If you are preparing for literally any level of AWS Certification, I think an excellent first step is to identify what I term core services. These services make the foundataion of AWS and they are ALWAYS the most tested areas.

I cover these services in depth in the growing list of AWS courses at CBT Nuggets! 

To simplify your locating them – I will group them just as AWS does in the main service list in your Web console.

AWS Compute

• EC2 – Elastic Compute Cloud allows you to easily scale virtual machines for your main compute horsepower; note that an opposite approach in AWS is serverless compute with Lambda

AWS Storage

• S3 – Simple Storage Services is object-based, key/value storage for many purposes in AWS
• EBS – Elastic Block Store permits the use of MDD or SDD storage for many purposes, including boot volumes for EC2 instances

AWS Database

• RDS – Relational Database Service allows you to host many database types in the cloud; this includes Oracle, MS SQL Server, and even Amazon’s own Aurora
• DynamoDB – a NoSQL database option in the cloud that performs blazing performance and on-demand scalability
• ElastiCache – creates in-memory caches for impressive performance interaction; this service also supports open standards in caching

AWS Networking

• VPC – Virtual Private Cloud provides the networking components needed for an infrastructure including subsets, gateways, routing tables, and security mechanisms

AWS Management

• CloudWatch – Permits the monitoring of key services; uses metrics and alarms for a familiar monitoring approach
• CloudTrail – Permits the tracking of potentially all the API calls to AWS; this allows you detailed analysis of all events no matter the source – Web Console, CLI, SDK, etc.

AWS Security

• IAM – Identity and Access Management allows the creation of users, groups, and roles for interacting securely with AWS

AWS Application Integration

• SNS – the Simple Notification Service allows the generation of email and text notifications based on AWS events
• SQS – the Simple Queue Service assists you in decoupling components and queuing messages between these components; this service helps the use of micro services for your processing needs