Introduction to AWS
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to:
- Explain what AWS is and its role as a cloud service provider
- Name the broad categories of AWS services and give an example of each
- Recognize that most real applications combine several AWS service categories together
Prerequisites: "What Is Cloud Computing?"
What AWS actually is
AWS (Amazon Web Services) is Amazon's cloud computing platform. It isn't one product you switch on — it's a large, growing catalogue of individual services, each solving a different infrastructure problem, that you pick and combine as needed. A small project might use two or three of them; a large one might use dozens.
This matters for how you should think about learning AWS: there isn't a single thing to master. There's a set of building blocks, grouped into categories, and this course dedicates a module to most of the categories that matter for building real applications.
The broad categories, at a glance
This lesson only introduces the categories — each one gets its own dedicated module later in this course, so don't worry about memorizing details yet.
- Compute — runs your application code. Examples: Amazon EC2 (virtual servers), AWS Lambda (run code without managing a server at all).
- Storage — keeps files and data. Examples: Amazon S3 (object storage for files), Amazon EBS (attached disk storage for a server).
- Databases — stores structured, queryable data. Examples: Amazon RDS (traditional relational databases), DynamoDB (a different, NoSQL style of database).
- Networking — connects things together securely. Examples: Amazon VPC (a private network you control), Route 53 (DNS — turning a domain name into an address).
- Security & identity — controls who can do what. Example: IAM, covered in full in the next module.
- Application integration & monitoring — connects separate pieces of a system and watches how they're behaving. Examples: Amazon SQS (queues), Amazon CloudWatch (logs and metrics).
How the categories combine in practice
A single feature almost never uses just one category. Take something ordinary: a web app where users can upload a document.
- The uploaded file itself is kept in storage (S3).
- Information about that file — who uploaded it, when, what it's called — lives in a database.
- The application logic that handles the upload request runs on compute (a server, or a small piece of code that runs on demand).
- Networking controls how the request reaches that compute layer safely.
- Security & identity decides which users and which parts of the system are allowed to do any of this at all.
You'll build almost exactly this kind of combination for real starting in Module 4, once each category has been covered on its own first.
Exercise
For each short description below, decide which broad AWS category it most likely belongs to — compute, storage, database, networking, or security & identity: (1) A service that runs your code in response to an event, without you managing a server. (2) A service that stores structured customer records you can query. (3) A service that keeps a private, isolated network for your cloud resources. (4) A service that stores uploaded files like PDFs and images.
Show hint
Ask what the service is fundamentally doing — running code, holding data in a queryable structure, holding raw files, controlling network access, or controlling permissions.
Introduction to AWS Quiz
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Summary
AWS is a cloud computing platform offering a large catalogue of individual, on-demand services — compute, storage, databases, networking, and more — that get combined together to build an application, rather than being one single product.