Adventures in AWS

I am considering taking some AWS certification. This is documenting that journey.

A Cloud Guru

AWS Tech Essentials

Introduction

90% of the market. AWS certificates are the most popular. Number of certs makes you a partner.

Associate Exams. 3 Entry Level 2 Professional Tier 3 Speciality

Developer Associate is the easiset.

AWS - The History So Far

AWS - no cost for startups to build infratstructure. Originally called SQS - 2004. 2013 - Certification was launched.

• 2016 re:Invent talk on YouTube.*

• Should subscribe to A Cloud Guru on youTube *
• Jeff Barrs Blogg *

10,000 Foot Overview 1

What do you need for the * Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam *.

Messaging Desktop and App Streaming Security and Identity Management Tools Storage Databases Networking and Content Delivery Compute AWS Global Infrastructure

A Region has Availability Zones. Region is a geographical area. 2 or more Availability Zones (Data Centres) in each region. Edge Locations are CDN delivery End Points for CloudFront. - for caching large media files. Lots more Edge locations that Regions - over 66 Some regions may not have certain sevices.

• VPC Important * Virtual Private Cloud - Virtual Data Centres in each Regions. How to build from memory.

• Route 53 - 53 is the DNS Port* DNS Servers - resolve URL to an IP address.

• Cloud Front * Caching videos etc, storage.

• Direct Connect * For connecting office to data centres over a dedicated line.

• EC2 - Elastic Compute Cloud * Just VMs in a cloud

• EC2 Container Services * Supports Docker containers. Not in the exam.

• Elastic Beanstalk * If you dont know AWS you can just use EB and it will do the provisioning. Quite a lot in the developer exam.

• Lambda * Serverless Upload code and it will respond to events. eg speaking to Alexa is speaking to Lambda Not yet in the exam but certain to change.

• Lightsail * Out of the box cloud - Wordpress. No need for AWS skills.

10,000 Foot Overview 2

Storage

• S3 - Simple Storage Service * Objects Lots in the exams. Virtual disk in the cloud for storing files. Not somewhere to install code or db. Dropbox was one of the first to use s3

• Glacier * Place to archive files. Regulatory bodies may require that files are kept. Low cost, not immediate access.

• EFS Elastic File Service * Files can be shared - could install apps and databases

• Storage Gateway * A way of connecting S3 to on premise data centre, usually an onsite VM.

Datatabse

• RDS - Relational Database Sevices * All types of db and Aurora.

• Dynamo DB * Non relational databases. No SQL. Really scaleable. Lots in developer exam.

• Redshift * Data warehousing - big data. Copy data here, then run big queries.

• Elasticcache * For caching data in the cloud. Eg vacuum cleaner is best seller, so cache this data.

Migration Services

• Snowball * Started as import/export using disks. This is how to do this at the Enterprise level - a briefcase sized appliance which you load and send to Amazon.

Snowball Edge also has compute capacity, can be taken on premis.

• DMS - Database Migration Services*

Can move from different database types eg Oracle to Aurora feud.

• Server Migration Services *

For migrating VMs from on premise to AWS.

Analytics

• Athena *

Allows you to execute SQL queries against S3 files. Like turning flat files into a db.

• EMR - Elastic Map Reduce * Used to process large amounts of data. Hadoop, Apache Spark.

• Cloud Search - Elastic Search * Used to create search capabilities for websites

• Kinesis * Streaming and analysing real-time data. Financial transactions, social media streams.

• Data Pipeline * eg. Move data from s3 into dynamodb

• Quick Sight * Business Analytics Tool

10,000 Foot Overview 3

Security and Identity

Every single exam - fundamental component.

• Inspector * Inspects VMs and reports.

• Certificate Manager * SSL certificates

• Directory Service * Connect AD to AWS.

• WAF * Web Application Firewalls CSRF SQL Injection.

• Artifacts * Compliance Documentation

Management Tools

• CloudWatch *

• Cloud Formation * Probably going to use. Turn infrastructure into code. A document which describes your environment.

• Cloud Trail * Auditing.

• Opsworks *

• Config *

• Service Catalog *

• Trusted Advisor * Tips on cost/performance.

Application Services

• Step Function * Way to visualise what is going on.

• SWF - Simple Workflow *

• API Gateway *

A door for securing

• AppStream *

A way of streaming desktop applications to users.

• Elastic Transcoder *

Formats videos for all devices.

Developer Tools

• CodeCommit *

• CodeBuild *

For compiling code

• CodeDeploy *

• CodePipeline *

Not in the Developer exams yet!

Mobile Services

• Mobile Hub *

• Cognito *

• Device Farm * Testing applications.

• Mobile Analytics *

• Pinpoint *

#### Business Productivity

Mail and docs.

iOT

Desktop and App Streaming

• Workspaces * OS in the cloud.

AppStream 2.0

AI

10,000 Foot Overview 4

• Alexa *

• Polly * Text to voice

• Machine Learning *

Predict data based

• Rekognition *

Analyse images.

Messaging

• SNS *

• SQS *

Decoupling queue system.

• SES *

Email

• Look At *

CloudWatch LOgs

Links

https://www.airpair.com/aws/posts/building-a-scalable-web-app-on-amazon-web-services-p1

https://wblinks.com/notes/aws-tips-i-wish-id-known-before-i-started/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccojvcQq858

Thoughts

How to Deploy

Use Redis for cache?

Code on AMI or pulled? How do we get he code on the box

Read Code Deploy

Centralised logging

Don’t SSH