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AWS Cloud Practitioner

4 min read

Notes taken while studying for the AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification. It is really disorganized.

AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Study Notes

Amazon Macie

  • Purpose: Detects sensitive data.

Amazon Shield

  • Purpose: Protects against DDoS attacks.

AWS Core Concepts

  • Key Principle: Pay for what you use.
  • Cloud Computing: On-demand delivery of resources over the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing.

Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)

  • EC2 enables multitenancy: sharing underlying hardware between virtual machines.
  • With EC2, you can:
    • Choose the operating system.
    • Select the number of instances.
    • Control what runs in your instance (e.g., business apps, web apps, databases, third-party software).
  • Vertical Scaling: Add more CPU and memory.
  • Advantage: While virtual machines aren’t new, EC2 simplifies provisioning, allowing for quick scaling.

EC2 Instance Families

  • General Purpose: Balanced resources for diverse workloads like web services.
  • Compute Optimized: Ideal for gaming and high-performance computing.
  • Memory Optimized: For memory-intensive applications.
  • Accelerated Computing: Designed for floating-point number calculations, graphics processing, etc.
  • Storage Optimized: Designed for high performance, delivering tens of thousands of low-latency IOPS.

EC2 Pricing Models

  • On-Demand: Pay for the duration your instance runs.
  • Saving Plan: Lower prices in exchange for a commitment (1–3 year terms).
  • Reserved Instances: Suitable for predictable workloads.
  • Spot Instances: AWS can reclaim the instance when needed.
  • Dedicated Hosts: Physical servers dedicated to your use.

EC2 Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing

  • Scalability: Start with what you need and scale automatically as demand changes.
  • Elastic Load Balancing (ELB): Distributes incoming traffic across multiple EC2 instances.
  • ELB acts as a single point of contact and spreads requests across resources in the Auto Scaling group.

Serverless Computing

  • Definition: Your code runs on servers managed by AWS, without provisioning or managing them.
  • Benefits: Focus on innovation, and applications can scale automatically.

AWS Serverless Services

  • Amazon ECS (Elastic Container Service): Container management system to run and scale containerized applications.
  • Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service): Fully managed Kubernetes on AWS.
  • AWS Fargate: Serverless compute engine for containers, managing the server infrastructure for you.

Content Delivery and Networking

  • Content Delivery Network (CDN): Geographically distributed servers speed up web content delivery.
  • AWS CloudFront: AWS’s CDN, using edge locations to deliver data closer to users.
  • AWS Outposts: AWS hardware deployed on-premises, essentially a mini AWS region in your building.

VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)

  • VPC: Logically isolates a section of your AWS resources.
  • Subnets: IP address ranges within a VPC, grouping resources together (public or private subnets).
  • Internet Gateway: Public entry point to a VPC.
  • Virtual Private Gateway: Allows secure connections from specific private networks.

Security

  • Network Access Control List (ACL): Controls access to subnets.
  • Security Group: Stateful firewall controlling instance-level security.

Common AWS Services and Concepts

Service/ConceptDescription
Amazon CloudFrontReduces network latency.
AWS EC2Virtual server in the AWS Cloud.
S3 Glacier Deep ArchiveLowest cost storage class in Amazon S3.
AWS EFS (Elastic File System)Scalable, cloud-native file storage.
Edge LocationsData centers that deliver content faster to users.
AWS OrganizationsManages multiple AWS accounts.
AWS ShieldProtects against DDoS attacks.
IAM (Identity and Access Management)Manages user permissions and access to AWS services.
AWS CloudTrailLogs and tracks user activity and API calls.
AWS Key Management Service (KMS)Manages encryption and decryption of data.
AWS LambdaRun code without provisioning servers.
AWS SageMakerSimplifies development and deployment of machine learning models.
AWS SnowballTransfers large amounts of data to and from the cloud.
AWS Cost ExplorerVisualizes and manages AWS costs.
AWS MarketplaceAllows listing and selling software on AWS.

Key AWS Exam Questions

  • Which service reduces network latency?
    • Amazon CloudFront
  • Which Amazon S3 storage class has the lowest cost?
    • S3 Glacier Deep Archive
  • What is AWS EFS?
    • AWS Elastic File System
  • What are Edge Locations?
    • Data centers that deliver content faster to users.
  • Who is responsible for managing storage and databases in AWS Cloud?
    • AWS
  • What is an IAM Policy?
    • A document that customizes user permissions for AWS services and resources.
  • What does AWS Shield protect from?
    • DDoS attacks.
  • What is AWS Lambda?
    • A service that lets you run code without thinking about servers.
  • AWS CloudTrail captures API calls and tracks all user actions within your AWS account.
  • CloudWatch monitors your AWS resources and can create automatic alarms for performance or cost optimization.

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