Your AWS Terminology Cheat Sheet

Use this cheat sheet as a simple, quick resource as you review and study for AWS certifications and work through our courses.

We don't just want you to memorize definitions — we want you to understand and recognize these terms and concepts, so we've taken the definitions AWS has provided and simplified them. Happy training!

1. Access control list (ACL): A firewall/security layer on the subnet level
2. Auto scaling: Automates the process of adding or removing EC2 instances based on traffic demand for your application
3. Buckets: Root-level "folders"
4. CloudFront: Content delivery network (CDN) that allows you to store your content at "edge locations" located all around the world, allowing customers to access your content more quickly
5. CloudTrail: Allows you to monitor all actions taken by IAM users
6. CloudWatch: Service that allows you to monitor various elements of your AWS account
7. Consolidated billing: Allows you to view, manage, and pay bills for multiple AWS accounts in one user interface
8. DNS server: A database of website domains and their corresponding IP addresses
9. DynamoDB: NoSQL database service that does not provide other NoSQL software options
10. Elastic Block Store (EBS): Provides persistent block storage volumes for use of EC2 instances.
11. Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2): A virtual computer, very similar to a desktop/laptop computer
12. Elastic Load Balancing (ELB): Evenly distributes traffic between EC2 instances that are associated with it
13. ElastiCache: Data caching service used to help improve the speed/performance of web applications running on AWS
14. Elasticity: The ability of a system to increase and decrease in size
15. Fault tolerance: Property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of one or more components
16. Firewall: A type of software that either allows or blocks certain kinds of internet traffic to pass through it
17. Folder: Any "subfolder" created in a bucket
18. High availability: Refers to systems that are durable and likely to operate continuously without failure for a long time
19. IAM users: Individuals who have been granted access to an AWS account
20. Identity and Access Management (IAM): Service where AWS user accounts and their access to various AWS services are managed
21. Lambda: Serverless computing that will replace EC2 instances, for the most part
22. Object availability: Percent over a one-year time period that a file stored in S3 will be accessible
23. Object durability: Percent over a one-year time period that a file stored in S3 will not be lost
24. Object lifecycle: Set rules to automatically transfer objects between storage classes at defined time intervals
25. Object sharing: Ability to make any object publicly available via a URL link
26. Object versioning: Automatically keep multiple versions of an object (when enabled)
27. Organizations: Allow you or your company access to manage billing and access to multiple AWS accounts in one user interface
28. Principle of least privilege: Giving a user only the rights/access to the AWS services and resources they need to do their job and nothing more
29. Publishers: Human/alarm/event that gives SNS the message that needs to be sent
30. Relational Database Service (RDS): SQL database service that provides a wide range of SQL database options to select from
31. RedShift: Data warehouse database service designed to handle petabytes of data for analysis
32. Roles: How different AWS services are granted permission to communicate and share data
33. Route 53: Where you configure and manage web domains for websites or applications you host on AWS
34. Scalability: The ability of a system to easily increase in size and capacity in a cost-effective way
35. Security group (SG): Firewall/security layer on the server/instance level
36. Shared responsibility model: Defines what you and AWS are responsible for when it comes to security and compliance
37. Simple Notification Service (SNS): AWS service that allows you to automate the sending of email or text messaging notifications based on events that happen in your AWS account
38. Simple Storage Service (S3): Online bulk storage service you can access from almost any device
39. Storage class: Represents "classification" assigned to each object in S3 (standard, RRS, S3-IA, Glacier)
40. Subnet: A subsection of a network and generally includes all the computers in a specific location
41. Subscriptions: Endpoints to which a topic sends messages
42. Topics: How you label and group different endpoints to which you send messages
43. Trusted Advisor: Service that "advises" and helps you optimize aspects of your AWS account
44. User credentials: IAM user's username and password for logging in to AWS
45. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC): A private subsection of AWS you control and in which you can place AWS resources

Many of these terms and simplified definitions were pulled from our AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner course and our AWS Essentials course, one of many free courses at ACG!

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