Amazon Web Services

Cheat Sheet

Region

An AWS cloud in a specific geographical area.

• US East (N. Virginia)
• US West (Oregon)
• US West (N. California)
• EU (Ireland)
• EU (Frankfurt)
• Asia Pacific (Singapore)
• Asia Pacific (Sydney)
• Asia Pacific (Tokyo)
• South America (Sao Paulo)

Availability Zone

A distinct location within a region that is insulated from failures in other Availability Zones, and provides inexpensive, low-latency network connectivity to other Availability Zones in the same region.  Essentially, a data center.

EC2

• Elastic Compute Cloud
• virtual machine
• multiple instances
• variable CPU, memory, network and storage attributes
• templates available
• tied to availability zone
• storage is ephemeral or persistent
• network is isolated from the rest of the AWS network
• can connect to on-premises network
• built-in firewall (security groups)
• SSH access by default using key pairs
• ip address is dynamic
• place meta-data on instances for easier management

EC2

EC2

EC2

EC2

EC2

Lambda

• reactive compute service
• functions must be written in node.js or Java
• logic triggered by events
• automated scaling
• performance remains constant
• compute capacity spread across availability zones
• reaction usually starts within milliseconds after getting the event

EC2 Container Service

• Docker container management
• containers distributed across an EC2 cluster
• load balancing provides via ELB
• failed health check results in container restart
• containers relocated based on resource needs, isolation policies, availability requirements
• Docker must installed on all instances
• Amazon agent must be installed on all instances
• mandatory co-location of containers supported
• single use containers (tasks)
• long lived use (services)
• JSON based descriptor

RDS

• Amazon Relational Database Service
• HA via primary and secondary instances
• read scaling via MySQL and PostgreSQL read replicas
• MySQL
• Amazon Aurora DB
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Oracle
• PostgreSQL
• scale CPU, RAM, storage and IOPs independently
• automated backups, patching and failure detection
• storage options include magnetic, general purpose SSD and provisioned SSD 

DynamoDB

• NoSQL database
• column-oriented
• low latency
• consistent throughput 
• reliable
• automated backups 

ElastiCache

• distributed, in-memory cache
• Memecached
• Redis (replication and multi-Availability Zone supported)
• failed nodes automatically detected and replaced
• automatic scale up and scale down
• automated backups and snapshots

Red Shift

• petabyte scale data warehouse solution
• compatible with standard BI tools

S3

• Amazon Simple Storage Service
• BLOB storage solution
• up to 5TB per blob
• unlimited storage
• versioned
• BLOBs stored within 'buckets'
• buckets are assigned to regions
• each BLOB has a user-assigned key
• in-flight and at-rest encryption available
• data automatically moved to 'cold storage' after a period of inactivity
• access controlled

Storage Gateway

• on-premises virtual appliance
• on-premises application integration to AWS storage
• visible as iSCSI storage volumes
• data on-premises for low-latency access
• asynchronously uploading data to Amazon S3

Glacier

• cold storage, aka archival storage
• retrieval time measured in hours
• same durability guarantees as S3
• $0.01 per GB per month
• SNS notifications supported

Import/Export Snowball

Petabyte data transfer device sent to your premises

Cloud Front

• content delivery network
• low latency
• high data transfer speeds
• United States
• Europe
• Asia
• Australia
• South America
• complex pricing model  but appears to be cheap

EFS

• Amazon Elastic File System
• shared file system
• auto-scales up or down
• NFS v4
• access data from EC2
• replicated within a region
• access controls

VPC

• Amazon Virtual Private Cloud
• virtual network dedicated to your AWS account
• logically isolated from other virtual networks
• can connect your VPC to your own corporate data center using an IPsec hardware VPN connection

Direct Connect

• dedicated network connection from your premises to AWS
• industry standard 802.1q VLANs
• reduces bandwidth costs
• consistent network performance
• compatible with all AWS services
• private connectivity to your Amazon VPC

