The AWS services have completely revolutionized the IT industry. The remarkable services provided by AWS have not only made your cloud computing more effective but it also saves a lot of resources and time. The AWS is becoming the first choice for startups because of its ability to provide powerful cloud architecture. There are many AWS services available in the market and it has become difficult for businesses to choose the right AWS option. This article discusses some of the best AWS services available in the market that you can use to build a cloud computing platform for your business.
The Amazon web service is a pioneer in the cloud industry and more than 32% of the total cloud marketing share belongs to AWS. There are many well-known companies using AWS services to fulfill their business needs, such as Coca-Cola, NASA, NetFlix, BBC, Coursera, SoundCloud, Rovio Entertainment, etc. Here are the most effective Amazon web services that you can use for your startup or business based on your cloud computing needs.
Table of Contents
Elastic Beanstalk

The Amazon Elastic Beanstalk offers many functionalities and features you require for web application management and deployment. While using AWS, you have to assimilate different services for different features. Sometimes, it is very hard to select any AWS service for use, provisioning, and management. In the end, instead of focusing on improving your product, you spend most of the time on system management. Amazon Elastic Beanstalk has made app deployment convenient and easy. The Amazon Elastic Beanstalk service makes the whole process of app management and deployment more convenient and easier.
Here, you just have to upload the application and provide some Beanstalk and it will manage all details of deployment for your app, for example, load balancing, provisioning, health monitoring, and auto-scaling. When you have done with your application deployment, you can control the whole environment and even new versions organization. Though, it doesn’t mean that the application will have to function with the prearranged setup. You get the full authority to modify the resources based on your business needs. The best thing about Amazon Elastic BeanStalk is that you just have to pay for the core AWS resources and there are no charges to get additional features.
Amazon EC2
The Amazon EC2 allows the user to deploy the application and configure virtual servers in a few minutes. For this, you just have to select the EC2 servers’ type also called instances, operating system, and select all the needed instances. You can set up its networking, storage management, and security as a physical server. This AWS architect offers you many options depending on the use case, for example, GPU-optimized, general-purpose, compute-optimized, storage-optimized, or memory-optimized instances.
The is divided into three groups based on the cost model:
Reserved Instances:
The Reserved instances of AWS EC2 let you reserve servers for the computing volume that you may require. This type of instance can be selected in case the computing capacity is expectable. You can get a huge discount of up to 75% for getting the AWS EC2 services for reserved instances.
On-Demand Instances:
In the case of these instances, you just have to pay for the per-hour service and can simply scale down or scale up the resource’s capacity based on the computing needs. On-demand instances are the best option for short-term use and here you don’t have to plan for the traffic spikes.
Spot Instances:
These instances are said to be unused and spare AWS EC2 instances that you can use at discounted prices. When EC2 retrieves spot instances, there is an interruption and it terminates them by default. You can even configure to stop or hide the spot instances depending on your requirements.
Amazon S3

The Amazon S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service) is an AWS service for storing the objects that allow you to retrieve and store data on the web whenever you want. You have to create a bucket in the region, where you want to store data. S3 buckets are the containers for storing the objects. Depending on your needs and goals, you can create many buckets. The Amazon S3 service is generally used in different industries and many use cases, for example, mobile applications, websites, restore and backup, enterprise applications, archives, big data analytics, and IoT devices. In Amazon S3, you can store and retrieve data anywhere on the web. There are three types of storage made for different use cases:
- S3 Standard for data accessed regularly.
- Amazon Glacier is archival storage for long-term use.
- S3 Infrequent Access for data accessed less often, for example, long-term and backup storage.
Amazon S3 emphasizes all the 3 benefits —security, scalability, and cost-effectiveness for the storage service.
Security
Amazon S3 automatically makes a data copy on several devices to make the data more secure. It lets you restore and preserve the earlier object versions, so in case of system failure or objects accidentally deleted, you can improve it whenever you want. It also provides you with full access control of data with query string authentication, bucket policies, and Access Control Management policies.
Scalability
In the Amazon S3, you can use any storage size based on your needs without planning and predicting beforehand.
Cost Effectiveness
One of the best things about Amazon S3 is that it is a cost-effective service. Like many other services, in Amazon S3, you only pay for the service you actually need, the cost model of the Amazon S3 is very simple and you don’t have to pay any added charges.
Amazon RDS
The Amazon services help us to make simpler and easier infrastructure, and for this purpose, it offers us RDS (Relational Database Service) service. This service also offers us dedicated instances for databases in a few minutes, this is fully managed by the support team and proficient in multiple database engine support for example SQL Server, PostgreSQL, SQL, etc. The Amazon RDS is a relational database service by AWS. This web service runs on the cloud and it is primarily made to simplify the operation, setup, and relational database scaling to be used in applications.
AWS Auto Scaling

