AWS services

ECS Fargate core

Runs your application as a Docker container without managing servers. Heroku or Railway are good comparisons, but Fargate runs inside the BYM private network with access to shared databases, secrets, and monitoring.

Use Fargate for applications that handle HTTP requests continuously, for example a REST API or a backend web application.

ECS Fargate documentation

Lambda core

Runs a single function on demand. No persistent server. You pay only for the time the function executes.

Vercel Edge Functions and Azure Functions use the same model. Good for event-driven tasks: processing uploads, responding to queue messages, or running scheduled jobs.

Lambda documentation

CloudFront core

Serves static files from a global CDN. The standard way to host front-end applications such as React or Angular SPAs in Byks.

Vercel, Netlify, and GitHub Pages use the same approach. You build to static files. CloudFront serves them from the edge location nearest to each user.

CloudFront documentation

ECR

A private Docker image registry (Elastic Container Registry). Before Fargate or Lambda can run your application, it needs a container image stored in ECR.

Think of it as a private Docker Hub. Your CI pipeline builds and pushes the image. The Byks module pulls from ECR when deploying.

ECR documentation

EC2

A virtual machine in the cloud. ECS Fargate and Lambda cover most use cases with less operational overhead.

SES

Sends transactional email (Simple Email Service). Such as SendGrid or Mailgun.

Use SES for order confirmations, password resets, and other automated email from your application.

SES documentation

SNS

A publish/subscribe messaging service (Simple Notification Service).

One service publishes a message to a topic. All subscribers receive it. Use SNS when many services need to react to the same event.

SNS documentation

SQS

A message queue (Simple Queue Service).

A producer sends messages to a queue. A consumer processes them one at a time. Use SQS to decouple services and handle workloads asynchronously, for example processing an uploaded file in the background rather than inside an HTTP request.

SQS documentation

ALB

Distributes incoming HTTP and HTTPS traffic to your application (Application Load Balancer).

In Byks, a shared ALB sits in front of all ECS Fargate services and routes each request to the correct service based on the URL path.

ALB documentation

API Gateway

Exposes an HTTP API and routes each request to a Lambda function, an SQS queue, or a private ALB, authenticating requests with a JWT or Lambda authorizer first.

Vercel and Netlify route API requests to a function with authentication built in. API Gateway works the same way in AWS, pointed at a Lambda function, a queue, or an internal load balancer instead of your own backend code.

API Gateway documentation

RDS

A managed relational database. BYM runs PostgreSQL on RDS.

RDS is provisioned outside the Byks module. Contact Team Cloud to request a new database. The Byks module grants your application network access automatically once an RDS instance exists in the account.

RDS documentation

S3

Stores files and objects (Simple Storage Service): images, PDFs, exports, and similar binary data. Such as Azure Blob Storage or Google Cloud Storage.

S3 for standalone file storage is provisioned outside the Byks module. Contact Team Cloud. CloudFront uses S3 as its origin automatically when hosting a front-end application.

S3 documentation

ElastiCache

A managed in-memory cache running Valkey, a Redis-compatible engine.

Use ElastiCache to cache frequently read data and reduce load on your database.

ElastiCache documentation

OpenSearch

A managed search and analytics engine, compatible with Elasticsearch.

Use OpenSearch when your application needs full-text search or aggregations beyond what a relational database provides.

OpenSearch documentation

EventBridge

An event bus and scheduler. In Byks, it triggers Lambda functions or SQS queues on a schedule (cron jobs) or in response to events from other AWS services.

CloudWatch Logs

Collects log output from ECS and Lambda. BYM uses Datadog as the primary observability platform. Logs are forwarded from CloudWatch to Datadog automatically.

In practice, read logs in Datadog rather than CloudWatch directly.