Route 53

• scalable Domain Name System (DNS)
• can configure Amazon Route 53 to check the health of your resources and respond to DNS queries using only the healthy resources
• latency-based routing

Directory Service

• use corporate identities to access AWS services
• simplifies deployment of directory-dependent Microsoft Windows applications
• connect to your existing on-premises Microsoft Active Directory
• set up and operate a new directory in the AWS cloud

IAM

• Identity & Access Management
• ACLs to resources
• users
• groups
• permissions
• applied to all API calls
• very fine grained control
• auditing via Cloud Trail
• Active Directory integration

Trusted Advisor

• customized cloud expert
• cost
• performance
• security
• fault tolerance

Cloud Trail

• provides a record of your AWS API calls
• visibility into user activity
• troubleshoot operational and security incidents
• help demonstrate compliance
• store log files in S3
• look up API history
• get notified of specific API activity

Config

• inventory of your AWS resources
• notifications of configuration changes
• audit the history of configuration changes

Cloud Watch

• collect and track metrics
• cloud resources
• applications 
• 38 metrics currently available
• custom metrics generated by applications
• collect and monitor log files
• set alarms
• view graphs and statistics

Elastic Beanstalk

• deploy and manage applications in the AWS cloud without worrying about the infrastructure
• defer resource choices to Beanstalk
• package your bits with a descriptor
• Beanstalk provisions the required resources
• automated software updates and patching not supported
• limited environments
• Docker, Java, Go, PHP, .NET, Node.js, Python, Ruby
• environment support -- test, production, stress
• web applications get their own ELB
• automated deployment, monitoring and scaling

OpsWorks

• automated deployment, configuration, scaling and healing
• templates for common layers
• custom layers use Chef for provisioning
• automated OS updates not supported
• model your application as layers
• pre-built layers available - Ruby, PHP, Node.js, Java, Amazon RDS, HA Proxy, MySQL, memcached
• automatic scaling by load and time-of-day

Cloud Formation

• templated deployment
• from Amazon
• derived from working deployment

Service Catalog

• catalog of approved services and software
• images, services, software and databases
• enables self-service
• fine-grain access controls and configuration
• version controlled
• no lawyers involved

Code Deploy

• automated deployment
• geared towards continuous deployment
• rolling updates
• platform agnostic
• provide a deployment descriptor
• deploy from S3
• deploy from GitHub

CodeCommit

• hosted version control
• Git based
• secure
• scalable
• easy integration from other repos

CodePipeline

• hosted continuous delivery pipeline
• build
• test
• deploy
• GitHub
• Jenkins
• S3
• Beanstalk
• CodeDeploy
• EC2

AWS IoT

• provides secure, bi-directional communication between Internet-connected things and the AWS cloud
• collect telemetry data from multiple devices and store and analyze the data
• create applications that enable users to control these devices
• message broker
• rules engine
• thing registry
• thing shadows
• security and identity service

EMR

• Amazon Elastic MapReduce
• Hadoop based
• data is uploaded to S3
• results stored in S3
• cluster automatically shuts down when job is finished

Elasticsearch Service

• run Elasticsearch at scale
• self-healing
• auto-scaling
• data replication
• secure
• monitoring
• convenient

Kinesis

• big data stream processing
• process  terabytes of data per hour
• Log and Event Data Collection
• Application and Service Alert
• Real-time Analytics
• Mobile Data Capture
• Social Data Firehose
• Gaming Data Feed

Data Pipeline

• automate the movement and transformation of data
• define data-driven workflows
• can be scheduled
• moves data between other Amazon services
• on-premises resources supported
• S3, DynamoDB, Redshift, RDS, and JDBC sources
• EMR, Hive, Pig, SQL, and Shell scripts
• manages the pipeline execution, resources, retry logic and failure notifications

