Plain-English definitions of the operations terms for AWS SysOps study. Simplified for learning; AWS documentation is authoritative.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| CloudWatch | Monitoring service for metrics, alarms and logs. |
| CloudWatch Alarm | Triggers an action when a metric crosses a threshold. |
| EventBridge | Event bus for routing events and automated responses. |
| CloudFormation | Infrastructure as code to provision AWS resources. |
| Systems Manager | Operate and automate resources at scale. |
| Auto Scaling | Adjusts capacity automatically to match demand. |
| Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) | Distributes traffic across targets. |
| VPC | A logically isolated virtual network in AWS. |
| Route 53 | AWS DNS and domain service. |
| CloudFront | Content delivery network (CDN). |
| IAM | Identity and access management. |
| KMS | Key Management Service for encryption keys. |
| Multi-AZ | Running across Availability Zones for resilience. |
| Snapshot | A point-in-time backup of a volume or database. |
| Trusted Advisor | Recommendations for cost, security and performance. |
| Right-sizing | Matching instance size to actual need to cut cost. |
| Patch management | Keeping systems updated, often via Systems Manager. |
| Config | Tracks resource configuration and compliance. |