DEV Community: Aristotelis S.

Investigating Amazon Managed Blockchain: Make your Web3 Life Easier

Aristotelis S. — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 08:49:26 +0000

Hi Everyone!😊

How this Post looks like?

Here, I'll be introducing the Amazon Managed Blockchain (AMB), AWS's managed service to fully deploy an operational blockchain. We'll talk about the service, the advantages of it, and provide a Good Practice "sticky note".

There are 3 Sections:

Amazon Managed Blockchain (AMB) - A comprehensive look on AMB, and its components.
Quirks & Features - A thorough look on the benefits, and how these are being utilized.
Appendix - Useful Resources to get more in depth with AMB.

0. Amazon Managed Blockchain (AMB) ⛓️

So, what is AMB actually?
It was first introduced back in 2018 as the managed service to provision a blockchain infrastructure without requiring any development. As a fully-managed service it may be considered as a serverless. Through AMB, you'll have the chance to either join a public network or even create and manage your own private networks.
AMB utilizes both the Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum Frameworks.

For the Web3 builders 🌌, working with the Ethereum framework will do the job for you, as AMB allows you to provision full nodes and connect to the Ethereum public mainnet and testnets. This, gives you big potentials, as you'll may take advantage of all the Ethereum capabilities through AMB.
NOTE* that AMB's Ethereum Mainnet nodes are running on Ethereum's PoS network.

On the other hand, if your project needs require privacy, and permission controls like financial and internal healthcare applications, knowing who did what, then Hyperledger Fabric 🧷 is your go-to framework.

Quick Introduction

Now, how does an AMB network look like?
As seen in the image below from the official AWS documentation (resource: Amazon Managed Blockchain Quickstart), the network is built within a VPC and it is consisted of several members (peer nodes). Each member can have 1-3 instances. Those instances can be distributed across AZs.
Just to have a good explanation of the diagram, if you deploy a blockchain using Quick Start with only the default parameters, then it is going to create a network with just one member (the yellowed Member A).

One key thing to notice: Currently AMB is available in the regions below. This is a dynamic process, so you'll might see more regions being added.

Region Code	Region Name	Date Added
us-gov-west-1	AWS GovCloud (US-West) limited	2022-09-07
eu-west-2	Europe (London)	2020-09-02
ap-northeast-2	Asia Pacific (Seoul)	2020-03-27
eu-west-1	Europe (Ireland)	2020-03-20
ap-northeast-1	Asia Pacific (Tokyo)	2020-03-13
ap-southeast-1	Asia Pacific (Singapore)	2020-03-06
us-east-1	US East (N. Virginia)	2019-05-22

1. Quirks & Features🥼💻

1. Reliability

On AWS, there are constant client software updates, which means nodes/peers will stay up-to-date and resolve any potential software exploits.
AMB ensures the delivery of the transactions across the blockchain network. A complete immutable change logs of the transactions is kept and maintained from the AMB, as it utilizes the Amazon QLDB which keeps all uncommitted transactions.

2. Highly Scalable - Secure

As mentioned, AMB networks are built within a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). AWS provides VPC Endpoints, an entry point from which communication is secured within the blockchain network, but also interacting with other members of your network.
If there is a need for more resources, users are able to add/remove resources to their blockchain network.
At the same time, within AMB, you are able to utilize the AWS Key Management Service which secures the communications within the blockchain network. Moreover, AWS infrastructure provides its own hardware security modules (HSM).

3. Fault-Tolerant

AMB is monitored and can replace any broken node/peer whenever it is detected (24/7).
At the same time, you may utilize AWS's monitoring services (AWS CloudWatch, AWS Inspector, AWS Guard etc.) and be proactive on any issues that might occur.

4. Other

AMB comes with a Free-tier which anyone can use through the STARTERpack.
Also, tons of integration capabilities while using the AWS CLI and SDK , but also the Hyperledger SDK and CLI .
Last, AMB supports HCLTech OBOL Tokenization.

2. Appendix 📚

Below, you'll find a few tips and a table of resources for your reference.

