I am very new to AWS and while getting familiarized with key concepts, I came across two distinct set of keys to which I think we could do with either without needing the other.
So the two keys that I want to talk about are
AWS Access Keys and AWS Key Pairs. From my understanding Acceskey and secret key are like user name and password which I can use to call CLI and API etc. while Key pair is used for Ssh-ing to my EC2s but what I am still failing to understand is that why did AWS have to create two similar concepts. Why didn't they just keep one pair of keys and have users use them for all the operations?
The use of public-private keypairs is standard in the IT industry, especially with Linux-based computers. Anyone who uses Linux in a corporate environment would likely be using keypairs.
Access Keys and Secret Keys are the AWS equivalent of a username and password, but for API calls. This is necessary to authenticate to AWS to prove that you are permitted to make the API call.
So, AWS did not "create two similar concepts". One is an industry standard for logging into a computer, the other is used to authenticate to AWS.