiq

Use this to
Block bad requests to Cloudfront protected
sites (aka stop people trying 10,000
passwords against /wp-admin)

It's like
Sophos, Kapersky

WAF
Should have been called
AWS Firewall

Mobile App Developer Services

These are the services that only work for mobile developers.

Cognito
Should have been called
Amazon OAuth as a Service

Use this to
Give end users - (non AWS) - the ability to log
in with Google, Facebook, etc.

It's like
OAuth.io

Use this to
Test your app on a bunch of di erent IOS and
Android devices simultaneously.

It's like
MobileTest, iOS emulator

Use this to
Track what people are doing inside of your
app.

It's like
Flurry

Use this to
Send mobile noti cations, emails and/or SMS
messages

It's like
UrbanAirship, Twilio

Device Farm
Should have been called
Amazon Drawer of Old
Android Devices

Mobile Analytics
Should have been called
Spot on Name, Amazon
Product Managers take note

SNS
Should have been called
Amazon Messenger

Ops and Code Deployment

Services
These are for automating how you manage and deploy your code onto other services.

CodeCommit
Should have been called
Amazon GitHub

Use this to
Version control your code - hosted Git.

It's like
Github, BitBucket

Use this to
Get your code from your CodeCommit repo
(or Github) onto a bunch of EC2 instances in a
sane way.

It's like
Heroku, Capistrano

Code Deploy
Should have been called
Not bad

CodePipeline

Should have been called

Amazon Continuous
Integration

Use this to
It's like
Run automated tests on your code and then
CircleCI, Travis
do stu with it depending on if it passes those
tests.

EC2 Container Service

Should have been called
Amazon Docker as a Service

Use this to
Put a Docker le into an EC2 instance so you can run a website.

Elastic Beanstalk
Should have been called
Amazon Platform as a
Service

Use this to
Move your app hosted on Heroku to AWS
when it gets too expensive.

It's like
Heroku, BlueMix, Modulus

Enterprise / Corporate Services

Services for business and networks.

AppStream
Should have been called
Amazon Citrix

Use this to
Put a copy of a Windows application on a
Windows machine that people get remote
access to.

It's like
Citrix, RDP

Use this to
Pay your Telco + AWS to get a dedicated
leased line from your data center or network
to AWS. Cheaper than Internet out for Data.

It's like
A toll road turnpike
bypassing the crowded side
streets.

Direct Connect
Should have been called
Pretty spot on actually

Directory Service

Should have been called

Pretty spot on actually

Use this to
Tie together other apps that need a Microsoft Active Directory to control
them.

WorkDocs
Should have been called

Use this to

It's like

Amazon Unstructured Files

Share Word Docs with your colleagues.

Dropbox, DataAnywhere

Use this to
Give everyone in your company the same
email system and calendar.

It's like
Google Apps for Domains

WorkMail
Should have been called
Amazon Company Email

Workspaces
Should have been called
Amazon Remote Computer

Use this to
Gives you a standard windows desktop that you're remotely controlling.

Service Catalog
Should have been called
Amazon Setup Already

Use this to
Give other AWS users in your group access to preset apps you've built so
they don't have to read guides like this.

Storage Gateway
Should have been called
S3 pretending it's part of
your corporate network

Use this to
Stop buying more storage to keep Word Docs on. Make automating getting
les into S3 from your corporate network easier.

Big Data Services

Services to ingest, manipulate and massage data to do your will.

Data Pipeline
Should have been called
Amazon ETL

Use this to
Extract, Transform and Load data from elsewhere in AWS. Schedule when it
happens and get alerts when they fail.

Elastic Map Reduce

Should have been called
Amazon Hadooper

Use this to
Iterate over massive text les of raw data that
you're keeping in S3.

It's like
Treasure Data

Glacier
Should have been called
Really slow Amazon S3

Use this to
Make backups of your backups that you keep on S3. Also, beware the cost of

getting data back out in a hurry. For long term archiving.

Kinesis
Should have been called
Amazon High Throughput

Use this to
It's like
Ingest lots of data very quickly (for things like Kafka
analytics or people retweeting Kanye) that you
then later use other AWS services to analyze.

RedShift
Should have been called
Amazon Data Warehouse

Use this to
Store a whole bunch of analytics data, do some processing, and dump it out.

Machine Learning
Should have been called
Skynet

Use this to
Predict future behavior from existing data for problems like fraud detection
or "people that bought x also bought y."

SWF
Should have been called
Amazon EC2 Queue

Use this to
Build a service of "deciders" and "workers" on
top of EC2 to accomplish a set task. Unlike
SQS - logic is set up inside the service to
determine how and what should happen.

It's like
IronWorker

Use this to
Get a bunch of hard drives you can attach to
your network to make getting large amounts
(Terabytes of Data) into and out of AWS

It's like
Shipping a Network
Attached Storage device to
AWS

Snowball
Should have been called
AWS Big Old Portable
Storage

AWS Management Services

AWS can get so di cult to manage that they invented a bunch of services to sell you to make
it easier to manage.

CloudFormation
Should have been called
Amazon Services Setup

Use this to
Set up a bunch of connected AWS services in one go.

CloudTrail
Should have been called
Amazon Logging

Use this to
Log who is doing what in your AWS stack (API calls).

CloudWatch
Should have been called
Amazon Status Pager

Use this to
Get alerts about AWS services messing up or
disconnecting.

It's like
PagerDuty, Statuspage

Con g
Should have been called
Amazon Con guration
Management

Use this to
Keep from going insane if you have a large AWS setup and changes are
happening that you want to track.

OpsWorks
Should have been called
Amazon Chef

Use this to
Handle running your application with things like auto-scaling.

Trusted Advisor
Should have been called
Amazon Pennypincher

Use this to
Find out where you're paying too much in your AWS setup (unused EC2
instances, etc.).

Inspector
Should have been called
Amazon Auditor

Use this to
Scans your AWS setup to determine if you've
setup it up in an insecure way

It's like
Alert Logic