AWS Tutorial — A Beginner's Guide

DS Shiva
5 min readMar 18, 2024

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Syllabus:

Module 1: Introduction to AWS

  • Introduction to Cloud Computing
  • Overview of AWS and its services
  • Understanding AWS Global Infrastructure
  • AWS Free Tier

Module 2: Compute Services

  • Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)
  • Amazon ECS (Elastic Container Service)
  • AWS Lambda
  • AWS Batch
  • Auto Scaling

Module 3: Storage Services

  • Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
  • Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)
  • Amazon Glacier
  • Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Module 4: Networking Services

  • Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)
  • Amazon Route 53
  • Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)
  • AWS Direct Connect

Module 5: Database Services

  • Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service)
  • Amazon DynamoDB
  • Amazon Redshift
  • Amazon Aurora

Module 6: Security and Identity

  • IAM (Identity and Access Management)
  • AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall)
  • AWS Shield
  • AWS Organizations
  • Key Management Service (KMS)

Module 7: Monitoring and Management Tools

  • Amazon CloudWatch
  • AWS CloudTrail
  • AWS Config
  • AWS Systems Manager

Module 8: Deployment and Management

  • AWS CloudFormation
  • AWS OpsWorks
  • AWS CodeDeploy
  • AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Module 9: DevOps Practices on AWS

  • CI/CD Pipelines with AWS CodePipeline
  • Infrastructure as Code with AWS CDK (Cloud Development Kit)
  • Container Orchestration with Amazon ECS and EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service)

Module 10: Advanced Topics

  • Big Data and Analytics with AWS
  • Machine Learning on AWS
  • Serverless Architectures
  • High Availability and Disaster Recovery

Module 11: Case Studies and Best Practices

  • Real-world use cases of AWS
  • Best practices for cost optimization, security, and performance
  • AWS Well-Architected Framework

Module 12: Hands-on Labs and Projects

  • Setting up a basic EC2 instance
  • Building a serverless application with AWS Lambda and API Gateway
  • Configuring high availability with Auto Scaling and ELB
  • Deploying a web application with AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Module 1:

1.1: Introduction to cloud computing

Cloud computing is a revolutionary paradigm in the realm of information technology, transforming the way businesses and individuals store, process, and access data and applications. At its core, cloud computing refers to the delivery of computing services — such as servers, storage, databases, networking, software, and analytics — over the internet (the cloud) on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Here’s a concise breakdown of the key components and benefits of cloud computing:

1. On-Demand Service: Cloud computing offers resources on-demand, allowing users to rapidly provision and scale resources as needed. This elasticity enables businesses to handle varying workloads efficiently.

2. Resource Pooling: Cloud providers maintain vast pools of computing resources, such as storage, processing power, and memory, which are dynamically allocated to multiple users as needed. This allows for efficient resource utilization and cost savings.

3. Scalability: Cloud services can scale up or down according to demand, providing flexibility and agility to businesses. This scalability ensures that resources are available when needed, avoiding over-provisioning and underutilization.

4. Pay-Per-Use Model: Cloud services typically operate on a pay-per-use or subscription-based pricing model, where users only pay for the resources they consume. This cost-effective approach eliminates the need for upfront capital investment in IT infrastructure and allows businesses to align expenses with usage.

5. Ubiquitous Access: Cloud services are accessible over the internet from any location and device with an internet connection. This enables remote access to applications and data, fostering collaboration and productivity among distributed teams.

6. Reliability and Resilience: Cloud providers invest heavily in robust infrastructure and redundancy measures to ensure high availability and reliability of services. Data is replicated across multiple geographically dispersed data centers, reducing the risk of downtime and data loss.

7. Security: Cloud providers implement stringent security measures to protect data and infrastructure from cyber threats. These measures often include encryption, authentication, access controls, and compliance certifications to meet industry standards and regulations.

8. Innovation and Agility: Cloud computing accelerates innovation by providing access to cutting-edge technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analytics, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Businesses can leverage these technologies to gain insights, automate processes, and drive competitive advantage.

Overall, cloud computing empowers businesses to focus on their core competencies while offloading the management of IT infrastructure to third-party cloud providers. By embracing cloud technology, organizations can achieve greater flexibility, scalability, cost-efficiency, and innovation, thereby gaining a competitive edge in today’s fast-paced digital landscape.

1.2 Overview of AWS and its services

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive cloud computing platform offered by Amazon.com. Launched in 2006, AWS has become one of the leading providers of cloud services, offering a vast array of infrastructure, platform, and software services to individuals, businesses, and governments around the world. Here’s an overview of AWS and some of its key services:

  1. Compute Services:
  • Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2): Provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud, allowing users to deploy virtual servers (instances) tailored to their specific requirements.
  • AWS Lambda: Enables serverless computing, allowing users to run code in response to events without provisioning or managing servers.

2. Storage Services:

  • Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3): Offers scalable object storage for data storage and retrieval, suitable for a wide range of use cases including backups, data lakes, and content distribution.
  • Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS): Provides block-level storage volumes for use with EC2 instances, offering high-performance storage for databases and applications.

3. Database Services:

  • Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS): Managed relational database service supporting multiple database engines such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle, and Amazon Aurora.
  • Amazon DynamoDB: Fully managed NoSQL database service offering seamless scalability, low-latency performance, and built-in security.
  1. Networking Services:
  • Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC): Enables users to provision a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud, complete with its own network configuration, subnet, and security settings.
  • Amazon Route 53: Scalable domain name system (DNS) web service offering highly available and reliable domain name resolution.
  1. Developer Tools:
  • AWS CodeDeploy: Automates code deployments to EC2 instances, on-premises servers, and serverless Lambda functions.
  • AWS CodePipeline: Provides continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) service for building, testing, and deploying applications.
  1. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning:
  • Amazon SageMaker: Fully managed service for building, training, and deploying machine learning models at scale.
  • Amazon Rekognition: Deep learning-based image and video analysis service for object detection, facial recognition, and content moderation.
  1. Analytics Services:
  • Amazon Redshift: Fully managed data warehouse service offering fast query performance and petabyte-scale data warehousing capabilities.
  • Amazon Athena: Interactive query service enabling users to analyze data stored in S3 using standard SQL queries.
  1. Security and Identity Services:
  • AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM): Centralized identity management service for controlling user access to AWS resources.
  • AWS Key Management Service (KMS): Managed service for creating and controlling encryption keys to secure data.

These are just a few examples of the extensive range of services offered by AWS. With its global infrastructure, scalability, reliability, and breadth of services, AWS continues to empower organizations of all sizes to innovate, scale, and transform their businesses in the cloud.

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DS Shiva

DS Shiva, BSc(IT), MCA, boasts 10+ years in IT. Worked for Tata Technologies, Capgemini, Speridian. Skills: .Net, SQL, Python, ML, Big Data, Spark, Azure, COBOL