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Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The market leader. Largest service catalog, biggest ecosystem, most jobs. Everything from raw compute to satellite ground stations — and 200+ services in between.

Market leader200+ services33+ regions~31% market shareEnterprise default
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Quick Facts

At a Glance

Launched
2006 (S3, EC2)
Parent
Amazon
Services
200+
Regions
~33 globally
Market share
~31% (largest)
Compliance
FedRAMP High, IL5/6, SOC, HIPAA, PCI…

Basic Concepts

  • Region = geographic area (e.g. us-east-1); AZ = isolated datacenter inside a region.
  • IAM is the universal access-control system — users, roles, policies in JSON.
  • Console / CLI / SDK / CloudFormation / CDK are the five ways to do anything.
  • VPC isolates your network; everything lives in one (or peered ones).
  • Largest service catalog means there's an "AWS way" to do almost anything — but also the most complexity.
Services

Signature Services Cheatsheet

CategoryServiceUse
ComputeEC2Virtual machines (the original).
ComputeLambdaServerless functions.
ComputeECS / EKS / FargateContainers (own / Kubernetes / serverless).
ComputeApp Runner / Elastic BeanstalkPaaS-style.
StorageS3The de-facto object storage standard.
StorageEBS / EFSBlock / file storage.
DatabaseRDS / AuroraManaged Postgres / MySQL / Oracle / SQL Server.
DatabaseDynamoDBServerless key-value / document, single-digit-ms latency.
NetworkingVPC, Route 53, CloudFrontNetwork, DNS, CDN.
MessagingSQS / SNS / EventBridge / Kinesis / MSKQueues, pub/sub, events, streams, Kafka.
IdentityIAM, Cognito, IAM Identity CenterService / app / workforce identity.
AnalyticsAthena, Redshift, Glue, EMRSQL on S3, warehouse, ETL, Spark.
AI / MLBedrock, SageMakerFoundation models, full ML platform.
SecurityKMS, Secrets Manager, GuardDuty, WAF, ShieldKeys, secrets, threat detection, perimeter.
ObservabilityCloudWatch, X-RayMetrics, logs, tracing.
Mechanics

Working in AWS

The Mental Model

AWS is built bottom-up: small, sharp building blocks you compose. Most production setups end up combining ~10 services (EC2/ECS, ALB, RDS, S3, IAM, CloudWatch, Route 53, KMS, Secrets, SQS). Once you know IAM and VPC, the rest is mostly variations.

IAM Done Right
  • Roles, not users — services and humans assume roles for short-lived credentials.
  • Least privilege via policy conditions; iam:PassRole is the trickiest pattern.
  • IAM Identity Center (formerly SSO) for workforce; permission sets per account.
  • Multi-account by default — Organizations + AWS Control Tower.
Networking
  • VPC with public / private subnets; NAT for outbound.
  • Security Groups = stateful instance firewalls. NACLs = subnet-level (rarely tuned).
  • Transit Gateway connects many VPCs & on-prem.
  • PrivateLink exposes AWS services without internet egress.
  • VPC endpoints route S3 / DynamoDB traffic through the AWS backbone.
Cost Surprises
  • NAT Gateway charges per GB egress — proxy / VPC endpoints often cheaper.
  • Cross-AZ traffic for chatty microservices.
  • S3 list / get / put requests for high-volume workloads.
  • CloudWatch Logs ingestion can dwarf EC2 cost on chatty apps.
  • Idle EBS / unused snapshots / orphaned EIPs.
The "AWS Well-Architected" Pillars
  • Operational Excellence
  • Security
  • Reliability
  • Performance Efficiency
  • Cost Optimization
  • Sustainability

A free Well-Architected Review with AWS partners is genuinely useful before going production.

When to Pick

Where AWS Wins

Maximum Optionality

The widest catalog of any cloud — there's a service for almost anything.

Mature Ops & Compliance

Most certifications, most government use, most enterprise battle-testing.

Largest Hiring Pool

More AWS-certified engineers than any other cloud.

Hybrid Reality

Outposts & Local Zones bridge to data centers and metros.

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