AWS Cloud Practitioner Overview

In December 2020, I started my Amazon Web Services (AWS) journey by taking the AWS formal training. In this post, I’ll talk about AWS certification and how I became AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner. AWS offers plenty of digital training on its website about cloud computing, and they are the experts to learn from. I took the AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials course and managed to finish it and pass the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam within four weeks. This course is for anyone who seeks an overall understanding of the AWS Cloud and to improve their cloud skills, independent of specific technical roles. To build your AWS Cloud knowledge, you will learn about AWS Cloud concepts, services, security, architecture, pricing, and support. This course also helped me prepare for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam. I enjoyed this course since it uses a simple coffee shop metaphor, baristas, and customers, simplifying the AWS architecture of services.

Stick around if you want to learn more about AWS cloud practitioner certification.

But first …

What does an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner do?

Let’s start by identifying what cloud architecture is and what the role is for cloud architects. AWS Solution Architect role and responsibilities Cloud Architect managing an organization’s IT environment using cloud computing. The role includes involvement in cloud migration projects, reviewing workload architectures, and leading the team in addressing high-risk concerns. They also serve as a link between the technical and business aspects of a cloud adoption project.

I wrote this article about how to become AWS Certified Architect that you may find helpful.

Course Overview:

This foundation course covers a wide range of AWS Cloud services at a high level. You will be introduced to those services and what they are used for. It is a very good starting point for any learner of the AWS Cloud to start with this course since it simply covers the basics and gives you a very good overview. This will help you pass the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam.

Module 1: Introduction to Amazon Web Services

This module is the first module in the AWS cloud practitioner course. It summarizes the benefits of AWS and explains what cloud computing is, and then talks about EC2s as a service that lets you run virtual servers in the cloud. It will also talk about the pricing model of AWS.

Module 2: Compute in the Cloud

This module covers the basics of Amazon EC2 instances and their types’ differences. It also gives an overview of the different billing options for EC2. It is also a good entry point for load balancing and auto-scaling, and I really appreciate the use of the coffee shop metaphor.

AWS cloud practitioner essentials are represented really well in the coffee shop metaphor.

Here you will learn about messaging and queueing tightly coupled architecture and the differences between Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) and Amazon Simple Queue Services (Amazon SQS). The module will explain the benefits of using a more reliable architecture, loosely coupled architecture.

Module 3: Global Infrastructure and Reliability

In this part of the course, you will be introduced to AWS Global Infrastructure, the basic concept of Regions, Availability Zones, and Amazon CloudFront and Edge Locations.

Module 4: Networking

This module talks about the basic concepts of networking, the difference between public and private networking resources, and other services which are used to interact with the AWS global network.

Module 5: Storage and Databases

Here you will learn about the various storage solutions offered by AWS. It will summarize the basic concepts of storage and databases and will describe the benefits of Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), and Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS). Regarding databases, the module will describe the benefits of Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS).

Module 6: Security

In this module, it is important to understand Amazon’s shared responsibility model. AWS is responsible for the security OF THE CLOUD, and the customer is responsible for the security IN THE CLOUD.

            AWS is responsible for items such as the physical security of its data centers, creating hypervisors, replacing old disk drives, and patch management of the infrastructure.

           The customers are responsible for items such as building application schema, analyzing network performance, configuring security groups and network ACLs, and encrypting their data.

It will also cover AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and AWS Organizations.

Module 7: Monitoring and Analytics

This section of the course talks about Amazon CloudWatch and monitoring your AWS infrastructure in real-time. Also, it will cover two other services: AWS CloudTrail and AWS Trusted Advisor.

Module 8: Pricing and Support

This is an important module for individuals in sales and marketing roles since it explains AWS pricing and support models. Moreover, it describes the benefits of AWS Organizations and consolidated billing, AWS Free Tier, and AWS pricing concepts.

AWS Free Tier

• Always Free
• 12 Months Free
• Trials

AWS pricing concepts

• Pay for what you use: No long-term contracts or complex licensing.
• Pay less when you reserve: i.e., “Savings Plan” a 1-year or 3-year term commitment.
• Pay less with volume-based discounts when you use more: i.e., the more Amazon S3 storage space you use, the less you pay for it per GB

Module 9: Migration and Innovation

This module talks about AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) at a high level. It summarizes the six key factors of migration strategies. Also, you will come across the benefits of some AWS data migration solutions, such as AWS Snowcone, AWS Snowball, and AWS Snowmobile.

Module 10: The Cloud Journey

Here you will learn the benefits of cloud computing and find a summary of the five pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework, which helps you understand design principles and how to operate reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective systems in the AWS Cloud.

Module 11: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Basics

This is the final module in this training course which will help find resources for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner examination.

Study Resources

I used various tools on this exam. AWS has been offered free of charge. Throughout the training, I set up and deployed a customer account. In addition, I’m using Pluralsight and CBT nugget. My subscription is free for Pluralscope, and I pay for my CBT Nugget subscription annually.

Is AWS cloud practitioner worth getting?

Yes. The AWS certified cloud provider certificate is an important certification to cloud experts for cloud systems management. AWS certification solidifies AWS services.

Is the AWS cloud practitioner hard exam?

AWS Cloud Practitioner Exams may be difficult for beginners. Generally, this is simpler if you know about the AWS billing system. It might be different for an experienced user with no previous experience with AWPS.