AWS Cloud Practitioner: Core Services

• AWS Cloud Practitioner is the foundational certification for individuals who want to demonstrate a basic understanding of the AWS Cloud.
• It is intended for individuals in technical, managerial, sales, purchasing, or financial roles.

Core AWS Services

• Compute: Includes services like EC2 (virtual servers), Lambda (serverless compute), and ECS/EKS (container orchestration).
• Storage: Includes services like S3 (object storage), EBS (block storage for EC2), and EFS (network file system).
• Database: Includes services like RDS (relational database service), DynamoDB (NoSQL database), and Redshift (data warehousing).
• Networking: Includes services like VPC (virtual private cloud), Route 53 (DNS), and CloudFront (CDN).

Compute Services

• EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud): Provides virtual servers in the cloud, offering various instance types optimized for different workloads.
• Users have control over the operating system, networking, and security.
• Lambda: A serverless compute service that allows you to run code without provisioning or managing servers.
• You pay only for the compute time you consume.
• Elastic Container Service (ECS): Supports Docker containers.
• Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS): A managed Kubernetes service to run containerized applications.
• Auto Scaling: Automatically adjusts the number of EC2 instances based on demand.

Storage Services

• S3 (Simple Storage Service): Object storage service offering scalability, data availability, security, and performance.
• Used for storing and retrieving any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere.
• EBS (Elastic Block Storage): Block-level storage volumes for use with EC2 instances.
• Provides persistent storage for running applications.
• EFS (Elastic File System): Provides a scalable, elastic, cloud-native NFS file system.
• It can be mounted on multiple EC2 instances concurrently.
• Glacier: Low-cost archive storage, for data that is infrequently accessed.
• Storage Gateway: Hybrid storage service that enables on-premises applications to use AWS cloud storage.

Database Services

• RDS (Relational Database Service): Supports various database engines such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and MariaDB.
• Simplifies the setup, operation, and scaling of relational databases.
• DynamoDB: A NoSQL database that supports key-value and document data structures.
• Delivers single-digit millisecond performance at any scale.
• Redshift: A fast, fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service.
• Used for big data analytics.
• Aurora: A MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database.
• Combines the performance and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open-source databases.

Networking Services

• VPC (Virtual Private Cloud): Enables you to launch AWS resources into a virtual network that you've defined.
• Provides control over your virtual networking environment.
• Route 53: A scalable and highly available DNS web service.
• Translates domain names into IP addresses.
• CloudFront: A content delivery network (CDN) service.
• Distributes content to edge locations globally, reducing latency for users.
• Direct Connect: Establishes a dedicated network connection from your on-premises environment to AWS.

Security Services

• IAM (Identity and Access Management): Enables you to manage access to AWS services and resources securely.
• Controls who is authenticated (signed in) and authorized (has permissions) to use resources.
• AWS Shield: Managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service.
• Safeguards applications running on AWS.
• AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall): Protects web applications from common web exploits.
• Trusted Advisor: Provides recommendations to optimize your AWS infrastructure for security, cost optimization, performance, and fault tolerance.
• Key Management Service (KMS): Allows you to create and control the encryption keys used to encrypt your data.
• CloudHSM: A hardware security module (HSM) in the cloud.

Serverless Services

• Lambda: Already mentioned in compute, provides serverless compute capabilities.
• API Gateway: Enables you to create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale.
• Step Functions: Allows you to coordinate multiple AWS services into serverless workflows.
• SQS (Simple Queue Service): A fully managed message queuing service.
• SNS (Simple Notification Service): A fully managed pub/sub messaging service.

Management and Governance Services

• CloudWatch: A monitoring and observability service.
• Collects and tracks metrics, collects and monitors log files, sets alarms, and automatically reacts to changes in your AWS resources.
• CloudTrail: Tracks user activity and API usage.
• Enables auditing, security monitoring, and operational troubleshooting.
• Config: Provides a detailed view of the configuration of AWS resources in your account.
• Helps assess, audit, and evaluate configurations.
• CloudFormation: Enables you to define and provision AWS infrastructure as code.
• Service Catalog: Allows organizations to create and manage catalogs of IT services that are approved for use on AWS.
• Systems Manager: Gives you visibility and control of your infrastructure on AWS.

Pricing and Support

• Pay-as-you-go: AWS offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where you pay only for the resources you use.
• AWS Free Tier: Allows you to use certain AWS services for free up to certain limits.
• Savings Plans: Offers lower prices on EC2 and Fargate usage in exchange for a commitment to a consistent amount of usage.
• Reserved Instances: Provides a significant discount (up to 75%) compared to On-Demand pricing and provides a capacity reservation when used in a specific Availability Zone.
• AWS Support Plans:
• Basic: Free, for basic account and billing support.
• Developer: For testing or early development.
• Business: For production workloads.
• Enterprise: For mission-critical workloads.
• Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator: Used to estimate the cost savings of using AWS.

Cloud Concepts

• Cloud Computing: On-demand delivery of compute power, database storage, applications, and other IT resources through a cloud services platform via the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing.
• Benefits of Cloud Computing:
• Cost savings.
• Scalability.
• Elasticity.
• Agility.
• Global reach.
• Reliability.
• Cloud Deployment Models:
• Cloud: All resources are in the cloud.
• On-premises: All resources are on-premises.
• Hybrid: A combination of cloud and on-premises resources.
• Regions: Geographical areas where AWS has data centers.
• Availability Zones (AZs): Multiple, isolated locations within each Region.
• Provide fault tolerance and high availability.

AWS Global Infrastructure

• AWS has a global infrastructure comprising Regions and Availability Zones.
• Each Region consists of multiple Availability Zones.
• Availability Zones are designed to be isolated from failures in other Availability Zones and provide inexpensive, low-latency network connectivity to other Availability Zones in the same Region.
• Edge Locations are used by CloudFront to cache and distribute content globally.

AWS Well-Architected Framework

• Aims to help cloud architects build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure for their applications.
• Based on five pillars:
• Operational Excellence: Ability to run and monitor systems to deliver business value and to continually improve supporting processes and procedures.
• Security: Ability to protect information, systems, and assets while delivering business value through risk assessments and mitigation strategies.
• Reliability: Ability of a system to recover from failures and meet demand.
• Performance Efficiency: Ability to use computing resources efficiently to meet system requirements, and to maintain that efficiency as demand changes and technologies evolve.
• Cost Optimization: Ability to run systems to deliver business value at the lowest price point.

Shared Responsibility Model

• AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud.
• Customers are responsible for security in the cloud.
• Customer responsibilities include managing the operating system, network and firewall configuration, client-side data encryption, server-side encryption, and networking traffic.
• AWS responsibilities include protecting the infrastructure that runs all of the services offered in the AWS Cloud.

AWS Marketplace

• A digital catalog with thousands of software listings from independent software vendors.
• Customers can use AWS Marketplace to find, test, buy, and deploy software that runs on AWS.

Exam Tips

• Focus on understanding the core services: EC2, S3, RDS, VPC, IAM.
• Understand the benefits of cloud computing and the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
• Know the Shared Responsibility Model.
• Familiarize yourself with AWS pricing models and support plans.
• Practice with sample questions and practice exams.