Top 20+ Widely Used AWS Services

AWS is one of the world’s most widely adopted cloud computing platforms, providing businesses and individuals with a broad set of tools to help them innovate, scale, and operate with greater efficiency. Whether you are a startup, a large enterprise, or anything in between, AWS offers more than 200 fully featured services from data centers worldwide designed to make application deployment, management, and scaling easier.

This article will discuss the best AWS services, covering their functionality and common use cases.

Top 20+ Most Popular AWS Services

1. Amazon CloudFront

AWS CloudFront is a fast, secure Content Delivery Network (CDN) service that distributes data, applications, and videos to users globally using edge locations for lower latency and high performance.

Use Case: Ideal for accelerating website content delivery for global users, improving performance and user experience.

2. Amazon Cloudwatch

AWS CloudWatch is a real-time monitoring service that offers insights into AWS resources and applications. It delivers metrics, logs, and alarms to help optimize performance and diagnose issues effectively.

Use Case: Ideal for monitoring application performance, setting alarms, and responding to changes in AWS infrastructure.

3. Amazon Cognito

AWS Cognito provides secure authentication, authorization, and user management for web and mobile apps. It supports sign-ups, sign-ins, and access control, integrating with social identity providers and enterprise directories for user authentication.

Use Case: Ideal for applications needing secure user authentication, social sign-in, and granular access control across services.

4. Amazon CloudFormation

AWS CloudFormation provides infrastructure as code, allowing users to model, provision, and manage AWS resources using templates in a repeatable and automated way.

Use Case: Ideal for automating the deployment and management of AWS infrastructure using code, ensuring consistency and efficiency.

5. Amazon DynamoDB

AWS DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database service that provides fast, scalable, and highly available performance for applications, automatically handling data distribution across multiple servers.

Use Case: Ideal for real-time applications, gaming, IoT, and mobile backends where low-latency performance is critical.

6. Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)

AWS EC2 is a foundational service that provides scalable virtual servers for a wide range of workloads. It is flexible and supports auto-scaling, load balancing, and various instance types (compute, memory, and storage optimized).

Use Case: Ideal for running web applications, backend processing, batch processing, and any compute-intensive workloads.

7. Amazon Elastic Beanstalk

AWS Elastic Beanstalk simplifies deploying and managing applications in various programming languages. It automatically handles infrastructure provisioning, scaling, and monitoring, enabling developers to concentrate on coding and deployment.

Use Case: Best for developers who want to deploy and manage applications quickly without diving deep into infrastructure management, while still retaining the option for full control if necessary.

8. Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)

AWS EBS is a high-performance, durable block storage service designed for use with EC2 instances. It provides scalable, persistent storage that is optimized for workloads that require low-latency access to data.

Use Case: Best suited for databases, enterprise applications, or file systems that require low-latency, high-performance storage.

9. Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

AWS EFS is a scalable, fully managed cloud file storage service designed for AWS. It provides elastic file storage that automatically scales up or down as files are added or removed, allowing for high availability and durability.

Use Case: Common for large-scale content management systems, media processing workflows, and shared storage for web servers or applications.

10. Amazon ElastiCache

AWS ElastiCache is a managed in-memory caching service that supports Redis and Memcached, improving application performance by retrieving data from a fast, managed cache.

Use Case: Accelerate database read times for web apps by caching frequently accessed data.

11. Amazon Firewall Manager

AWS Firewall Manager is a centralized security management service that helps configure and enforce firewall rules, policies, and security groups across multiple AWS accounts and resources.

Use Case: Ensure consistent firewall policies and protection across multi-account AWS environments, simplifying security management.

12. Amazon GuardDuty

AWS GuardDuty is a threat identification service that continuously monitors AWS accounts, workloads, and data for potentially malicious activity and unauthorized behavior using machine learning and integrated threat intelligence.

Use Case: Ideal for automatically detecting and responding to security threats and anomalies in AWS environments.

13. Amazon Inspector

AWS Inspector is an automated service designed to improve the security and compliance of applications running on AWS by conducting security assessments.

Use Case: Useful for performing continuous vulnerability assessments, identifying security risks, and compliance risks and improving the overall security posture.

14. Amazon IAM (Identity and Access Management)

AWS IAM enables secure control over AWS services and resources by managing users, groups, roles, and permissions, ensuring only authorized individuals and applications have access to the necessary AWS resources.

Use Case: Enforce fine-grained access control, managing permissions and security for users, roles, and applications.

15. Amazon Key Management Service (KMS)

AWS KMS is a managed encryption service that streamlines the creation and management of encryption keys used to secure your data across AWS services and applications.

Use Case: Secure sensitive data through encryption, key management, and automated key rotation.

16. Amazon LightSail

AWS LightSail is a simplified cloud service offering virtual private servers, storage, and networking for small-scale applications, providing an easy-to-use interface and affordable pricing.

Use Case: Perfect for small-scale apps, personal websites, or small businesses that don’t need the extensive configuration of EC2.

17. Amazon Lambda

AWS Lambda is a Function as a Service (FaaS) that automatically runs code in response to events, scaling dynamically. It eliminates the need to manage servers, allowing developers to focus on code and only pay for execution time.

Use Case: Ideal for microservices architectures, data processing (e.g., image resizing), and event-driven applications where servers don’t need to run continuously.

18. Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service)

Amazon RDS is a fully managed relational database that supports several database engines, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, and SQL Server. It handles backups, patching, and replication.

Use Case: Used for OLTP databases, data warehousing, and any applications requiring relational database features like ACID compliance and complex queries.

19. Amazon Route 53

AWS Route 53 is a scalable DNS and domain name registration service that routes end users to internet applications, supporting high availability and low-latency DNS resolution.

Use Case: Provide DNS routing and health checks for domain names and distributed applications globally.

20. Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)

AWS S3 is a highly scalable, reliable, and low-latency object storage service, allowing users to hold and retrieve data from anywhere on the web with high durability and seamless integration with other AWS services.

Use Case: Common use cases include storing backups, static website hosting, media serving, big data analytics, and more.

21. Amazon S3 Glacier

AWS S3 Glacier is a low-cost cloud storage service for data archiving and long-term backup. It is designed for infrequently accessed data.

Use Case: Ideal for compliance archives, media archives, and any cold storage needs where access frequency is low, but data retention is critical.

22. Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service)

AWS SNS is a completely managed messaging service for sending notifications to distributed systems, applications, or users via email, SMS, or HTTP endpoints.

Use Case: Send real-time notifications or alerts across distributed applications and users globally.

23. Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)

AWS VPC allows users to create isolated, customizable networks within AWS, giving full control over networking environments, including IP addresses, subnets, and routing tables.

Use Case: Ideal for hosting secure applications, databases, or internal services with fine-grained network access control.

How Can InfosecTrain Help?

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