When it comes to cloud computing, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the most popular platforms. It offers a comprehensive suite of cloud-based services, including storage, networking, database, analytics, application services, and deployment tools. However, if you’re just getting started with AWS, it can be difficult to keep track of all of the AWS terminology.
This guide features a list of AWS terms that you should learn as a beginner. This glossary of AWS terminology can help you learn all about the cloud computing service to help further your tech career.
What Is AWS?
AWS stands for Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of Amazon and a leading global provider of cloud computing solutions. AWS began in 2004 with Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) but now hosts over 200 services. These include Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, Amazon Relational Database Service, Amazon Simple Storage Service, Amazon CloudWatch, and public cloud spaces.
AWS is a trailblazing cloud service provider. In simple terms, cloud services and infrastructure are like a virtual machine that provides relevant solutions to businesses. Like a virtual machine, these services reduce running costs and improve a business’ general productivity.
Who Uses AWS Terminology?
Many information technology (IT) professionals use AWS terminology while performing their daily tasks. These professionals include software developers, data scientists, and cyber security analysts. Since they often work in teams, mastering AWS terminology means they can communicate more effectively with each other. Beginners should also learn AWS terms so that they can master AWS tools more quickly.
Of the various IT professionals, cloud engineers and AWS solutions architects will have more in-depth knowledge of Amazon’s cloud services. They use AWS vs Azure to help businesses through various challenges and improve their performance in marketing, customer satisfaction, and more.
List of AWS Terms: Things Every Cloud Engineer Should Know
- Access Control List
- Amazon API Gateway
- Amazon CloudFront
- Amazon CloudSearch
- Amazon Elastic Block Store
- Amazon Elastic Container Service
- Amazon Elastic File System
- Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
- Amazon Machine Image
- Amazon SageMaker
- Amazon Simple Email Service
- Amazon Simple Notification Service
- Amazon Relational Database Service
- Amazon Virtual Private Cloud
- AWS Elastic Beanstalk
- AWS Key Management Service
- AWS Management Console
- AWS Security Hub
- Elastic Load Balancing
- Elastic Network Interface
Glossary of AWS Terminology: 5 Common AWS Terms
Amazon Web Services’ glossary contains hundreds of entries, which can be overwhelming. To help you sift through the clutter, we have created a list of AWS terms you must know if you want to become a cloud engineer.
Amazon Relational Database Service
Amazon Relational Database Service or Amazon RDS helps you set up and manage a database in the cloud. It also includes tools for backup and recovery, plus the AWS Identity and Access Management and encryption tools to secure the data. You may also migrate your existing databases to the Amazon RDS using AWS Database Migration Service.
Why Cloud Engineers Need to Know About Amazon Relational Database Service
Cloud engineers need to know about the Amazon RDS because it’s a key component that enables customers to build their own flexible and scalable databases. It’s secure, cost-effective, and easy to administer from project conception to deployment. Amazon RDS is also a quick, production-ready database management service that doesn’t require installation or maintenance.
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud
A virtual private cloud (VPC) is an isolated virtual network on Amazon Web Services dedicated to your AWS account. Similar to physical data centers, Amazon VPC provides a space to launch and manage your virtual machine, virtual server instances, and other resources in the cloud environment. Understanding the AWS management console and its command-line interface is crucial for managing a VPC.
Why Cloud Engineers Need to Know About Amazon Virtual Private Cloud
Cloud engineers should know virtual private cloud, as it’s one of the most employed services in AWS. It gives them extended control over their virtual network and better security over their database servers and any connected individual device.
AWS Management Console
The AWS Management Console is Amazon’s web interface where users can manage their resources. The console allows you to view the real-time status of services running on AWS, create and manage AWS resources, and monitor resource usage. You can also use it to manage your Elastic IP address or set up CloudWatch alarms.
Why Cloud Engineers Need to Know About AWS Management Console
Cloud engineers need to know about AWS Management Console, as it’s the main interface used for managing and monitoring cloud resources. AWS Management Console also helps keep the cloud secure.
AWS Security Hub
The AWS Security Hub is a centralized cloud resource for security and compliance, and it’s part of cyber security best practices for cloud engineers. It provides an integrated view of all important aspects of your account’s security status. That includes things like CloudTrail logs, configuration rules, VPC flow logs, and bucket policies for Amazon’s simple storage service.
Why Cloud Engineers Needs to Know About AWS Security Hub
Cloud Engineers need to know about AWS Security Hub because it has centralized security and compliance monitoring. AWS Security Hub also provides an integrated view of AWS security events, configuration changes, and access requests. Cloud engineers can also use it to monitor any changes in their virtual network while responding to security risks and maintaining regulatory compliance.
