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AWS glossary

James Murray, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, reading among the pigeonholes of quotation slips in his Scriptorium

AWS terms defined by engineers who bill clients for getting them wrong: what each one is, when to use it, and what it costs when you don't.

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67 termsLast reviewed November 2026A to ZBy topicAsk an engineer

Why the gotchas come first

A definition is cheap.The gotchais what costs you:the NAT bill nobody modelled,the role nobody scoped.

Long tables of catalogue cards being sorted in the Card Division of the Library of Congress, early twentieth century
Card Division, Library of Congress, 1900–1920
The catalogue room of the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris, wooden card cabinets under a painted ceiling
Catalogue room, Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris

What every entry holds. A definition, when to use it and when not to, tips, and official AWS references.

Gotchas, ranked. 40 entries split their gotchas into serious and regular: 106 serious ones, next to 259 tips in all.

Who writes it. An AWS Select Tier Services Partner with 50+ AWS certifications on staff. Last reviewed November 2026.

All 67 terms, A to Z

Each headword opens its full entry: the definition, when to use it and when not, tips, and gotchas ranked by how much they cost.

S

Amazon S3Amazon Simple Storage Service — scalable object storage for any amount of data, used for backups, data lakes, static websites, and application assets.

Amazon S3 Express One ZoneS3 Express One Zone is a high-performance single-AZ S3 storage class delivering single-digit millisecond first-byte latency for AI/ML training, analytics, and HPC workloads.

Amazon S3 TablesS3 Tables are managed Apache Iceberg tables on S3 — purpose-built table buckets with auto-compaction, snapshot management, and up to 3× better query performance than self-managed Iceberg on standard S3.

Amazon S3 VectorsS3 Vectors is the AWS native vector store — purpose-built vector storage on S3 with up to 90% lower cost than dedicated vector databases for RAG workloads.

AWS Savings PlansFlexible pricing commitment that reduces AWS compute and database costs by up to 72% compared to on-demand pricing.

Amazon SESAmazon Simple Email Service — AWS outbound and inbound email infrastructure with a-la-carte $0.10/1k send and Essentials/Pro/Enterprise plans (Jul 2026).

AWS Shared Responsibility ModelFramework defining what security and compliance tasks AWS manages versus what customers must manage.

SOC 2 Type II ComplianceIndependent audit certifying security controls for service organizations over an extended period.

SPFSender Policy Framework — DNS TXT record listing which hosts may send mail for a domain; limited to 10 DNS lookups.

AWS Step FunctionsServerless workflow orchestration service for coordinating distributed applications and multi-step processes using visual state machines.

11 shelves,67 terms

An open drawer of index cards from a copyright card catalogue, resting on a wooden table
A drawer from the copyright card catalogue

Pick a shelf to filter the dictionary to that topic.

Back to A to Z

Platform & Operations17

Landing zones, Control Tower, observability, and workflow orchestration for teams running AWS at scale.

Generative AI11

Bedrock, Nova, RAG pipelines, and AgentCore — the vocabulary behind production GenAI on AWS.

Agentic Commerce7

The vocabulary of agent-driven retail — ACP, UCP, MCP catalog surfaces, agent checkout, and the product-data terms that decide whether a model shortlists you.

Databases & Caching7

RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, Redshift, and the managed cache layer choices that affect latency and bill.

Security & Identity7

IAM, encryption, audit trails, and the guardrails that keep multi-account AWS estates compliant.

Compute4

EC2, Lambda, EKS, and the serverless vs container trade-offs that show up on every architecture review.

Storage4

S3 storage classes, Express One Zone, Tables, and Vectors — where object storage meets analytics and AI.

Compliance3

HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI — what AWS covers, what you own, and which services carry a BAA.

Cost & FinOps3

Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, and the FinOps practices that turn CUR data into action.

Networking2

VPC fundamentals and how to connect environments without turning NAT Gateway into your second-largest line item.

Architecture2

Multi-tenancy patterns and the Well-Architected Framework pillars that structure every review.

Ask

Can't find the term you need? An AWS engineer will explain it against your own architecture.

Pictures:James Murray in the Scriptorium (public domain); Card Division of the Library of Congress, 1900–1920 (public domain); Salle des catalogues, Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris, Marie-Lan Nguyen (CC BY 2.0); Copyright card catalog drawer, Michael Holley Swtpc6800 (public domain); Type in sort case, Edinburgh City of Print (CC BY 2.0); Widener Library reading room, 1920 (public domain). Via Wikimedia Commons.