Getting Started

AWS Introduction

Get started with Amazon Web Services — the world's leading cloud platform.

What is AWS?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally. AWS provides cloud computing services — from infrastructure like compute, storage, and databases to machine learning, analytics, and IoT.

Why AWS?

  • Market leader: ~33% of cloud market share
  • Breadth: 200+ services covering almost any use case
  • Global infrastructure: 30+ regions, 90+ availability zones
  • Pay-as-you-go: No upfront costs, scale up or down
  • Free tier: 12 months free for many services

Key Service Categories

  • Compute: EC2, Lambda, ECS, EKS
  • Storage: S3, EBS, EFS
  • Databases: RDS, DynamoDB, Aurora, ElastiCache
  • Networking: VPC, CloudFront, Route 53, API Gateway
  • Security: IAM, Cognito, KMS, WAF
  • AI/ML: SageMaker, Rekognition, Polly, Bedrock

AWS CLI

bash
# Install: https://aws.amazon.com/cli/
aws configure
aws configure list

Example

bash
# Install AWS CLI (macOS)
brew install awscli

# Configure credentials
aws configure
# AWS Access Key ID [None]: YOUR_KEY
# AWS Secret Access Key [None]: YOUR_SECRET
# Default region name [None]: us-east-1
# Default output format [None]: json

# Verify configuration
aws sts get-caller-identity

# List S3 buckets
aws s3 ls

# List EC2 instances
aws ec2 describe-instances

# Use multiple profiles
aws configure --profile production
aws s3 ls --profile production

# Set region for a command
aws s3 ls --region eu-west-1
Try it yourself — BASH