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AWS services cheat sheet

February 14, 2020 · 6 min read

Cloud computing has been a game-changer in the software industry because it

alleviates most of the burden associated with maintaining the infrastructure of
applications. AWS plays a vital role in this process, providing an a ordable cloud
infrastructure to the masses.

What, exactly, is AWS, and where do you start? Let’s take a deep dive into the many
services that are available with AWS.

What is cloud computing?

At a basic level, the cloud refers to remote computing resources and systems that are
made available to customers or the public and do not require active maintenance on the
user’s part. There are three types of cloud services: public, private, and hybrid.

Whereas public cloud services provide third–party resources to the public over the
internet, private cloud services provide resources to enterprise customers. Hybrid
cloud, as you might imagine, combines both public and private traits.

The world’s largest cloud provider, Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides cloud tools
and platforms to a wide range of customers under a metered payment model. In this
tutorial, we’ll examine the following types of AWS services based on their use cases and
domains in which they are widely used.

1. App services
2. Web development
3. Mobile development
4. Code injection
5. Enterprise
6. Big data
7. Infrastructure

Let’s get started!

1. App services
App services provided by AWS deliver cost-e ective computing resources to host
applications.

AWS EC2

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) provides a virtual server machine on
which to host a complete application.

AWS IAM

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) manages user accounts and their
privileges in AWS. An admin can access all the resources, for example, whereas the
average user can only access AWS Storage (S3). AWS IAM acts as a safeguard against
accidental deletion and/or manipulation of resources.

AWS S3

AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) enables customers to store any amount of data and
make it accessible from anywhere. Consistent availability is one of AWS S3’s biggest
selling points. In fact, it guarantees 99.9 percent uptime.

AWS VPC

AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is an isolated section of the cloud where you can launch
and maintain AWS resources.

Why do you need a private cloud if you can access the same services from the public
cloud? VPC enables you to create your own IP address range, which is especially useful if
you’re running an enterprise and you want to extend your resources to the cloud.

AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda facilitates what is known as serverless computing, which lets you run your
application code without having to manage the server on your own. Instead, you pay for
the computing power you consume.

2. Web development
The following AWS services can be useful in developing web applications.

AWS RDS

AWS Relational Database Service (RDS) provides a relational database for your
applications. Instead of setting up a database for your application from scratch, AWS
provides it out of the box with high scalability.

AWS CloudFront

CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) service that delivers data, images,
videos, and applications in a secure way. The CDN distributes data across di erent
regions so users can access it seamlessly from wherever they are.

AWS DynamoDB

DynamoDB is a document database that serves as an alternative solution to MongoDB.

One of the main advantages of DynamoDB is that it can handle 10 trillion requests per
day.

Amazon API gateway

Ever wondered how you can access several microservices from a single endpoint? That’s
where API Gateway comes in. This service enables you to connect, monitor, and access
various backend services.

AWS Route 53
AWS Route 53 is a Domain Name System (DNS) provider that helps you set up a domain
name for your applications. There are four common records in AWS Route 53:

1. A : URL to IPv4
2. AAAA: URL to IPv6
3. CNAME : URL to URL
4. Alias : URL to AWS Resources

AWS Simple Email Service (SES)

As its name suggests, SES is a simple email service through which you can send
noti cations and service emails from your application to users. You can use the SMTP
interface or any other AWS SDK to integrate SES into your application.

AWS Simple Queue Service (SQS)

SQS is a message queuing tool that facilitates communication between multiple

services. Let’s say, for example, you have a user accessing authentication microservices.
With SQS, you can send and receive messages between those services without any data
loss.

3. Mobile development
The following services are particularly helpful for mobile application developers.

AWS Congito

Cognito is essentially a simpler and more e cient authentication mechanism. It can be

used to facilitate user sign-in and sign-up on web and mobile applications.

AWS Device Farm

Testing mobile and web applications can be time-consuming. AWS Device Farm enables
you to test an application using a range of mobile devices and desktop browsers. The
main bene t of Device Farm is that it manages the testing infrastructure on its own.
Amazon Pinpoint

Amazon Pinpoint is a tool for analyzing the user experience on web and mobile
applications. It also helps developers and marketers engage their customers with
personalized messages.

Amazon Simple Noti cation Service (SNS)

AWS SNS is a publisher/subscriber messaging service in which one microservice can

publish a message and other microservices can subscribe and receive messages. SNS
works best for microservice architecture patterns and employs a concept of topic where
the pub/sub happens.

4. DevOps
Now that we’ve covered AWS tools for app services and both web and mobile
developers, let’s see how AWS services can bene t DevOps.

AWS Code Commit

AWS Code Commit provides a source control for your code. Think of it as a GitHub on
the cloud. The tool helps you manage your complete source code under a highly scalable
ecosystem. It can also work with other source control systems such as GitHub and
Bitbucket.

