Other AWS Services

1. What this section is

The deck is explicit about it: these are the services that could not be grouped with the others. They are reported by students as sometimes, but rarely, appearing on the AWS exam, so the coverage is short and brief and mostly without hands-on. There is deliberately no summary lecture at the end of the section.

Treat this chapter as a “recognize the name, know the one-line job” list rather than something to study deeply.

2. Amazon WorkSpaces

Amazon WorkSpaces is a managed Desktop as a Service (DaaS) solution to easily provision Windows or Linux desktops.

Great to eliminate management of on-premises VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure).
Fast and quickly scalable to thousands of users.
Secured data — integrates with KMS.
Pay-as-you-go service with monthly or hourly rates.

Users connect securely from a corporate data centre — or anywhere — to a virtual desktop running in the AWS Cloud.

3. Amazon AppStream 2.0

Amazon AppStream 2.0 is a Desktop Application Streaming Service.

Delivers an application to any computer, without acquiring or provisioning infrastructure.
The application is delivered from within a web browser.

AppStream 2.0 vs WorkSpaces

WorkSpaces	AppStream 2.0
Fully managed VDI, a whole desktop is available	Streams a desktop application to web browsers — no VDI to connect to
Users connect to the VDI and open native or WAM applications	Works with any device that has a web browser
Workspaces are on-demand or always on	Allows configuring an instance type per application type (CPU, RAM, GPU)

4. AWS IoT Core

IoT stands for “Internet of Things” — the network of internet-connected devices that are able to collect and transfer data.

AWS IoT Core lets you easily connect IoT devices to the AWS Cloud:

Serverless, secure and scalable to billions of devices and trillions of messages.
Your applications can communicate with your devices even when they aren’t connected.
Integrates with a lot of AWS services — Lambda, S3, SageMaker and more.
Build IoT applications that gather, process, analyze and act on data.

Devices publish and subscribe messages through IoT Core.

5. AWS AppSync and AWS Amplify

AWS AppSync

Store and sync data across mobile and web apps in real-time.
Makes use of GraphQL (a mobile technology from Facebook).
Client code can be generated automatically.
Integrations with DynamoDB / Lambda.
Real-time subscriptions.
Offline data synchronization (replaces Cognito Sync).
Fine-grained security.
AWS Amplify can leverage AWS AppSync in the background.

AWS Amplify

A set of tools and services that helps you develop and deploy scalable full stack web and mobile applications.

It covers Authentication, Storage, API (REST, GraphQL), CI/CD, PubSub, Analytics, AI/ML Predictions, Monitoring, and can pull source code from AWS, GitHub and others. The Amplify backend wires together services such as Amazon Cognito, Amazon S3, AWS AppSync, API Gateway, Lambda, DynamoDB, Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Lex, with Amplify Studio on top.

6. AWS Infrastructure Composer

AWS Infrastructure Composer lets you visually design and build serverless applications quickly on AWS.

Deploy AWS infrastructure code without needing to be an expert in AWS.
Configure how your resources interact with each other.
Generates Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using CloudFormation.
Ability to import existing CloudFormation / SAM templates to visualize them.

7. AWS Device Farm

AWS Device Farm is a fully managed service that tests your web and mobile apps against desktop browsers, real mobile devices and tablets.

Run tests concurrently on multiple devices to speed up execution.
Ability to configure device settings: GPS, language, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and so on.
The devices are real devices, not emulators.
You get back reports, logs, screenshots and can interact with devices.

8. AWS Backup

AWS Backup is a fully managed service to centrally manage and automate backups across AWS services.

On-demand and scheduled backups.
Supports PITR (Point-in-time Recovery).
Retention Periods, Lifecycle Management, Backup Policies.
Cross-Region Backup.
Cross-Account Backup (using AWS Organizations).

You create a Backup Plan (frequency, retention policy) and assign AWS resources to it. Supported resources on the slide: Amazon EC2, Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, Amazon Aurora, DynamoDB, Amazon EFS, Amazon FSx and AWS Storage Gateway.

9. Disaster Recovery strategies

The deck lays out four strategies, ordered by cost:

Strategy	What runs where
Backup and Restore	Data from the corporate data centre is backed up to S3; nothing is running in AWS. Cheapest.
Pilot Light	Core functions of the app run in AWS on EC2 — ready to scale, but minimal setup
Warm Standby	A full version of the app, but at minimum size, running in AWS
Multi-Site / Hot-Site	A full version of the app, at full size, running in AWS. Most expensive.

A typical DR setup for cloud deployments is cross-Region: EC2 instances in two AZs in N. Virginia (us-east-1) with failover to EC2 instances in two AZs in London (eu-west-2).

AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS)

Used to be named “CloudEndure Disaster Recovery”.

Quickly and easily recover your physical, virtual and cloud-based servers into AWS.
Example uses: protect your most critical databases (including Oracle, MySQL and SQL Server), protect enterprise apps (SAP), protect your data from ransomware attacks.
Continuous block-level replication for your servers.

An AWS Replication Agent on the source servers replicates continuously (seconds) into a Staging area of low-cost EC2 instances and EBS volumes; on failover (minutes) the workload comes up on target EC2 instances and EBS volumes in Production, and can later fail back.

10. AWS DataSync

AWS DataSync moves large amounts of data from on-premises to AWS.

Can synchronize to Amazon S3 (any storage class — including Glacier), Amazon EFS, and Amazon FSx for Windows.
Replication tasks can be scheduled hourly, daily, weekly.
The replication tasks are incremental after the first full load.

An AWS DataSync Agent runs on the on-premises server and ships data over TLS to the DataSync service in the Region, which writes it into S3 Standard, S3 Intelligent-Tiering, S3 Standard-IA, S3 One Zone-IA, S3 Glacier, S3 Glacier Deep Archive, EFS or FSx for Windows File Server.

11. Cloud migration strategies: the 7Rs

Retire

Turn off things you don’t need — often as a result of re-architecting.
Helps reduce the surface area for attacks (more security).
Save cost, maybe up to 10% to 20%.
Focus your attention on resources that must be maintained.

Retain

Do nothing for now — it’s still a decision to make in a cloud migration.
Reasons: security, data compliance, performance, unresolved dependencies.
No business value to migrate; mainframe or mid-range and non-x86 Unix apps.

Relocate

Move apps from on-premises to its Cloud version.
Move EC2 instances to a different VPC, AWS account or AWS Region.
Example: transfer servers from VMware Software-defined Data Center (SSDC) to VMware Cloud on AWS.

Rehost — “lift and shift”

Simple migrations by re-hosting on AWS (applications, databases, data).
Migrate machines (physical, virtual, another cloud) to the AWS Cloud.
No cloud optimizations are done — the application is migrated as is.
Could save as much as 30% on cost.
Example: migrate using AWS Application Migration Service.

Replatform — “lift and reshape”

Example: migrate your database to RDS; migrate your application to Elastic Beanstalk.
Not changing the core architecture, but leveraging some cloud optimizations.
Save time and money by moving to a fully managed service or Serverless.

Repurchase — “drop and shop”

Moving to a different product while moving to the cloud — often a SaaS platform.
Expensive in the short term, but quick to deploy.
Examples: CRM to Salesforce.com, HR to Workday, CMS to Drupal.

Refactor / Re-architect

Reimagining how the application is architected using cloud-native features.
Driven by the business need to add features and improve scalability, performance, security and agility.
Move from a monolithic application to micro-services.
Example: move an application to Serverless architectures, use AWS S3.

12. Migration tooling

AWS Application Discovery Service

Plan migration projects by gathering information about on-premises data centres — server utilization data and dependency mapping are important for migrations.

Agentless Discovery (AWS Agentless Discovery Connector) — VM inventory, configuration, and performance history such as CPU, memory and disk usage.
Agent-based Discovery (AWS Application Discovery Agent) — system configuration, system performance, running processes, and details of the network connections between systems.
The resulting data can be viewed within AWS Migration Hub.

AWS Application Migration Service (MGN)

The “AWS evolution” of CloudEndure Migration, replacing AWS Server Migration Service (SMS).

A lift-and-shift (rehost) solution that simplifies migrating applications to AWS.
Converts your physical, virtual and cloud-based servers to run natively on AWS.
Supports a wide range of platforms, operating systems and databases.
Minimal downtime, reduced costs.

Mechanically it looks like Elastic Disaster Recovery: an AWS Replication Agent, continuous replication into a low-cost Staging area, then a cutover to target EC2 instances and EBS volumes in Production.

AWS Migration Evaluator

Helps you build a data-driven business case for migration to AWS.

Provides a clear baseline of what your organization is running today.
Install the Agentless Collector to conduct broad-based discovery.
Take a snapshot of your on-premises footprint, server dependencies and so on.
Analyze current state, define target state, then develop a migration plan.

The steps on the slide: Install Collector → Gather Data → Import Data (from 3rd party tools or Application Discovery Service) → Quick Insights → Business Case.

AWS Migration Hub

A central location to collect servers and applications inventory data for the assessment, planning and tracking of migrations to AWS.

