AWS Services, Explained in Five Questions

Every service card answers the questions that actually matter when you meet a new AWS service: What is it, why does it exist, when should you pick it, where does it sit in an architecture, and how do you integrate it — plus exam-angle tips and links to the official AWS documentation and blogs. Coverage is tuned to the AWS Certified AI Practitioner (AIF-C01) exam.

Show services for your learning path

All services (44)MLA-C01 (16)SCS-C03 (5)CLF-C02 (18)AIF-C01 (44)GenAI (5)SAA-C03 (5)

The 5 services below are the ones the Architecting on AWS path expects you to know. Open the study path →

🗄️ Data & Analytics · 2

Amazon S3Object storage — the data backbone of every AI workload.Durable (11 nines), effectively unlimited object storage organised in buckets, with storage classes from frequent-access to deep archive, versionin…What · Why · When · Where · How →Amazon OpenSearch ServiceSearch, log analytics, and vector database for RAG.A managed OpenSearch cluster (and serverless option) for full-text search and log analytics that now doubles as a vector database: k-NN indexes sto…What · Why · When · Where · How →

🛡️ Security & Governance · 2

AWS IAMWho can do what — identities, roles, and policies.The global identity and access service: users, groups, roles, and JSON policies that allow or deny every API action across AWS, with roles providin…What · Why · When · Where · How →Amazon CloudWatchMetrics, logs, and alarms for everything you run.The observability backbone: metrics from every service, log aggregation, alarms, dashboards, and anomaly detection — including model-invocation met…What · Why · When · Where · How →

⚙️ Compute & Cost · 1

AWS LambdaServerless functions — the glue of AI pipelines.Event-driven compute that runs code without servers, billed per millisecond, triggered by S3 uploads, API Gateway requests, queues, and schedules.What · Why · When · Where · How →

Preparing for the exam? Start the AI Practitioner study guide or jump into the AIF-C01 learning path.