What is Amazon Web Services?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally. AWS provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments on a metered pay-as-you-go basis.
Launched in 2006, AWS has grown to become the market leader in cloud infrastructure, serving millions of customers worldwide. It enables organizations to move faster, lower IT costs, and scale applications. AWS offers compute power, database storage, content delivery, and other functionality to help businesses scale and grow.
AWS Cost Calculator
Total Monthly Cost: $45
Estimates based on US East (N. Virginia) pricing
AWS Core Services
Amazon EC2
Scalable virtual servers in the cloud with configurable CPU, memory, storage, and networking.
• Reserved instances
• Spot instances
• Auto Scaling groups
• Elastic Load Balancing
Amazon S3
Object storage service with 99.999999999% durability and unlimited scalability.
• Intelligent tiering
• Glacier archival
• Static website hosting
• Cross-region replication
AWS Lambda
Serverless compute service that runs code without managing servers.
• Automatic scaling
• Pay per request
• Multiple language support
• VPC connectivity
Amazon RDS
Managed relational database service supporting multiple database engines.
• Automated backups
• Multi-AZ deployment
• Read replicas
• Point-in-time recovery
AWS Global Infrastructure
Regions
Physical locations with multiple Availability Zones.
- • 30+ regions worldwide
- • Data sovereignty compliance
- • Low latency optimization
- • Independent failure domains
Availability Zones
Isolated data centers within regions.
- • 90+ availability zones
- • Redundant power & networking
- • Low-latency connectivity
- • High availability design
Edge Locations
Content delivery network endpoints.
- • 400+ edge locations
- • CloudFront CDN
- • Global content caching
- • Reduced latency
AWS Service Categories
Compute
EC2, Lambda, ECS, EKS, Fargate, Batch
Storage
S3, EBS, EFS, FSx, Storage Gateway
Databases
RDS, DynamoDB, Aurora, Redshift, ElastiCache
Networking
VPC, CloudFront, Route 53, API Gateway
Security
IAM, KMS, WAF, GuardDuty, Inspector
Analytics
Athena, EMR, Kinesis, QuickSight, Glue
Machine Learning
SageMaker, Rekognition, Comprehend, Lex
Developer Tools
CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CloudFormation
Real-World AWS Implementations
Netflix
Runs entirely on AWS, serving 200+ million subscribers globally.
- • 100,000+ EC2 instances
- • Petabytes of S3 storage
- • Auto scaling for demand
- • Global content distribution
Airbnb
Built on AWS to scale from startup to global marketplace.
- • RDS for user data
- • S3 for photo storage
- • EMR for analytics
- • CloudFront for performance
NASA JPL
Uses AWS for Mars rover operations and space exploration data.
- • Mission-critical workloads
- • Scientific data processing
- • Global collaboration
- • Cost optimization
Coca-Cola
Modernized IT infrastructure and improved operational efficiency.
- • Hybrid cloud architecture
- • Data lake analytics
- • Supply chain optimization
- • Digital transformation
AWS Well-Architected Framework
Operational Excellence
Run and monitor systems to deliver business value and continually improve.
Security
Protect information, systems, and assets while delivering business value.
Reliability
Ensure workloads perform their intended function correctly and consistently.
Performance Efficiency
Use computing resources efficiently and maintain efficiency as demand changes.
Cost Optimization
Run systems to deliver business value at the lowest price point.
Sustainability
Minimize environmental impact of running cloud workloads.