AWS provides a wide range of services that can replace traditional on-premises solutions, including compute, storage, networking, databases, Identity, and Access Management, Monitoring and logging, Security, and compliance, DevOps and CI/CD, Disaster Recovery and High Availability, and Remote Desktop / Virtual Desktops.
1. Compute
On-prem AWS Replacement
Physical servers EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)
Hypervisors (VMware, Hyper-V) EC2 with AMIs, AWS VM Import/Export, AWS Outposts
Auto-scaling compute clusters EC2 Auto Scaling, Elastic Beanstalk, ECS, EKS, Lambda
2. Storage
On-prem AWS Replacement
SAN / NAS EBS (Elastic Block Store), EFS (Elastic File System), FSx (for Windows File Server or Lustre)
Object storage appliances Amazon S3
Archival storage (tape libraries)Amazon S3 Glacier, Glacier Deep Archive
Backup solutions AWS Backup, S3, Storage Gateway
3. Networking
On-prem AWS Replacement
Physical switches & routers VPC, Transit Gateway, Route Tables
Load balancers Elastic Load Balancer (ALB, NLB, CLB)
VPN appliances AWS VPN, Client VPN
Firewalls AWS Network Firewall, Security Groups, NACLs
DNS servers Amazon Route 53
4. Databases
On-prem AWS Replacement
SQL Databases (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MSSQL) Amazon RDS (with Multi-AZ), Aurora
NoSQL Databases DynamoDB
Data warehousing (on-prem DBs with analytics add-ons) Amazon Redshift
5. Identity & Access Management
On-prem AWS Replacement
Active Directory AWS Directory Service (AD Connector / Microsoft AD)
LDAP servers AWS Directory Service
PKI / Certificate services AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)
6. Monitoring & Logging
On-prem AWS Replacement
Nagios / Zabbix / PRTG Amazon CloudWatch, CloudWatch Logs, X-Ray
SIEM solutions Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Security Hub, CloudTrail
7. Security & Compliance
On-prem AWS Replacement
Intrusion Detection / Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS)AWS GuardDuty, AWS Network Firewall
Vulnerability management AWS Inspector
DLP appliances Macie (for S3 data classification)
Security audits AWS Config, AWS Audit Manager
8. DevOps & CI/CD
On-prem AWS Replacement
Jenkins, Bamboo, GitLab CI AWS CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy
Artifact repositories AWS CodeArtifact
Container registry Amazon ECR (Elastic Container Registry)
9. Disaster Recovery & High Availability
On-prem AWS Replacement
Offsite backup locations S3 Cross-region Replication, AWS Backup
Cold/warm DR sites Multi-region deployments, CloudEndure Disaster Recovery
10. Remote Desktop / Virtual Desktops
On-prem AWS Replacement
Citrix, VMware Horizon Amazon WorkSpaces, AppStream 2.0
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