What is the primary use of AWS Glue?

AWS Glue is primarily designed for preparing and transforming big data for various analytical purposes, which encompasses tasks like data extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL processes). It automates the discovery of data, cataloging, and schema generation, making data ready for analytics without requiring extensive manual intervention. This capability is particularly useful for organizations that handle large volumes of data and need to streamline their data workflows for more efficient processing and insights.

The integration of AWS Glue with other AWS services, including Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, and Amazon Redshift, further enhances its functionality, allowing users to ingest, transform, and analyze data seamlessly. This makes it a powerful tool for data engineers and analysts when working with big data environments.

In contrast, the other options reflect different services that AWS offers. For instance, securely backing up and storing data might align more closely with services like Amazon S3 or AWS Backup, hosting virtual machines relates to Amazon EC2, and monitoring network traffic is indicative of services such as Amazon VPC Flow Logs or AWS CloudTrail. None of these fulfill the specific purpose of data transformation and preparation that AWS Glue specializes in.