Tips 💡

Sandbox 🕹️: If you want to experiment with AMB, Quick Start + Starter Edition will be the optimal solution, as it provisions the least amount of resources (dropping the cost), utilizing the Free Tier which is available.
Cost Optimization 💸: As in every situation, please enable the AWS Cost and Usage Report and have limits for your expenses. That way, you want get any additional surprises in your bank account :).
Clean Up 🧹: Once done experimenting, do not forget to clean up, and to do so, members should not be peered, as you won't be allowed to delete them (as per blockchains' functionality).
Storage 🗄️: For anyone that might have stubbled upon this, as the name implies Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB) is a database to keep a verifiable and trusted history of all the data changes in an environment. AMB allows all participated parties to make transparent transactions securely without the need of a central authority.
Developing Cost 💲💲: Cost wise, using AMB might be more cost-efficient for you, your team or your company, as you are saving up cost on personnel and resources from developing your blockchain infrastructure from scratch.

Resources 🥫:

Resource Name	Link
Amazon Managed Blockchain Setup Tutorial (YT)	Link
AWS re:Invent 2021 - When to use blockchain (YT)	Link
AWS Summit ANZ 2022 - Build and scale a Web3 startup (YT)	Link
AWS AMER Summit May 2021 - Build blockchain apps with Ethereum and Hyperledger (YT)	Link

I hope that you'll find this post useful and it will help you understand the Amazon Managed Blockchain Service. You are more than welcome to add any comment if you have doubts or questions (or any suggestions!). 🙏

Becoming a Cloud Architect: A Roadmap to the AWS Solutions Architect - Associate Certificate🏗️💡

Aristotelis S. — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 17:02:37 +0000

Hello Everyone! 😄

What should you be expecting from the Article?

Here, I will be presenting all the tips and tricks I used to prepare myself properly and pass the exams of the AWS Solutions Architect - Associate certificate.

This is my first post, so an feedback is more than welcome!😁

There are 4 Sections

General Information - Information about the AWS resources and exams.
Courses - What you need to know and how to proceed.
Practice Tests - How should you utilize your time and resources.
Appendix - Useful Resources w/ Tips & Tricks.

0. General Information 📝

Name: AWS CAA-S03 (previously CAA-S02).
Length: 130 minutes for English-native speakers. If you are a non English-native speaker, you may request 30 additional minutes for the exams.
Minimum Passing Score: 720 (72%)
Cost: 150$ (One exam attempt per voucher)
Format: 65 questions (multiple choice or multiple answers)

🧑‍💼 Fields of Interest: Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer, Infrastructure Engineer, Operations Engineer, Automations Engineer, Cloud Engineer/Developer.

The AWS Solutions Architect - Associate (or SAA-C03) is considered as a rather challenging certificate. It is a process that could take as much time as you want/need. To be honest though, you should set a goal of N days/months and schedule the exams for a certain day. As the time passes, it gets more difficult to remember all the information you gained during your homework.
Don't forget we are talking about nearly 150 AWS services that are in the exams.

Questions are descriptive and could get long, presenting an architectural scenario, for which you are asked to provide the most well suited answer from a multiple choice format.

Since the AI/ML Solutions are now a hot topic, the SAA-C03 release of the exams assimilate more questions on AWS's AI/ML services.
In these 65 questions, 15 of them are Unscored Questions. These questions will not affect your score. AWS randomly uses them in the exams, to gather information from each candidate and assess the worth of each question for future use.
Every time, try excluding the answers that seem to be off. Usually, you'll find two answers that do not actually stick with the questions, and two answers that are similar.
Never leave a question unanswered. Even if it doesn't make sense to you, I suggest that you answer the question, Flag it and revisit it, once you are done with all 65 of them. This way you'll get plenty more time to evaluate the question without getting anxious about the time.

There are 4 domains in which you'll prepare yourself, as described in the table below. This is just good to know, it doesn't make any difference to you.

Domain	% of Exams
Domain 1: Design Secure Architecture	30%
Domain 2: Design Resilient Architectures	26%
Domain 3: Design High-Performing Architectures	24%
Domain 4: Design Cost-Optimized Architectures	20%

🔒 Domain 1 : Design Secure Architecture

Secure Architecture means Access Control, Global Infrastructure, Federated Access and Identity Services and Best Practices.

Outstanding Services: VPN, AWS Direct Connect, NAT Gateways, AWS WAF, and Security Groups.