The AWS Auto Scaling does application monitoring and automatically alters the computation resources capacity to improve its performance. It is an open-source service, where you can scale and monitor resources in one interface without navigating to other consoles. AWS Auto Scaling adjusts the computation resources capacity for better performance.
The AWS Auto Scaling allows you to system scale automation for Amazon Cloud services, for example, Spot Fleets and Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon DynamoDB tables, Amazon ECS tasks, and Amazon Aurora Replicas and indexes. In the case of Auto Scaling, you don’t have to increase the resources, when the demand is increasing but also reduce them throughout the quiet which saves your prices. Therefore, AWS Auto Scaling scans the application and reduces or adds the resources depending on the real-time needs.
Amazon VPC
The Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) is a profitable AWS cloud computing service that offers the user a virtual private cloud, through provisioning a rationally isolated Amazon Cloud section. Some of the enterprises are able to approach the Amazon Elastic Cloud from a virtual private network based on IPsec. Different from outdated EC2 instances that are owed external and internal IP numbers by AWS, the users can allocate IP numbers, choosing from one or more subnets.
The intentions of the Amazon VPC are to offer a facility similar to private clouds using technologies such as HPE Helion Eucalyptus or OpenStack. However, private clouds use technologies, for example, various database systems and OpenShift application hosting. The security experts of the cloud advised there may be a compliance risk, like a service cancellation or loss of control while using the resources of the public.
AWS CloudFront

The AWS CloudFront is a content delivery network for high-speed delivery of dynamic and static web content, for example, applications, videos, images, and APIs. This content can be delivered through its international Point of Presence network called Edge locations. These are the data centers that cache content from the source server so whenever a user sends a request for content, it is sent from the nearest edge location to lessen the time of delivery (decrease latency). In case content is not cached, the data is fetched by CloudFront from the source and cached in the edge location.
Therefore, with Amazon CloudFront, the user accepts the content with the least interruption. The CloudFront can be continuously integrated with Amazon services, for example, Elastic load balancing Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, or as data origins, the AWS Shield for eliminating the Lambda Edge and DDoS attacks for customizing delivery of content. Like other services, CloudFront provides simple systems of payment known as pay-as-you-go without any long-term contracts or added fees.
Elastic Load Balancing
If your website or application has to deal with millions of concurrent requests, it means that you need to scale your servers to achieve more requests. However, adding servers is not likely to help if the traffic is not analytically distributed on all the servers. You require a middle service to monitor the servers, recognize the request, and route the request to the most suitable server. It allocates incoming traffic across numerous targets, including containers, IP addresses, and Amazon EC2 instances. The “traffic cop” routes the requests of the users to the various targets checking their capability and availability thus, maximizing the performance and speed.
The Elastic Load Balancing AWS architecture provides 3 different load balancers for different use cases of traffic distribution: Classic Load Balancer, Application Load Balancer, and Network Load Balancer. As well as requests distributing, Elastic Load Balancing can be arranged to screen the performance of the overall resource. This can also route the requests for ensuring effective performance of resources, increasing the accessibility and tolerance of errors in the application.
AWS Inspector

When it comes to the IT infrastructure of the cloud, the security valuation is the first thing that comes to your mind. You have to ensure that your IT set-up is free from any deficiencies to guarantee the full security of the infrastructure. The AWS inspector is a service that can help you improve the compliance and security of applications organized on the Amazon platform. AWS inspector helps to improve the security of applications deployed on AWS.
It can also empower the security valuation and assess the compliance, vulnerabilities, and loopholes in the application. These valuations are motorized by a set of instructions that depends on the best security practices. The Amazon Inspector operates the automatic assessment and gathers the resource’s behavioral data. When you finish collecting the data, it links it with the predefined security guidelines. In the end, a report is produced depending on the results that are ranked by the security level. Therefore, you can take the essential actions to protect your application.
Amazon Elasticache
The AWS Elasticache Memory caching system supports Redis and Memcache. It is a fully managed cache service and in-memory data store by AWS. The Amazon server enhances the overall web applications’ performance by repossessing data from managed caches, in preference to relying completely on disk-based databases that are slower. The ElastiCache supports 2 in-memory caching engines: Redis and Memcached. It is said to be a web service for cloud computing, this service is designed to make simpler the operation, scaling, and setup of Redis and Memcached distributions.
The complicated processes of administration such as backing up, restoring data sets patching software, and dynamically removing or adding competencies are automatically managed. The overall ElastiCache resources scaling can be achieved through one API call. The limitations of the database are frequently a block for the performance of the application. By employing Amazon ElastiCache among a database tier and its application, operations of the database become faster. The publish-subscribe patterns are also supported by AWS ElastiCache for Redis, which allows the formation of message boards and chat rooms where messages are distributed automatically to users.
AWS Shield

