kaustubh yerkade

Posted on Dec 13, 2025 • Edited on Dec 15, 2025

AWS for Developers: The Guide

Cloud is no longer a “nice to have.” If you are building, scaling, shipping, or even experimenting. AWS is where most of the world runs its production workloads.

But here’s the problem -> AWS has over 200 services. New developers often feel like they’re entering a jungle with no map.

This article is that map.
Short. Concise. Practical.

Let’s go.

Why AWS Still Rules the Cloud

Even with big players like Azure and GCP growing fast, AWS dominates because:

Most complete ecosystem (Compute, Storage, Database, AI, DevOps… literally everything)
Battle tested global infrastructure
Deep enterprise adoption
Strong tooling for DevOps, automation, and infra-as-code
Leader in serverless (Lambda), container orchestration (ECS/EKS), and data engineering

If you're a developer, AWS is more than a cloud provider, it's a career multiplier.

The AWS Big 5:

The Only Services Every Developer Must Know. These are workload services used to run actual applications:

Amazon EC2 - Virtual Machines, Classic Style
Amazon S3 - The Unlimited Storage Bucket
AWS Lambda - Serverless Magic
Amazon RDS - Databases Without the Ops Pain
Amazon DynamoDB - The NoSQL Supercharger

Forget the 200+ service list.
These are the 5 services that drive 80% of real-world applications.

Let's see them one by one -

1. Amazon EC2- Elastic Compute Cloud

The foundational compute service of AWS.

Why it’s top tier:

Runs your applications on virtual servers
Full OS-level control
Autoscaling + Load Balancing support
Best for legacy applications, backend services, batch jobs

Example uses:

Application servers
Backend microservices
Game servers
High-performance web apps

2.Amazon S3- Simple Storage Service

The backbone of modern cloud storage.

Why everyone uses it:
Unlimited file storage
Extremely durable (99.999999999% durability)
Cheap and scalable
Stores everything from images to logs to ML datasets

Example uses:
Static website hosting
Backup & archiving
Data lakes
CI/CD artifacts

3.AWS Lambda- Serverless Compute

Run code without managing servers.

Why it’s a top 5 service:

Only pay when code runs
Scales automatically
Integrates with 200+ AWS services
Ideal for event-driven architectures

Example uses:

API backend
Automation scripts
CRON jobs
Data processing

4.Amazon RDS- Relational Database Service

Managed SQL databases without DBA overhead.

Why it’s essential:

Automated backups
Multi-AZ replication
High availability built-in
Supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle, Aurora

Example uses:

Banking apps
ERP / CRM systems
Transactional websites

5. Amazon DynamoDB- Fully Managed NoSQL Database

A super-fast, massively scalable NoSQL solution.

Why top companies love it:

Millisecond low-latency reads/writes
Auto-scaling to millions of requests
Zero-downtime operations
Serverless + event-driven

Example uses:

Shopping carts
Gaming state data
IoT device storage
Microservices

AWS Developer Workflow:

How Modern Teams Build Apps on AWS

Here’s what a typical production-grade AWS architecture looks like:

Frontend → CloudFront → S3
API → API Gateway → Lambda/ECS
Database → RDS / DynamoDB
Messaging → SNS / SQS
CI/CD → CodePipeline / GitHub Actions
Infra → Terraform / CDK
Monitoring → CloudWatch / X-Ray

This stack is scalable, fault-tolerant, and cost-efficient.

AWS DevOps Essentials

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Tools:
Terraform
AWS CDK
CloudFormation

Using IaC ensures:

Version-controlled infra
Consistent deployments
Automated scaling + repeatability

CI/CD with AWS

Common choices:

AWS CodePipeline
GitHub Actions
GitLab CI
Jenkins on EC2

Typical pipeline:

Build → Test → Security Scan → Deploy → Verify

Monitoring & Logging

CloudWatch Logs & Metrics
AWS X-Ray for tracing
CloudTrail for auditing
OpenSearch for log analytics

Observability is non-negotiable in 2025.

Quick Summery Cheat Sheet

Rank	AWS Service	Category	Why It's Top 5
⭐ 1	EC2	Compute	Full control, flexible, widely used for apps
⭐ 2	S3	Storage	Durable, cheap, global, foundation for many systems
⭐ 3	Lambda	Serverless	Zero server management, event-driven apps
⭐ 4	RDS	Database	Managed SQL, scalable, secure
⭐ 5	DynamoDB	NoSQL	High-speed, fully managed, microservice-friendly

Part 2

How AWS works
What the core services are
How they connect together
A mental model to stop AWS from feeling chaotic

I’ve written this in simple language, with engineering intuition, not marketing fluff.

AWS Without the Headache: A Simple Mental Model That Finally Makes Sense

“AWS is not hard. AWS is too big to explain at once.”

If you’re new to AWS (or even experienced), you’ve probably felt this:

Too many services
Weird names (EC2, IAM, VPC, ALB, EKS... why?)
Every tutorial starts in the middle, never at the beginning

So let’s do something different.

We won’t start with services
We’ll start with how AWS actually works

First: AWS is like a Massive Digital City

AWS is infrastructure, rented by the hour.

Imagine AWS as a city:

City Concept	AWS Equivalent
Land	AWS Regions
Buildings	Data Centers
Electricity	Compute (EC2, Lambda)
Roads	Networking (VPC, Subnets)
Security Guards	IAM
Warehouses	S3
Post Office	SNS / SQS

Once you see this, AWS stops feeling scary.

Regions & Availability Zones -The Foundation

Before any service, AWS gives you geography.

Region

Physical location (Mumbai, Frankfurt, Virginia)
Completely isolated from other regions
A region is basically a cluster of data centers.

Availability Zone (AZ)

One region has multiple AZs
Each AZ = independent data center
Used for high availability

Mumbai region is having 3 AZs -
ap-south-1a -
ap-south-1b
ap-south-1c

Region Code (e.g., us-east-1, ap-south-1): Identifies the broad geographical area (e.g., US East, Asia Pacific) and its specific location.

Letter Suffix (e.g., a, b, c, 1, 2, 3): Designates the individual, physically separate data center within that region, with unique power, cooling, and networking.

Rule of thumb