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Cloud Navigator

Stop drowning in AWS jargon. We translate 50+ AWS services into plain English so you can build with confidence.

50
Services Translated
10
Categories
0
Jargon Required
πŸ”
⚑

Compute

(4)
πŸ–₯️

EC2

Rent a computer in the cloud

β–Ό

Plain English:A virtual computer you rent by the hour. Pick the size, install what you want, run anything.

intermediate~ Variable
πŸ’‘

Lightsail

Simple, fixed-price virtual server

β–Ό

Plain English:The simple version of EC2. A pre-packaged virtual server with a fixed monthly price β€” no surprise bills.

beginner$ Low
🌱

Elastic Beanstalk

Deploy apps without managing infrastructure

β–Ό

Plain English:Upload your code and AWS handles everything else β€” servers, scaling, monitoring. Like a valet for your app.

beginner~ Variable
πŸ“

Auto Scaling

Automatic capacity management

β–Ό

Plain English:Automatically adds or removes servers based on demand. Black Friday traffic? It scales up. 3am quiet? It scales down. You save money.

intermediateFree Tier
πŸ’Ύ

Storage

(4)
πŸͺ£

S3

Unlimited cloud file storage

β–Ό

Plain English:Unlimited file storage in the cloud. Think of it as a giant, indestructible filing cabinet. Store anything: photos, videos, backups, data.

beginner$ Low
πŸ’Ώ

EBS

Hard drives for EC2 instances

β–Ό

Plain English:A hard drive for your virtual computer (EC2). It stays connected even if you restart the computer.

intermediate$$ Medium
πŸ“

EFS

Shared file system for multiple servers

β–Ό

Plain English:A shared folder that multiple computers can access at the same time. Like a Google Drive for your servers.

intermediate$$ Medium
🧊

S3 Glacier

Cheap archive storage

β–Ό

Plain English:Ultra-cheap storage for stuff you rarely need. Like a storage unit β€” cheap rent, but takes hours to retrieve items.

beginner$ Low
πŸ—„οΈ

Database

(4)
🐘

RDS

Managed SQL database

β–Ό

Plain English:A managed database β€” AWS handles backups, updates, and scaling. Pick your flavor: PostgreSQL, MySQL, or others.

intermediate$$ Medium
⚑

DynamoDB

Fast, flexible NoSQL database

β–Ό

Plain English:A super-fast database that scales infinitely. No schema needed β€” just throw data in and read it back in milliseconds.

intermediateFree Tier
🌌

Aurora

High-performance managed database

β–Ό

Plain English:AWS's own database engine β€” 5x faster than MySQL, 3x faster than PostgreSQL. Enterprise-grade with auto-scaling.

advanced$$$ High
🏎️

ElastiCache

In-memory caching (Redis/Memcached)

β–Ό

Plain English:An in-memory cache that makes your app lightning fast by storing frequently-accessed data in RAM instead of hitting the database.

intermediate$$ Medium
🌐

Networking

(4)
🏰

VPC

Private network in the cloud

β–Ό

Plain English:Your own private network inside AWS. Like building walls around your servers so only approved traffic gets in.

intermediateFree Tier
🌍

CloudFront

Global content delivery network (CDN)

β–Ό

Plain English:A global network of servers that caches your content closer to users worldwide. Makes your site load fast everywhere.

intermediate$ Low
πŸ—ΊοΈ

Route 53

Domain name & DNS management

β–Ό

Plain English:AWS's DNS service β€” it translates your domain name (like actuate.pink) into the server address visitors need.

beginner$ Low
βš–οΈ

Elastic Load Balancer

Distribute traffic across servers

β–Ό

Plain English:Distributes incoming traffic across multiple servers so no single server gets overwhelmed. Like a traffic cop for your app.

intermediate$$ Medium
πŸ”’

Security

(7)
πŸ”‘

IAM

User access & permissions management

β–Ό

Plain English:Controls who can do what in your AWS account. Create users, set permissions, and enforce security rules.

beginnerFree Tier
πŸ‘€

Cognito

User authentication for your app

β–Ό

Plain English:Add user sign-up, sign-in, and access control to your app β€” without building it yourself. Supports Google, Facebook, etc.

beginnerFree Tier
πŸ”

KMS

Encryption key management

β–Ό

Plain English:Manage encryption keys for your data. AWS keeps the keys safe so you don't have to worry about them.

intermediate$ Low
πŸ›‘οΈ

WAF

Web application firewall

β–Ό

Plain English:A firewall for your web apps. Blocks common attacks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting before they reach your servers.

intermediate$$ Medium
🀫

Secrets Manager

Secure password & secret storage

β–Ό

Plain English:A secure vault for passwords, API keys, and database credentials. Auto-rotates them so you never forget.

beginner$ Low
πŸ•΅οΈ

GuardDuty

AI threat detection

β–Ό

Plain English:An AI-powered security guard that watches your AWS account 24/7 for suspicious activity and threats.

beginner$$ Medium
πŸ‘£

CloudTrail

AWS activity audit log

β–Ό

Plain English:Records every action taken in your AWS account. Who did what, when, and from where. Your audit trail.

beginnerFree Tier
🧠

AI & Machine Learning

(6)
πŸ§ͺ

SageMaker

Build & deploy ML models

β–Ό

Plain English:A complete toolkit for building, training, and deploying machine learning models. From notebook to production.

