Specialized AWS Services

Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud. It's up to five times faster than standard MySQL and three times faster than PostgreSQL. Aurora automatically grows storage from 10 GB up to 128 TB, replicates six copies of data across three AZs, and continuously backs up to S3. It combines the performance of commercial databases with the simplicity of open-source.

Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a fully managed message queuing service. It decouples components of distributed applications. Producers send messages to a queue, consumers process them. Two types: Standard (unlimited throughput, best-effort ordering) and FIFO (exactly-once processing, ordered). SQS helps build resilient, loosely coupled architectures.

AWS Config continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations and evaluates them against desired settings. It provides a detailed view of resource relationships and configuration history. You can set rules to check compliance — for example, ensuring all S3 buckets have encryption enabled. Config helps with auditing, compliance, and troubleshooting configuration changes.

Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) is a fully managed pub/sub messaging service. Publishers send messages to topics, and subscribers (email, SMS, HTTP endpoints, Lambda, SQS) receive them. Use cases: sending alerts, fan-out patterns (one message to many receivers), mobile push notifications. SNS guarantees delivery to all subscribers of a topic.