Cloud
16 Cloud terms explained simply, ordered from basic to advanced. Start at the top if the topic is new to you.
Basic
Amazon
An online store with its own delivery network, and the company that runs AWS.
Amazon S3
A giant online drawer for files, rented by the gigabyte.
Cloud computing
Renting computers over the internet instead of buying your own.
Container
A sealed box with a program and everything it needs to run anywhere.
Data center
A building full of servers where the internet, the cloud and AI actually run.
Microsoft
The company of Windows and Office, now just as much a cloud company with Azure.
Intermediate
Amazon ECS and Fargate
AWS runs your containers; with Fargate you never see the servers at all.
AWS CloudFormation
Describe your AWS infrastructure in a text file; AWS builds it exactly like that.
CDN
Copies of a website kept on servers around the world, close to whoever asks.
Data lake
Cheap storage where all your data is kept as raw files, to be sorted out later.
Infrastructure as code
Describing servers, networks and databases in files instead of clicking.
Kubernetes
The system that runs and babysits containers across many machines.
Load balancer
The traffic cop that spreads incoming requests across many servers.
Serverless
Code that runs only when called; you never see or manage the server.