Helps accelerate your migration and automate lift-and-shift.
AWS Migration Hub Orchestrator provides pre-built templates to save time and effort migrating enterprise apps (e.g. SAP, Microsoft SQL Server).
Supports migration status updates from Application Migration Service (MGN) and Database Migration Service (DMS).

Its four jobs: discover, analyze and group servers into apps; right-size your workloads with strategy recommendations; orchestrate migrations across multiple tools; incrementally refactor applications in AWS.

13. AWS Fault Injection Simulator (FIS)

A fully managed service for running fault injection experiments on AWS workloads.

Based on Chaos Engineering — stressing an application by creating disruptive events (e.g. a sudden increase in CPU or memory), observing how the system responds, and implementing improvements.
Helps you uncover hidden bugs and performance bottlenecks.
Supports EC2, ECS, EKS, RDS and more.
Use pre-built templates that generate the desired disruptions.

You create an Experiment Template, FIS starts it against your resources, CloudWatch and EventBridge monitor it, the experiment stops when complete or when an alarm is triggered, and you view results to identify performance, observability or resiliency issues.

14. AWS Step Functions

AWS Step Functions builds a serverless visual workflow to orchestrate your Lambda functions.

Features: sequence, parallel, conditions, timeouts, error handling.
Can integrate with EC2, ECS, on-premises servers, API Gateway, SQS queues and more.
Possibility of implementing a human approval feature.
Use cases: order fulfillment, data processing, web applications — any workflow.

15. AWS Ground Station

A fully managed service that lets you control satellite communications, process data, and scale your satellite operations.

Provides a global network of satellite ground stations near AWS regions.
Allows you to download satellite data to your AWS VPC within seconds.
Send satellite data to S3 or an EC2 instance.
Use cases: weather forecasting, surface imaging, communications, video broadcasts.

16. Amazon Pinpoint

Amazon Pinpoint is a scalable 2-way (outbound/inbound) marketing communications service.

Supports email, SMS, push, voice and in-app messaging.
Ability to segment and personalize messages with the right content for customers.
Possibility to receive replies.
Scales to billions of messages per day.
Use cases: run campaigns by sending marketing, bulk, transactional SMS messages.

Versus Amazon SNS or Amazon SES:

In SNS & SES you manage each message’s audience, content and delivery schedule.
In Amazon Pinpoint you create message templates, delivery schedules, highly-targeted segments and full campaigns.

Pinpoint can stream events (e.g. TEXT_SUCCESS, TEXT_DELIVERED) to SNS, Kinesis Data Firehose or CloudWatch Logs.

Quick recap

Concept	What to remember for the exam
Amazon WorkSpaces	Managed DaaS, Windows/Linux desktops, replaces on-premises VDI, KMS, pay-as-you-go
AppStream 2.0	Streams a single application into a web browser; instance type per application
AWS IoT Core	Serverless connection for billions of devices; publish/subscribe; Lambda, S3, SageMaker
AWS AppSync	GraphQL, real-time sync and subscriptions, offline sync (replaces Cognito Sync)
AWS Amplify	Toolset for full-stack web/mobile apps — auth, storage, API, CI/CD, analytics
Infrastructure Composer	Visual design of serverless apps; generates CloudFormation; imports CFN/SAM templates
AWS Device Farm	Test web and mobile apps on real devices and desktop browsers, concurrently
AWS Backup	Central, automated backups; PITR; cross-Region and cross-Account (via Organizations)
DR strategies	Backup and Restore → Pilot Light → Warm Standby → Multi-Site, cheapest to most expensive
Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS)	Ex-CloudEndure DR; continuous block-level replication; failover in minutes, failback
AWS DataSync	On-premises → S3 (any class), EFS, FSx for Windows; scheduled, incremental after first load
The 7Rs	Retire, Retain, Relocate, Rehost, Replatform, Repurchase, Refactor
Application Discovery Service	Agentless or agent-based inventory + dependency mapping; feeds Migration Hub
Application Migration Service (MGN)	Lift-and-shift rehosting, replaces SMS, continuous replication then cutover
Migration Evaluator	Builds the business case: Agentless Collector, Quick Insights, cost baseline
Migration Hub	Central discovery, planning and tracking; Orchestrator templates; MGN and DMS status
Fault Injection Simulator	Chaos engineering experiments on EC2, ECS, EKS, RDS; stops on alarm
Step Functions	Serverless visual workflow orchestrating Lambda; human approval step
AWS Ground Station	Managed satellite ground stations; data into your VPC, S3 or EC2
Amazon Pinpoint	2-way marketing communications: templates, segments, campaigns — unlike SNS/SES