The AWS Shield is a security service that provides defense against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks for AWS-hosted applications. It offers automatic inline mitigations and always-on detection that helps in limiting the latency and downtime because of the DDoS attacks. AWS Shield provides security against distributed denial of service. There are two tiers of this Amazon service: Standard and Advanced.
AWS Shield Standard
It is a standard AWS service that is free and provides security to all users for DDoS attacks without any added charges. It defends the applications against the transport layer and common network attacks on applications and websites.
AWS Shield Advanced
It is said to be the premium AWS service that offers more functionalities and more security against DDoS attacks on websites and other applications. Here, you will get more functionalities and features, for example, mitigation and detection against DDoS attacks, real-time visibility into attacks, web application firewall, AWS DDoS Response Team 24/7 support, etc. The AWS Shield Advanced fees are more as compared with the standard services charges because of some added functionality in AWS Shield Advanced services.
Amazon SNS
Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service) is a service for sending notifications provided as an Amazon Web Services component since 2010. It offers an efficient set-up for mass message delivery, mainly to the users of mobile. From the viewpoint of the sender, the SNS acts as one message bus to send messages to a variety of platforms and devices, from Baidu to Kindle Fire. An interface of a single code can discourse them equally, or formats of the message can be personalized to the specific requirements of every platform.
The Amazon SNS is a simple AWS service that deals with online communications. The SNS can be used for sending email, SMS, and HTML endpoint messages or SQS. The stimulating part about this well-known notification service is the flexibility of incorporation with different applications, for example, PHP, Node.JS, and Python applications. It is significant to know the usage of SNS, it can be used for email server operations. Additionally, you might be able to influence Amazon SNS to send notifications to users on the web and also on iOS and Android mobile platforms.
When it comes to overcoming the issue of the developers, AWS also offers a very specific system of notification that offers integration with any application type, be it, Python, PHP Node, etc. With SNS, the notifications can be sent to all users on any platform, web or mobile on iOS or Android. It also uses the subscribe model for messages to push delivery. In this model, the recipients subscribe to at least one SNS ‘topic’.
Typically, it is an internal part of the mobile app that is hidden from the user. Delivery of a message might also be hidden from the user: the SNS service is majorly pointed at the specific apps of the internal processing, instead of a generic email substitute. A game might receive unlock keys or bonus level announcements for in-game buying through this path. This service can be used by the ticket booking app could use it for boarding passes, validation vouchers, or flight delay notifications.
Amazon CloudWatch

The Amazon CloudWatch service offers real-time management and monitoring services for applications and resources of AWS. It tracks and collects metrics to help you optimize and manage the resources for improved performance and makes the developers’ work, system managers, and system operators easier. Amazon CloudWatch provides real-time monitoring for AWS applications. All the information about the service can be found on the homepage and can make a custom dashboard for personalized apps. The alarms can be set to care for the metrics, understandings for service optimizations, and automate tasks, and issues.
The AWS Cloud Watch can be used to evaluate the services with Amazon RDS DB, Amazon DynamoDB, EC2, Amazon EBS volumes, AWS Lambda, Elastic Load Balancers, instances, etc. For instance, CPU EC2 usage monitoring and control whether you need extra instances for the management of the application. The collected data can help you save the cost by stopping consuming the resources that are under-used. Eventually, CloudFront provides you with important insights and information that would also help you to efficiently run the application.
AWS Lambda
The AWS Lambda is said to be a “serverless” service made to execute the backend code in response to actions for example, changes in data, HTTP requests, actions in mobile or web apps, or changes in system state. The AWS lambda is known as serverless because it does not need you to set up the instances. Here, you just have to upload your code and everything else is done by Lambda. The AWS Lambda was primarily made for use cases, for example, object or image uploads to Amazon S3, website clicks responding, updates to DynamoDB tables, or sensor readings reacting from an IoT device. The AWS Lambda can be automatically used to deliver back-end facilities activated by “spin down” services and custom HTTP requests, to save the maximum resources.
You can use Labda’s code editor to write code or simply upload the code to Lambda → Set up code to generate with AWS services, for example, DynamoDB, S3, or in-app action → When Lambda accepts the request, it automatically runs the code using the all of the essential resources. Amazon charges for definite computing milliseconds of time needed for the code execution. If you are not running any code no charges will be paid. Therefore, it is said to be a cost-effective service with zero management.
Conclusion
In this article, I have discussed some of the most effective AWS services to build cloud platforms. Here, 14 AWS services are discussed that can be used by companies or individuals for building powerful cloud architecture. I hope the information shared in this article will help you to find out the best AWS service to fulfill your cloud computing needs.
Hammad Mohsin
When evaluating public cloud providers it is easy to get hung up on the differences.AWS Microsoft Azure and Google cloud each have their own terminology pricing service catalog and purchasing variations.