⚖️ Domain 2 : Design Resilient Architecture

Resilient Architecture means scalable, fault-tolerant and loosely coupled, and highly available architectures.

Outstanding Services: SQS, SNS, AWS Lambda, AWS Fargate, Load Balancers (ALB, ELB, GLB), Amazon API Gateway, Secrets Manager, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS, AWS Step Function, DR Strategies, Amazon Route 53, AWS Regions and Availability Zones

⚡ Domain 3 : Design High-Performing Architectures

High Performing Architecture means scalable and elastic database, compute and network solutions.

Outstanding Services: Amazon ElastiCache Memcached/Redis, Database replication (Read Replicas, Multi-AZ), Database types (serverless, relational or not), AWS CloudFront, AWS Global Accelerator, AWS PrivateLink, AWS VPN, Direct Connect, AWS DataSync, AWS Storage Gateway, AWS Kinesis, AWS Firehose.

💰 Domain 4 : Design Cost-Optimized Architectures

Cost Optimized Architecture means using the most appropriate infrastructure, providing the best performance with the least cost.

Outstanding Services: AWS Cost Explorer, Cost Allocation Tags, Comparing identical services (i.e. Nat gateway/instance), Network routing/peering/topology (AWS Transit Gateway, VPC peering, Site-to-Site VPN, AWS Direct Connection), Spot Fleets/Instances, Comparing AWS database services, Comparing storage types (EBS, EFS, FSx, S3), S3 Bucket Tiers.

1. Courses 📙

First of all, you need to pick the course that makes the best fit for you. For my case, the course Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C03 offered by Stephane Maarek in Udemy was ideal. Descriptive, well organized, with a great flow and hands-on labs. This is a long course with 27 hours of lectures.

NOTE: You do not need to go over the hands-on labs. Time and Cost-wise (as you would need to provision some AWS infrastructure that might not be included in the Free Tier). There is not doubt that this will help you elevate your understanding in AWS, but it is not actually required to prepare you for the exams. Practice tests are the experience you are looking, just for the exams.

Course	Cost	Time	Link
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate 2020 (PASS THE EXAM!) - freecodecamp	Free	10h26m	Link
Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C03
- Udemy	18.64$	10h26m	Link

Tip: For me it was helpful writing down notes of the services I had issues understanding.

2. Practice Tests 🧪

Practice Tests are actually what will get you through the exams. Without these, it would be (and without any experience in these exams) extremely difficult for anyone to pass the exams.
This is the hands-on experience you are looking for the exams.

NOTE: in October 2022 AWS released the new version of the exams, moving into SAA-C03 (previous was SAA-C02).

TIP: There are no big differences between the two versions, but AWS has included new services in SAA-C03, focusing on the AI/ML ones.

Practice Tests	Cost	Link
AWS Official Sample Questions	Free	Link
ExamTopics - Provides answers/discussions	Free	Link
KnowledgeHut upGrad - Registration required	Free	Link
W3School - Registration required	Free	Link
SkillCertPro ⭐ - My preference	19.99$	Link
Whizlab - Remember to check only the Practice Tests	17.95$	Link
Practice Exams - AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate	18.64$	Link
AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Practice Exams	19.73$	Link

3. Appendix 🍬

Here you'll find resources to help you out through your preparation for the certificate, but also for your career as a AWS Solutions Architect.

AWS Product List - FAQs 🆘 - This probably is one of the most important one. The best resource you may utilize to gain a better understanding is the FAQs page of the service itself. As an AWS Solutions Architect you need to have at least a good understanding of these questions for the most popular services.
Abdur's Notes - This is a great blog for you to use as a reference point when you want to go back and check specific resources or just to make a revision. Those could be a little outdated, but still will do the job for you.
AWS Solutions - This is an index of solutions provided by AWS, which follow good practice principles, and can be used as additional labs/exercises.
AWS Well Architected - This is a resource that will help you out build and maintain solutions on top of the six pillars of AWS for Cloud systems.
AWS Blog - Consider this as AWS newsfeed. From here, you may keep yourself up-to-date with the latest trends/news of AWS from AWS.

Hopefully this will get you started with your studies on the exams. Again, please share if you have any other suggestions, tips or tricks!