advanced$$$ High
πŸͺ¨

Bedrock

Access foundation AI models via API

β–Ό

Plain English:Access powerful AI models (Claude, Llama, Stable Diffusion) through a single API. No ML expertise required.

beginner~ Variable
πŸ‘οΈ

Rekognition

Image & video AI analysis

β–Ό

Plain English:AI that can identify objects, people, text, and scenes in images and videos. Plug-and-play computer vision.

beginner$ Low
πŸ“–

Comprehend

Natural language processing (NLP)

β–Ό

Plain English:AI that reads text and understands it β€” finds sentiment, key phrases, language, and topics automatically.

beginner$ Low
πŸ—£οΈ

Polly

Text-to-speech AI

β–Ό

Plain English:Turns text into natural-sounding speech. Choose from dozens of voices and languages.

beginner$ Low
🌐

Translate

Real-time language translation

β–Ό

Plain English:Real-time language translation. Send text in, get translated text back. Supports 75+ languages.

beginner$ Low
πŸ› οΈ

Developer Tools

(5)
πŸ“

CodeCommit

Managed Git repositories

β–Ό

Plain English:AWS's version of GitHub β€” a private Git repository hosted in the cloud. Store and collaborate on code.

beginnerFree Tier
πŸ”„

CodePipeline

Automated build & deploy pipeline

β–Ό

Plain English:Automates your deployment process. When code changes, it automatically builds, tests, and deploys β€” hands-free.

intermediate$ Low
πŸ“‹

CloudFormation

Infrastructure as code

β–Ό

Plain English:Define your entire AWS infrastructure in a template file. Deploy, update, or tear down everything with one click.

intermediateFree Tier
πŸ“ˆ

CloudWatch

Monitoring, logging & alerts

β–Ό

Plain English:Monitor everything in your AWS account β€” logs, metrics, alarms. Know when something breaks before your users do.

beginnerFree Tier
πŸ“±

Amplify

Full-stack app development platform

β–Ό

Plain English:Build full-stack web and mobile apps fast. Authentication, storage, APIs β€” all wired up with a few clicks.

beginnerFree Tier
πŸ“Š

Analytics

(5)
πŸ”΄

Redshift

Data warehouse for big analytics

β–Ό

Plain English:A data warehouse for analyzing massive datasets. Run complex queries across petabytes of data in seconds.

advanced$$$ High
πŸ”

Athena

SQL queries on S3 data

β–Ό

Plain English:Run SQL queries directly on files stored in S3. No database needed β€” just point at your data and ask questions.

intermediate$ Low
πŸ“Š

QuickSight

Business intelligence dashboards

β–Ό

Plain English:Drag-and-drop dashboard builder for your data. Create charts, graphs, and reports β€” share them with your team.

beginner$$ Medium
🌊

Kinesis

Real-time data streaming

β–Ό

Plain English:Process real-time data streams. Ingest thousands of events per second β€” like a firehose of live data you can analyze instantly.

advanced$$ Medium
🧩

Glue

Data preparation & ETL

β–Ό

Plain English:Automatically discovers, cleans, and transforms your data so it's ready for analysis. ETL made simple.

intermediate$$ Medium
☁️

Serverless

(7)
Ξ»

Lambda

Run code without a server

β–Ό

Plain English:Run a small piece of code without managing any server. You only pay when your code actually runs β€” down to the millisecond.

beginnerFree Tier
πŸšͺ

API Gateway

Managed API front door

β–Ό

Plain English:A front door for your APIs. Handles authentication, rate limiting, and routing β€” so you can focus on the code.

beginnerFree Tier
πŸ“’

SNS

Push notifications & pub/sub messaging

β–Ό

Plain English:Send notifications β€” emails, texts, push notifications β€” to millions of subscribers at once. Pub/sub messaging.

beginnerFree Tier
πŸ“¬

SQS

Message queue between services

β–Ό

Plain English:A message queue β€” one part of your system drops messages in, another picks them up. Decouples your services so they don't crash each other.

beginnerFree Tier
πŸ”—

Step Functions

Visual workflow orchestration

β–Ό

Plain English:Orchestrate multiple AWS services into visual workflows. "First do this, then do that, if it fails do this instead."

intermediate$ Low
πŸŒ‰

EventBridge

Event-driven architecture hub

β–Ό

Plain English:A central event bus β€” when something happens in one service, automatically trigger actions in others. Event-driven architecture made easy.

intermediateFree Tier
πŸ“§

SES

Email sending service

β–Ό

Plain English:Send and receive emails at scale. Transactional emails, marketing campaigns, notifications β€” all from your app.

beginner$ Low
πŸ“¦

Containers

(4)
🐳

ECS

Run Docker containers, managed

β–Ό

Plain English:Run Docker containers without managing the machines underneath. Like a shipping dock that loads and unloads your containers automatically.

intermediate~ Variable
☸️

EKS

Managed Kubernetes

β–Ό

Plain English:Kubernetes β€” the industry-standard container orchestrator β€” fully managed by AWS. For teams already using Kubernetes.

advanced$$$ High
πŸš€

Fargate

Serverless containers

β–Ό

Plain English:Run containers without thinking about servers at all. You define the container, AWS runs it β€” no EC2 instances to manage.

intermediate$$ Medium
πŸ—οΈ

ECR

Docker image registry

β–Ό

Plain English:A private Docker image warehouse. Store, manage, and deploy your container images securely.

intermediate$ Low

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