AWS Technical Essentials Course

Lesson 1 • Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Defines cloud computing models, deployment types, and economic drivers. Provides the conceptual baseline required for all subsequent AWS service discussions.

Lesson 2 • AWS Management Console and CLI

Introduces the primary interfaces for interacting with AWS services. Builds hands-on navigation skills essential for all lab exercises throughout the course.

Lesson 3 • AWS Pricing and Support Models

Explains pay-as-you-go pricing, free tier limits, and support plan tiers. Enables cost-aware decision-making from the first day of AWS usage.

Lesson 1 • AWS Identity and Access Management Basics

Covers IAM users, groups, roles, and policies as the foundation of AWS security. Establishes access control patterns used in every subsequent service configuration.

Lesson 2 • Security Best Practices and MFA

Applies AWS security recommendations to harden accounts against common threats. Directly supports compliance and audit readiness for production environments.

Lesson 3 • Roles, Federation, and Temporary Credentials

Explains how roles grant temporary access to services and external identities. Enables secure cross-account and application-level access patterns.

Lesson 1 • EC2 Purchasing and Scaling Options

Compares On-Demand, Reserved, Spot, and Savings Plans to optimise cost and availability. Introduces Auto Scaling as the mechanism for elastic capacity management.

Lesson 2 • Elastic Load Balancing for High Availability

Explains ALB, NLB, and Gateway Load Balancer routing behaviours and health checks. Connects load balancing to fault-tolerant, multi-AZ application architectures.

Lesson 3 • Amazon EC2 Instance Fundamentals

Covers instance types, AMIs, key pairs, and the launch wizard. Provides the hands-on foundation for deploying and connecting to virtual servers on AWS.

Lesson 4 • Containers on AWS: ECS and EKS

Compares ECS and EKS for orchestrating containerised applications on AWS. Introduces Fargate as a serverless container runtime to eliminate cluster management.

Lesson 1 • Amazon CloudFront and Edge Delivery

Configures CloudFront distributions to cache and accelerate content globally. Demonstrates how edge delivery reduces latency and offloads origin infrastructure.

Lesson 2 • Security Groups and Network ACLs

Differentiates stateful security groups from stateless network ACLs for layered defence. Applies both controls to enforce traffic policies at instance and subnet levels.

Lesson 3 • VPC Connectivity and Peering

Covers VPC peering, Transit Gateway, and VPN options for connecting isolated networks. Enables multi-VPC and hybrid architectures required in enterprise environments.

Lesson 4 • Amazon Route 53 DNS Management

Explains hosted zones, record types, and routing policies for global traffic management. Connects DNS configuration to high availability and disaster recovery strategies.

Lesson 1 • Amazon S3 Core Concepts

Introduces buckets, objects, storage classes, and access controls for object storage. Establishes S3 as the foundational data store referenced throughout the course.

Lesson 2 • Amazon EFS and FSx for File Storage

Explains shared file systems for Linux and Windows workloads using EFS and FSx. Addresses use cases where multiple instances require concurrent file system access.

Lesson 3 • Storage Gateway and Data Transfer Services

Introduces hybrid storage and bulk data migration tools for on-premises integration. Bridges local infrastructure to AWS cloud storage for migration and extension scenarios.

Lesson 4 • S3 Security, Encryption, and Compliance

Applies server-side and client-side encryption, Block Public Access, and logging to S3. Ensures data protection practices meet regulatory and organisational requirements.

Lesson 1 • Amazon Aurora for High-Performance Relational Workloads

Explains Aurora's distributed storage architecture and its advantages over standard RDS. Positions Aurora as the preferred choice for high-throughput, highly available relational workloads.

Lesson 2 • Amazon RDS for Relational Databases

Covers RDS engine options, Multi-AZ deployments, and automated backups. Establishes managed relational database patterns used in most enterprise applications.

Lesson 3 • Specialised Database Services Overview

Surveys Amazon Redshift, Neptune, Timestream, and QLDB for purpose-built workloads. Enables informed database selection across analytics, graph, time-series, and ledger use cases.

Lesson 4 • Amazon DynamoDB for NoSQL Workloads

Introduces DynamoDB's key-value and document model, capacity modes, and indexing. Addresses use cases requiring single-digit millisecond latency at any scale.

Lesson 1 • AWS Step Functions for Workflow Orchestration

Demonstrates state machine design for orchestrating multi-step serverless workflows. Addresses error handling, retries, and parallel execution in complex business processes.

Lesson 2 • Amazon SQS for Decoupled Messaging

Explains standard and FIFO queues, visibility timeouts, and dead-letter queues. Establishes asynchronous decoupling as the foundation of resilient distributed systems.

Lesson 3 • Amazon EventBridge for Event-Driven Architectures

Introduces EventBridge event buses, rules, and schema registry for routing events. Enables event-driven integration between AWS services and third-party SaaS applications.

Lesson 4 • Amazon API Gateway for API Management

Covers REST and HTTP API creation, authorisation, throttling, and deployment stages. Connects API Gateway to Lambda and backend services for serverless API architectures.

Lesson 1 • Amazon CloudWatch for Observability

Configures metrics, alarms, dashboards, and log groups for full-stack visibility. Provides the operational monitoring foundation required for all production AWS workloads.

Lesson 2 • AWS Well-Architected Framework Review

Applies the six pillars to evaluate and improve existing AWS workload designs. Synthesises all course concepts into a structured framework for architectural decision-making.

Lesson 3 • AWS Systems Manager for Operational Management

Covers Session Manager, Patch Manager, and Parameter Store for secure instance management. Eliminates the need for bastion hosts and manual patching in managed environments.

Lesson 4 • AWS CloudFormation for Infrastructure as Code

Introduces template structure, stacks, and change sets for repeatable infrastructure deployment. Enables consistent, version-controlled provisioning across environments and accounts.