AWS Glossary [Part I]: List of frequently terms used on daily basis

I will cover some terminologies used in Amazon Web Services. The idea is facilitate the understand of the topics to help all people that starting your AWS Cloud journey.

4 min readJul 25, 2023

Maybe had you ever got some interest to keep near you the AWS services to learn, as you know, there are an almost an infinity of terms inside the AWS platform, and to learn all these things is most difficult. My work today is provide a list of AWS terms and leverage you to check them and note the main services used into the daily basis. I will cover the services by sessions like compute, databases, network, and the idea is keep this glossary live for future notes and checks.

Everybody knows that AWS is the most important cloud platform used around the world, and is very relevant for us learn and practice the services to delivery top work, building scalable, and easily configurable, allowing businesses to deploy and manage their applications with ease. Stay with me until end of this article to learn and note the main services used in AWS and feel free to help me with the descriptions and examples, just to keep the post more readable for everybody.

Compute

Refers to the suite of services provided by AWS that enable users to run applications and workloads in the cloud. It offers a wide range of computing options to meet various performance, scalability, and cost requirements. Learn more about some topics covered by compute services.

EC2 (virtual servers in the cloud).
It is a web service for launching and managing Linux/UNIX and Windows Server instances in Amazon data centers, basically virtual machine in the cloud.
Lambda (run code without thinking about servers).
AWS Lambda is a web service that you can use to run code without provisioning or managing servers. You can run code for virtually any type of application or backend service with zero administration. You can set up your code to automatically start from other AWS services or call it directly from any web or mobile app.
AWS App Runner (build and run production web applications at scale).
It is a managed service that makes it facilitate to deploy from source code or a container image directly to a secure web application.
Elastic Beanstalk (run and manage web apps).
It’s a service for deploying and scaling web apps with some linguages like, Java, .NET, PHP, Node.js, Docker.
Lightsail (launch and manage virtual private servers).
Basically it’s provides a solutions to get started with a platform to host web applications in the cloud. Lightsail includes several features to launch your project quickly like virtual machines and databases.

Containers

Containers provide an isolated environment for applications, ensuring consistency and reproducibility across different environments, such as development, testing, and production. Keep the eyes into them and learn more AWS terms below.

Elastic Container Registry (managed docker container registry for aws).
It’s help you share your docker images and you can easily store your container images, making them accessible for other compute services.
Elastic Container Service (secure and scalable way to run containers).
It’s a managed service to work with containers inside AWS cloud, it makes the process easy to run, stop and manage the apps based in containers.
Elastic Kubernetes Service (start, run and scale kubernetes apps).
It’s an a managed service that provides a Kubernetes environment to run and scale your applications with several benefits, prices and all necessaru supporting.

Database

Database services provide scalable, managed, and reliable solutions for storing and managing data in the AWS cloud offering a variety of database services to cater to different application needs and workloads.

DynamoDB (manage nosql database).
It’s a NoSQL database service with several benefits like fast and performance, it’s delivery a key-value service and flexible data model.
RDS (relational database service).
It’s helps you to set up, operate and scale relacional workloads in AWS environment with high performance and prices types for each engine.
ElastiCache (in-memory cache).
It’s provides a high performance and cost for in-memory cache, it’s works with Redis engine to delivery more power and performance.

Storage

Provides a wide range of storage services that cater to diverse data storage needs in the cloud. These services are designed to be scalable, durable, and highly available, allowing businesses to store, secure, and manage their data effectively.

S3 (scalable storage in the cloud).
It’s keep your data secure inside buckets with a wide of prices and high availability.
S3 Glacier (archive storage in the cloud).
Provides a durable storage with security features backup.
Storage Gateway (hybrid storage integration).
Basically it’s connects with an on-premisses environment to integrate with cloud-based storage.

Network

Refer to the set of tools and services that facilitate network connectivity, security, and management for applications and workloads deployed in the cloud. AWS offers various networking solutions to ensure seamless communication between resources.

VPC (virtual private cloud).
It’s an amazing service focused in virtual network with several resources to delivery an isolated way to build network.
Route 53 (dns and domain name registration)
You can register domains, route internet traffic to resources and check the health for applications.
API Gateway (build, deploy, manage API’s).
With the API Gateway the organizations can build secure, scalable APIs that enable efficient interaction between applications and backend resources.
CloudFront (content delivery network)
It’s distributes the static and dynamic web content to end users.