CapEx (Capital Expenditure): Upfront investment in physical infrastructure, depreciated over time
OpEx (Operational Expenditure): Ongoing costs for cloud services, pay only for what you consume
| Model | Description | You Manage | AWS Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | Infrastructure as a Service - Basic building blocks | OS, apps, data, middleware | EC2, VPC, EBS |
| PaaS | Platform as a Service - Deploy without managing infrastructure | Apps and data only | Elastic Beanstalk, Lambda |
| SaaS | Software as a Service - Complete product run by provider | Nothing (just use it) | WorkSpaces, Chime |
| Component | Description | Key Points |
|---|---|---|
| Regions | Physical locations with multiple AZs (30+ worldwide) | Choose based on: compliance, latency, service availability, pricing |
| Availability Zones | 1+ data centers with redundant power/networking | Minimum 3 AZs per region, connected with high-bandwidth links |
| Edge Locations | 450+ Points of Presence for content delivery | Used by CloudFront, Route 53, Global Accelerator |
| Local Zones | Extend AWS region to more locations | Ultra-low latency for specific geographic areas |
| Wavelength Zones | AWS infrastructure in 5G network providers | Single-digit millisecond latency for mobile apps |