AWS Cloud Technical Essentials Training

Lesson 1 • AWS Global Infrastructure

Maps Regions, Availability Zones, and edge locations to real-world resilience patterns. Provides the geographic context needed for architecture decisions throughout the course.

Lesson 2 • AWS Management Console and CLI

Introduces the three primary AWS access methods: Console, CLI, and SDKs. Hands-on navigation skills enable students to complete all lab exercises in later chapters.

Lesson 3 • AWS Pricing and Support Plans

Explains pay-as-you-go pricing, free tier limits, and cost estimation tools. Students can forecast spend before deploying resources in subsequent labs.

Lesson 4 • AWS Shared Responsibility Model

Clarifies which security tasks AWS owns versus customer-owned tasks. This mental model governs every security decision covered in later chapters.

Lesson 1 • Multi-Factor Authentication and Password Policies

Covers MFA device types, enforcement strategies, and IAM password policies. These controls harden accounts before students expose resources to the internet.

Lesson 2 • IAM Roles and Temporary Credentials

Explains role assumption, STS tokens, and cross-account access patterns. Roles replace long-term credentials for EC2 instances and Lambda functions covered later.

Lesson 3 • AWS Identity and Access Management Basics

Introduces IAM as the central access control service and explains its core objects. Establishes the permission framework used in every subsequent service configuration.

Lesson 4 • Writing and Attaching IAM Policies

Teaches JSON policy structure, effect/action/resource elements, and policy attachment. Students write policies that precisely scope permissions for EC2, S3, and other services.

Lesson 1 • EC2 Storage and Networking Options

Covers EBS volume types, instance store trade-offs, and Elastic IP addresses. Students attach and configure storage before the dedicated storage chapter deepens these skills.

Lesson 2 • Containers with ECS and EKS

Explains Docker fundamentals, ECS task definitions, and EKS cluster concepts. Students understand container orchestration options before choosing architectures in later chapters.

Lesson 3 • Amazon EC2 Instance Fundamentals

Explains instance types, AMIs, and the launch wizard workflow. Provides the hands-on compute baseline that networking and storage chapters build upon.

Lesson 4 • EC2 Pricing Models and Cost Optimization

Compares On-Demand, Reserved, Spot, and Savings Plans pricing. Students apply cost-aware selection criteria to every compute decision in later labs.

Lesson 1 • Amazon VPC Architecture Essentials

Defines VPCs, CIDR blocks, and the default VPC behavior. This foundational topology hosts every compute and database resource deployed in subsequent chapters.

Lesson 2 • VPC Connectivity Options

Explains VPC peering, Transit Gateway, VPN, and Direct Connect use cases. Students select the right connectivity model for hybrid and multi-VPC architectures.

Lesson 3 • Subnets, Route Tables, and Gateways

Covers public and private subnet design, route table rules, and internet gateway attachment. Students build the multi-tier network used in the application architecture chapter.

Lesson 4 • Amazon Route 53 and CloudFront

Covers DNS routing policies, health checks, and CloudFront distribution setup. These services complete the content delivery layer for web applications built later.

Lesson 1 • Amazon EFS and FSx File Systems

Explains NFS-based EFS and Windows-native FSx for shared file access patterns. Students choose between file systems for multi-instance and enterprise workloads.

Lesson 2 • Amazon S3 Core Concepts

Introduces buckets, objects, keys, and the S3 consistency model. S3 underpins static hosting, data lakes, and backup patterns used throughout the course.

Lesson 3 • Amazon EBS Deep Dive

Examines gp3, io2, st1, and sc1 volume types with IOPS and throughput benchmarks. Students match volume types to database and application workload requirements.

Lesson 4 • S3 Security and Access Control

Covers bucket policies, ACLs, Block Public Access, and pre-signed URLs. Students apply least-privilege S3 access before integrating it with compute services.

Lesson 1 • Amazon Aurora Architecture

Explains Aurora's distributed storage, cluster endpoints, and Serverless v2 scaling. Students understand when Aurora outperforms standard RDS for demanding workloads.

Lesson 2 • Amazon RDS Fundamentals

Introduces managed relational databases, supported engines, and the RDS launch workflow. RDS underpins the three-tier application architecture assembled in the next chapter.

Lesson 3 • Amazon DynamoDB NoSQL Essentials

Covers tables, partition keys, sort keys, and DynamoDB's single-digit millisecond performance. Students design key schemas that avoid hot partitions in high-throughput apps.

Lesson 4 • Purpose-Built Database Services

Surveys Neptune, Timestream, QLDB, and Keyspaces for specialized data models. Students match non-relational data requirements to the correct AWS database service.

Lesson 1 • Elastic Load Balancing

Compares ALB, NLB, and Gateway Load Balancer and explains listener rules and target groups. Load balancers distribute traffic across the Auto Scaling group built in the prior section.

Lesson 2 • CloudWatch Logs and Insights

Explains log groups, log streams, subscription filters, and Logs Insights queries. Centralized logging is essential for diagnosing issues in distributed applications.

Lesson 3 • AWS Auto Scaling Groups

Covers launch templates, scaling policies, and health check replacement. Auto Scaling ensures the compute layer responds to demand changes without manual intervention.

Lesson 4 • Infrastructure as Code with CloudFormation

Teaches template structure, stack operations, and change sets. Students automate the multi-tier architecture built throughout the course into a repeatable template.

Lesson 1 • Threat Detection and Incident Response

Covers GuardDuty findings, Security Hub aggregation, and AWS Config compliance rules. Students build a detection layer that alerts on misconfigurations and active threats.

Lesson 2 • Data Protection and Encryption

Explains AWS KMS key types, envelope encryption, and secrets management with Secrets Manager. Students encrypt data at rest and in transit across all services deployed.

Lesson 3 • Designing for High Availability

Covers multi-AZ deployments, failover strategies, and recovery time objectives. Students apply HA patterns to the three-tier application built in earlier chapters.

Lesson 4 • Cost Optimization Strategies

Applies Cost Explorer, Budgets, and Trusted Advisor recommendations to reduce waste. Students produce a cost optimization plan for the architecture built throughout the course.