Why I Chose AWS for My First Cloud Project

by Your Name
awslearningcloud

When I decided to learn cloud computing, I had to choose between AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Here’s why I chose AWS.

Market Leader

AWS is the largest cloud provider with roughly 32% market share. This means:

  • More job opportunities
  • Larger community
  • More tutorials and resources
  • Battle-tested services

Free Tier Benefits

AWS offers a generous free tier that includes:

  • 1 million Lambda requests per month (always free)
  • 5GB of S3 storage for 12 months
  • 25GB of DynamoDB storage (always free)
  • CloudFront data transfer

Perfect for a learning project like this!

Serverless First

AWS pioneered serverless computing with Lambda. For my portfolio site, I don’t need:

  • Server management
  • Scaling concerns
  • High upfront costs

I only pay for what I use, which for a personal site means just a few dollars per month.

Learning Path

My plan is to progressively learn:

  1. Storage & CDN - S3 and CloudFront (current)
  2. Compute - Lambda functions
  3. APIs - API Gateway
  4. Databases - DynamoDB
  5. Infrastructure as Code - OpenTofu
  6. CI/CD - GitHub Actions with AWS
  7. Monitoring - CloudWatch

Challenges Ahead

I know I’ll face challenges:

  • IAM permissions can be tricky
  • Understanding pricing models
  • Debugging Lambda functions
  • Setting up proper monitoring

But that’s the point - learning by doing!

Resources I’m Using

  • AWS Documentation (comprehensive but dense)
  • YouTube tutorials
  • AWS Free Tier
  • OpenTofu documentation
  • This blog to document my progress!

Follow along as I build this site and learn AWS!