Amazon Web Services (AWS): A 2022 FAQ

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is without a doubt the world’s leading cloud services provider, and it’s still racing ahead of Microsoft’s Azure cloud and the Google Cloud Platform. However, not everyone may be familiar with AWS and its various services. In this article, we’ll try to answer some of the most common questions you may have about Amazon Web Services.

What are the top AWS services?

There are about 200+ AWS services offered by Amazon. Some of the most frequently used AWS services include:

• Amazon EC2: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) provides virtual servers to run various workloads in the cloud. The EC2 Auto-scaling service can also scale computing capacity to meet user demands by automatically adding or removing EC2 instances.
• Amazon S3: Amazon Simple Storage System (S3) is a highly scalable object storage AWS service
• Amazon Aurora – The Aurora service provides a MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database
• Amazon DynamoDB: The DynamoDB service provides a serverless NoSQL database
• Amazon RDS: Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) provides MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and MariaDB database support.
• Amazon Lambda: This is a serverless event-driven computing AWS service. It can run code without the need to deploy servers or clusters.
• Amazon VPC: Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) provides an isolated cloud network with security rules for inbound and outbound connections
• Amazon CloudFront: Amazon’s CloudFront service delivers global web content with security and high-performance streaming
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk: This service supports running and managing web applications with capacity provisioning, load balancing, and auto-scaling

What does the AWS free tier include?

AWS is not free. Each service charges different rates for its usage. However, Amazon does offer a limited AWS Free Tier for many of its services.

Is AWS free for 12 months?

The AWS Free Tier includes a limited 12 months free option which provides 12 months of free usage following your initial sign-up date to AWS. When your 12-month free usage term expires or if your application usage exceeds the tier’s limits, then you’ll need to pay the standard service rates.

To learn more about the AWS free tier, you can check out the Get started with the AWS Free Tier – How AWS Pricing Works support page.

How do I work with AWS?

The AWS Management Console is the primary management interface for most AWS services. The AWS Management Console is free to use, and it works with most AWS services.

The AWS Management Console provides a simple web interface to interact with Amazon Web Services. The Console supports the three latest versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Apple Safari, as well as Microsoft Internet Explorer 11.

You can use the AWS Management Console to locate services by selecting the Services menu in the top-level navigation bar to see the list of all services grouped by category. You can also search for specific AWS services using Unified Search.

You can sign in to the management console using your AWS or IAM account credentials on this page.

Who are the top AWS Customers?

AWS is used by all types of organizations ranging from small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to big companies. AWS has the largest customer base of any cloud provider with 1.45 million businesses and $62.2 billion in revenue. According to Span Global Services, the top ten Fortune 100 companies that use AWS are:

• Netflix
• Comcast
• General Electric
• Kellogg’s
• Bristol-Myers Squibb
• Pfizer
• Capital One
• McDonald’s
• Adobe
• Nordstrom

How does Netflix use AWS?

Netflix has been heavily committed to AWS for several years, and the company use AWS for nearly all their computing and storage requirements. This includes databases, analytics, recommendation engines, video transcoding, and more.

If want to learn more details about how Netflix uses AWS you can check out the Netflix Case Study on the AWS website.

Need More AWS FAQs?

We hope we answered your biggest questions about AWS in this FAQ. However, if you’re interested in reading more FAQs about AWS, you can also check out dozens of official FAQs from Amazon on the AWS website.