AWS Code Deploy

AWS Code Deploy automates deployment and enables you to automate the process of
releasing new features in development.

AWS CodePipeline

CodePipeline also enables you to automate the release process. First, you de ne your
own release process. Then, CodePipeline builds, tests, and deploys your code every time
there is a code change.
Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS)

ECS is an orchestration service that manages containers, such as Docker containers. You
can integrate other AWS resources, such as AWS IAM and AWS Route 53, with a
container to make it perform more e ciently.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

This easy-to-use service allows you to choose a tech stack and upload your code. AWS
BeanStack will deploy the code on its own and manage the infrastructure.

5. Enterprise
AWS has some of the best services for enterprise applications. Below are some AWS
services that are suitable for enterprise application development.

Amazon App Stream

AppStream provides cloud services for CPU-intensive applications. Apps such as

OpenGL and desktop applications can be deployed in AppStream.

AWS Direct Connect

Direct Connect is a cloud service that helps you establish a network connection between
your datacenter and AWS resources.

AWS Directory Service

AWS Directory Service is basically a Microsoft Active Directory in the AWS cloud. It
helps you manage di erent AWS accounts in the active directory. In layman’s terms,
it’s like Google Docs with di erent levels of account access.

Amazon WorkDocs
This service enables enterprises to manage documents in the cloud. With AWS
WorkDocs, users can share and edit documents from anywhere on any device. Put
simply, moving all your les from a traditional le system to AWS cloud enables you to
manage them more e ciently.

Amazon WorkMail

As the name suggest, WorkMail is an email service that helps you manage emails and
their contents at the enterprise level.

Amazon WorkSpaces

WorkSpaces is a desktop-as-a-service solution in the cloud. It provides Windows or

Linux workspaces across the enterprise, which is less expensive than typical desktop
solutions and can save companies lot of money.

AWS Service Catalog

Service Catalog helps IT administrators group, organize, and govern AWS resources and
manage user access to applications. This is particularly useful for granting access to
users who need certain resources to work on their respective projects.

6. Big data
In the age of big data, companies in all industries face myriad challenges related to
storing and managing all that information. Let’s look at some AWS services that can
help developers solve those pain points.

AWS Data Pipeline

Data Pipeline processes huge amounts of data. It helps in the ETL process of data and
complex data processing.

Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR)

Ever wonder how the cloud processes such an unfathomable volume of data? Look no
further than Elastic MapReduce (EMR). This feature uses open-source tools such as
Apache Spark and Apache Hive to perform extract, transform, load (ETL) operations on
the data.

Amazon Glacier

Glacier is essentially AWS S3 with 99.999999 percent durability and availability. It

helps customers store large amounts of data with high throughput.

Amazon Kinesis

Kinesis processes streaming data in real time and proceeds with the pipeline. It is
widely used in internet of things (IoT) applications, enterprise applications, and the
gaming industry.

Amazon RedShift

RedShift is a data warehouse service in the AWS cloud that stores application data for
analysis. It can store and handle petabytes of data.

Amazon Machine Learning

AWS Machine Learning provides services to run and deploy machine learning models in
the AWS cloud without any managed infrastructure.

Amazon Simple Work ow Service (SWF)

SWF is designed to help you develop and run background jobs for your application. If
you want to monitor the processing state of your application, for example, you can use
SWF to track it.

7. Infrastructure
In this section, we’ll explore some of the most useful AWS services for managing IT
infrastructure.

AWS CloudFormation

CloudFormation enables you to manage AWS resources using a script le. You simply
create a service and manage the complete infrastructure of your application.

AWS CloudTrail

CloudTrail provides auditing for your AWS resources. It involves log monitoring, risk
auditing, etc.

AWS CloudWatch

CloudWatch monitors the status of your application or service in the AWS cloud. It
comes in handy when you want to monitor the logs and health of an application or
service running in AWS.

AWS OpsWork

OpsWork provides instances of Chef and Puppet, which are automation scripting tools.
Chef and Puppet can be used to automate the con guration management of application
infrastructures.

AWS Trusted Advisor

This online tool provides support and guidance for AWS resources in real time. It scans
your infrastructure and compares it with AWS best practices to provide some
recommendations and feedback.

Conclusion
You should now have a good understanding of what features and tools are available in
AWS. Each service solves a speci c problem developers commonly struggle with in their
respective elds. It’s important to know the purpose of each service and to use it wisely.
By that same token, it’s also critical to do your homework and understand the cost and
ROI associated with each service.

Which AWS services do you look forward to using in your next project?

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Ganesh Mani Follow

I'm a full-stack developer, Android application/game developer, and tech enthusiast who loves to work
with current technologies in web, mobile, the IoT, machine learning, and data science.

#aws

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