Machine Learning

• for  building ML models
• generating predictions

SQS

• Amazon Simple Queue Service
• at least once semantics
• multiple readers
• multiple writers
• manual acknowledgement required
• messages not acknowledged in time are returned to the queue
• up to 256 KB of text in any format
•  no guarantee of first in, first out delivery of messages
• 120,000 limit for the number of inflight messages per queue
• dead letter queue support

SWF

• Amazon Simple Workflow Service
• background jobs -- parallel or sequential steps 
• state tracker and task coordinator
• tracking workflow executions and logging their progress
• holding and dispatching tasks
• controlling which tasks each of your application hosts will be assigned to execute
• maintaining application state

AppStream

• application streaming service
• audio
• video
• multi-platform
• variable transport based on current network conditions
• STX streaming protocol

Elastic Transcoder

• transcodes media from S3
• 30 formats supported
• common presets available
• notifications of job status
• caption and sub-titles supported
• watermarks supported

SES

• Amazon Simple Email Service
• trusted by ISPs
• bounce management
• complaint management
• e-mail authentication

CloudSearch

• elastic search service
• can search most anything
• data is uploaded to the search service
• geospatial support
• 34 languages

Cognito

• securely store, manage, and sync identities and data across multiple devices, platforms, and applications
• recognize end users across devices and platforms
• save data to end user profiles and keep it in sync across all of the user's devices
• Multiple Identity Providers
• Amazon, Facebook, Google, Twitter, OpenID Connect compatible provider
• custom providers supported
• analytics

Mobile Hub

• in beta
• integrated console
• build, test and monitor mobile apps
• auto provisions required services
• iOS (Objective-C) and Android (Java) supported

Mobile Analytics

• collect and analyze app usage data
• use RedShift for custom analysis
• Daily Active Users (DAU), Monthly Active Users (MAU), and New Users
• Sticky Factor (DAU divided by MAU)
• Session Count and Average Sessions per Daily Active User
• Average Revenue per Daily Active User (ARPDAU) and Average Revenue per Daily Paying Active User (ARPPDAU)
• Custom Events

SNS

• Simple Notification Service
• push messaging service
• to mobile devices and Amazon services
• publication is asynchronous
• cryptographically signed
• consumption via multiple protocols
• Lambda, SQS, HTTP, Email, SMS

WorkSpaces

•  provides users with a desktop experience in the cloud that can be accessed from any connected device
• multi-device support
• PC, Mac, iPad, Kindle tablet, Android tablet
• Active Directory integration
• on-premises
• Amazon
• hybrid

WorkDocs

•  enterprise storage and sharing service
•  selected folders on your local computer in sync with your cloud folders

WorkMail

•  managed email and calendaring service
• Outlook Compatible

API Gateway

• publish, maintain, monitor and secure APIs
• proxy to any internet endpoint, EC2 endpoint or Lambda function
• versioning and stages, eg alpha, milestone
• metering and throttling
• caching
• signing & authorization via AWS Signature v4
• SDK generation, JavaScript, iOS, Android -- throttling and retries baked in
• manages API key distribution
• DDoS protection and latency reduction via CloudFront
• TLS termination support

Device Farm

• test apps on real smartphones and tablets
• large selection of devices
• detailed reports, searchable logs and screenshots
• configure location, network settings, language and application data prior to running the test
• integrate with existing development workflow
• Android and FireOS supported (no iOS)
• run provided tests eg. Calibash or JUnit
• fuzzing used if you don't have your own tests
• CPU and memory utilization captured and reported

"Amazon Sucks"

• virtual hardware has shorter life span than physical hardware.  Have to move your bits every so often.
• be in multiple zones or you will go down
• multi-zone failures can occur but multi-region is expensive
• EBS fails with the region, has poor I/O  and cause Linux boxes to lockup when unavailable
• many AWS services are backed by EBS and will fail when EBS fails, eg. ELB and RDS
• the same sized physical machine costs less the its virtual equivalent

Cost Estimates