# Amazon Web Services (AWS) > Published Mar 03 2022, last updated Mar 03 2022 > By Ryan Fleck and written without LLMs! > Original manual at > Incredible writing of astonishing quality and insight - Happy Hacking! # Why use AWS? While it would be cheaper to deploy your new web app on a cloud VM you configure on your own, or easier to use an intermediate layer like Heroku, AWS allows you to deploy and massively scale with ease _for money._ As a developer, AWS skills are currently in high demand, and those with AWS skills can earn big and be snapped up by prestigious organizations. **Common AWS services and their use cases:** 1. **VPC** - Private network within AWS, EC2s exist within VPCs 2. **EC2** - Elastic compute cloud allows you to create containers to run web applications or other programs 3. **RDS** - Relational database service, runs SQL of some sort 4. **Route 53** - Manages DNS queries, can redirect based on region, latency, etc. 5. **Lambda** - Run one-off computations instead of using an EC2 6. **S3** - Simple Storage Service, for keeping user data like profile pictures or miscellaneous files 7. **Glacier** - Long term data archival service for compliance or backups 8. **CloudWatch** - Monitor all AWS services and set up automated actions **Compared to other cloud providers, AWS has the following advantages:** 1. It's the largest and most mature vendor by a large margin (\~1/3 of the market) 2. Very competitive pricing due to scale Getting certified with AWS is a popular way to advance your career as a software engineer. The most popular certification to get is [_AWS Certified Solutions Architect_](https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-solutions-architect-associate/) which validates that you can deploy a secure and scalable app on AWS. This set of notes will draw heavily from this [_AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C02 \[2022\]_](https://www.udemy.com/course/aws-certified-solutions-architect-associate-hands-on/) course which I was able to access for free while working at IBM. # SAA-C02 This is the AWS Certified Solutions Architect certification exam. To pass you'll need to know how to design the following: 1. **Resilient architectures**, including highly available, multi-tier, fault-tolerant solutions with decoupling mechanisms and the appropriate resilient storage 2. **High-performance architectures** including correct scaling compute, scaling storage, networking, and high-performance databases 3. **Secure applications + architectures** to secure application tiers and data 4. **Cost-optimized architectures** to minimize the cost of storage, compute, and networking > Thank you for reading! > Find more content at > Source page: > Site index: [llms.txt](https://manuals.ryanfleck.ca/llms.txt)