Elastic Load Balancing
Amazon’s Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) is a key tool for optimizing the performance of your applications, and is part of the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, known as EC2. It automatically distributes traffic among a pool of Amazon EC2 instances to even out traffic distribution. It also eliminates the need to manage load balancers on your own.
Why Cloud Engineers Need to Know About Elastic Load Balancer
Cloud engineers need to be familiar with the features and functionality of Amazon ELB to ensure that their applications are running efficiently. By using Amazon ELB, they don’t have to worry about the impact of rising traffic.
AWS Terminology Cheat Sheet: 5 Advanced AWS Terms
As you advance in your professional career as a cloud engineer, you’ll soon come across more advanced AWS terminology. Learning these advanced AWS terms can be challenging, though. So, we have curated five must-know terms in the AWS terminology cheat sheet below.
Access Control List
An access control list is a security layer that defines security credentials and who has access to services on your cloud. It creates a list of permissions that determines which users can access which objects. There are four types of access control list: extended, standard, reflexive, and dynamic.
Why Cloud Engineers Should Know About Access Control List
Cloud engineers should know about access control lists because cyber security is a very important part of their job. An access control list helps them prevent viruses and malicious codes by identifying and controlling network traffic. The filtering of network traffic also secures confidential information.
Amazon CloudFront
CloudFront is a web service that provides a fast content delivery network service. It can cater to both static and dynamic web content. It also facilitates content delivery to edge locations or a network of data centers.
Why Cloud Engineers Should Know About Amazon CloudFront
Cloud engineers should know about Amazon CloudFront because it provides fast and global delivery of web content, such as .html, .css, .js, and image files. It also has low latency, which means it can deliver content in the shortest time possible. Plus, it offers built-in security using protections like AWS Shield Standard.
Amazon SageMaker
Amazon SageMaker is a machine learning system that provides a set of services to help you generate insights from data. Amazon SageMaker replaced the former Amazon Machine Learning program, and like that program, it is used to create machine learning models. You can use it to train machine models in a cloud environment.
Why Cloud Engineers Should Know About Amazon SageMaker
Cloud engineers should know about Amazon SageMaker because it can help them solve real-life business problems in unique ways. For example, they can use the service to make accurate predictions, improve customer experience, and build predictive models using AWS data sets.
Amazon Elastic Block Store
Amazon Elastic Block Store or Amazon EBS is a storage service that provides scalable block-level storage. You can use it to create volumes, which are virtual disks that can be used for storage. You can also use the SSD storage for transactional workload, while the disk storage functions primarily for intensive workloads such as log processing.
Why Cloud Engineers Should Know About Amazon Elastic Block Store
Cloud engineers should learn Amazon EBS because it’s useful for migrating storage area networks to the cloud. Plus, it can be used to deploy any database from Oracle software to MySQL or Apache Cassandra. This block-level storage also has a low latency performance and allows for easy data backup and restoration.
Amazon Elastic File System
Amazon Elastic File System is a file storage system that enables you to store files on your computer’s hard drive. It provides users with high performance and scalable storage for any elastic cloud service, including Amazon ECS.
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Why Cloud Engineers Should Know About Amazon Elastic File System
Cloud engineers should know about Amazon Elastic File System because scalability is one of its outstanding features. It can grow and shrink depending on demand without having to create new infrastructure. Plus, it has an adaptive throughput and is in itself elastic.
How Can I Learn AWS Terminology in 2022?
There are many ways you can learn AWS terminology in 2022, starting by using the glossary above. You should also check out the official AWS glossary document, which is the central repository for all AWS terms. You may also consider learning by taking an online AWS course or in-person training program. Learning AWS tools hands-on at an AWS coding bootcamp can also help you master the terminologies quickly.
AWS FAQ
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, or Amazon EC2, is a cloud computing service that offers a resizable computing capacity. It was created to make web-scale computing more accessible to developers.
Serverless computing enables you to create and deploy apps and services without having to worry about servers. With serverless computing, your application still runs on a server, but AWS manages the server for you.
Amazon Cloud Directory is a service that provides access to resources and information in Amazon’s cloud. It’s useful for managing hierarchy as you go through the application development process. It gives cloud engineers an interface to manage all of their data and to query for data stored in the cloud.
It may take about three months to master AWS cloud services. However, some learning paths, such as the best AWS coding bootcamps, can help you learn much faster.
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