The most widely used cloud platform. Master the services and architecture patterns that power global enterprises.
AWS dominates with 31% market share. Core services every architect must know:
Compute:
- EC2: virtual machines, instance types (C for compute, M for memory, T for burstable)
- Auto Scaling Groups: scale EC2 based on CloudWatch metrics
- Lambda: serverless functions, 15min max, cold starts, concurrency limits
- ECS/EKS: container orchestration — Fargate (serverless containers) vs EC2 launch type
- App Runner: fully managed container service
Storage:
- S3: object storage, 11 9s durability, storage classes (Standard, IA, Glacier, Deep Archive)
- EBS: block storage for EC2, GP3 (baseline 3000 IOPS), io2 for high IOPS databases
- EFS: managed NFS, shared across AZs
- FSx: managed Windows File Server or Lustre (HPC)
Databases:
- RDS: managed relational — PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle
- Aurora: AWS-native, 5x faster than RDS MySQL, serverless option
- DynamoDB: key-value + document, single-digit ms latency, DAX for caching
- ElastiCache: Redis or Memcached as a managed cache
Networking:
- ALB: application load balancer (Layer 7), path/host-based routing
- NLB: network load balancer (Layer 4), ultra-low latency, static IPs
- CloudFront: CDN with 400+ edge locations, Lambda@Edge/Functions
- Route 53: DNS, health checks, latency/geo routing
- API Gateway: managed HTTP/WebSocket/REST APIs with auth and throttling
Security:
- KMS: managed encryption keys
- Secrets Manager: store and rotate credentials
- WAF: web application firewall
- GuardDuty: threat detection
- Security Hub: centralised security findings
Compute:
- EC2: virtual machines, instance types (C for compute, M for memory, T for burstable)
- Auto Scaling Groups: scale EC2 based on CloudWatch metrics
- Lambda: serverless functions, 15min max, cold starts, concurrency limits
- ECS/EKS: container orchestration — Fargate (serverless containers) vs EC2 launch type
- App Runner: fully managed container service
Storage:
- S3: object storage, 11 9s durability, storage classes (Standard, IA, Glacier, Deep Archive)
- EBS: block storage for EC2, GP3 (baseline 3000 IOPS), io2 for high IOPS databases
- EFS: managed NFS, shared across AZs
- FSx: managed Windows File Server or Lustre (HPC)
Databases:
- RDS: managed relational — PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle
- Aurora: AWS-native, 5x faster than RDS MySQL, serverless option
- DynamoDB: key-value + document, single-digit ms latency, DAX for caching
- ElastiCache: Redis or Memcached as a managed cache
Networking:
- ALB: application load balancer (Layer 7), path/host-based routing
- NLB: network load balancer (Layer 4), ultra-low latency, static IPs
- CloudFront: CDN with 400+ edge locations, Lambda@Edge/Functions
- Route 53: DNS, health checks, latency/geo routing
- API Gateway: managed HTTP/WebSocket/REST APIs with auth and throttling
Security:
- KMS: managed encryption keys
- Secrets Manager: store and rotate credentials
- WAF: web application firewall
- GuardDuty: threat detection
- Security Hub: centralised security findings