DEV Community: Prasad Lakshan

High Availability in DynamoDB

Prasad Lakshan — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 00:27:22 +0000

In the realm of modern applications, maintaining continuous operation is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. Downtime translates directly to lost revenue, frustrated users, and potential reputational damage. For applications that rely heavily on databases, achieving high availability (HA) becomes an essential objective.

This article serves as a comprehensive guide to the robust HA configuration options offered by DynamoDB, a widely used NoSQL managed service from AWS. We'll embark on a journey that begins by establishing the core functionalities of DynamoDB, including its inherent automatic partitioning and synchronous replication across multiple Availability Zones (AZs) within a region. This foundational layer provides a solid starting point for ensuring data and application uptime.

DynamoDB Fundamentals:

Managed NoSQL Service: Built and offered by AWS, DynamoDB is a schemaless NoSQL managed service.
Automatic Partitioning: Data and incoming traffic are automatically partitioned across multiple partitions stored on numerous backend servers distributed across three Availability Zones (AZs) within a single region. This forms the base for a DynamoDB table's availability.
Synchronous Replication: Each partition is replicated synchronously across the three AZs within a region. This protects against single node or even a full AZ outage, ensuring high availability.

Scaling Throughput:

Provisioned Throughput: You can adjust the provisioned throughput of your DynamoDB database to accommodate your application's growth. This process seamlessly triggers the creation of additional partitions and replication mechanisms. In essence, your database seamlessly scales alongside your application's needs.

Global Tables for Regional Resilience:

Cross-Region Replication: DynamoDB offers an additional layer of availability through Global Tables. These tables replicate your data across multiple regions, safeguarding your applications from regional outages, even in the face of unforeseen circumstances.
Leverage data locality: Users can access data from the geographically closest replica, minimizing network latency and enhancing responsiveness.

Technical Details of Global Tables:

Replication Scope: Replication can be configured for one or more regions within the same AWS account.
Read/Write Capabilities: Global Tables offer multi-master read/write access with eventual consistency, allowing reads and writes on any table with near real-time updates propagated to others.
Enabling Global Tables: We'll provide practical guidance on converting existing DynamoDB tables to Global Tables using both the AWS Management Console and the AWS CLI.

Understanding these HA configuration options empowers you to:

Maximize uptime: By leveraging DynamoDB's built-in features and implementing advanced options like Global Tables, you can ensure your database delivers exceptional uptime and remains the unwavering foundation of your resilient and dependable applications.
Scale dynamically: Adjust provisioned throughput to seamlessly accommodate fluctuations in application demands.
Enhance data availability: Safeguard your data against regional outages with cross-region replication offered by Global Tables.
Optimize performance: Leverage data locality to minimize network latency and improve user experience.

By equipping yourself with this knowledge, you can unlock the full potential of DynamoDB and ensure your applications remain operational and responsive, even in the face of challenges.

Mastering Foundational Network Concepts in AWS

Prasad Lakshan — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 02:56:10 +0000

Because cloud computing is always changing, people who work with it need to have a deep understanding of the basic network ideas used by Amazon Web Services (AWS). This article goes into comprehensive detail about some of the most important network principals and components. It also goes into detail about how to build resilient and scalable architectures on the AWS platform.

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC):

Definition and Purpose: A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) serves as a meticulously isolated segment of the AWS Cloud, providing practitioners with the ability to launch AWS resources within a defined virtual network.
CIDR Blocks and Subnets: The exact boundaries of VPCs are set with Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) blocks, and resources are separated by setting up subnets inside VPCs. To build secure and efficient network architectures, you need to have a deep understanding of CIDR notation.

Elastic Load Balancing (ELB):

Load Balancer Types: AWS has different types of load balancers, such as the flexible Application Load Balancers (ALB) and the performance-driven Network Load Balancers (NLB). Each type is designed for a specific use case.
Distributed Traffic Routing: Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) is a key part of making sure that new application traffic is spread across multiple targets, which improves availability and fault tolerance.

Amazon Route 53:

Domain Name System (DNS) Services: Amazon Route 53, AWS’s scalable DNS web service, is a key part of how traffic is routed around the world and is used to register and handle domain names.
Health Checks and Failover: Knowing a lot about Route 53 means knowing about its strong health checks and failover settings, which are important for making sure that applications are always available and reliable.

Security Groups and Network Access Control Lists (NACLs):

Security Groups: Security Groups are very important for controlling both incoming and outgoing traffic, acting as virtual firewalls for instances and adding to the total security posture.
Network Access Control Lists: There is an extra layer of security provided by Network Access Control Lists (NACLs). They work at the subnet level and give detailed control over network data.

Direct Connect and VPN:

Direct Connect: Direct Connect sets up dedicated network links between on-premises data centres and AWS. This gives users more bandwidth and less latency for better connectivity.
Virtual Private Network (VPN): AWS VPN makes it possible for on-premises networks and AWS VPCs to securely talk to each other over the internet. It is an important part of hybrid cloud systems.

AWS Transit Gateway:

Centralized Network Hub: AWS Transit Gateway simplifies network architecture by serving as a central hub for connecting multiple VPCs and on-premises networks, fostering seamless communication.
Routing and Scale: People who are in charge of large network designs need to have a deep understanding of Transit Gateway’s routing features and scalability.

Conclusion:

Core network concepts in AWS must be understood by professionals who want to design, install, and oversee secure, scalable cloud environments. If an AWS professional fully understands these ideas, they can easily build high-performance solutions in the cloud, whether they are setting up VPCs, load balancers, or orchestrating seamless connectivity.

An Introduction to Key Services for Cloud Success

Prasad Lakshan — Fri, 26 May 2023 07:32:56 +0000

Businesses of all sizes are leveraging the power of cloud computing for innovation, scalability, and cost-efficiency in today's digital landscape. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is known as a leader among cloud service providers, delivering a comprehensive portfolio of services that cater to a wide range of corporate demands. In this article, I will present an overview of AWS and explore its core services, providing the foundation for your AWS adventure.

Understanding AWS:

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud computing platform offered by Amazon that allows businesses to design, deploy, and manage applications and infrastructure in the cloud. Organizations can use AWS to access a flexible and scalable infrastructure, allowing them to focus on their core skills rather than hardware and data centres.

Key Services in AWS:

Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud):

Amazon EC2 is a core AWS service that provides scalable computation capacity in the cloud. It allows users to launch virtual servers called instances, which may be easily built and customized to fit unique computing needs. EC2 instances are available in a variety of configurations, ranging from general-purpose instances for everyday workloads to specialized instances for purposes like as machine learning or high-performance computing.

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service):

Amazon S3 is an object storage service that allows companies to store and retrieve massive volumes of data. It offers a long-lasting and secure storage solution that ensures data availability and durability across multiple regions. S3 allows you to store and retrieve an unlimited quantity of data from anywhere on the internet, making it excellent for backup, data archiving, content sharing, and many other applications.

AWS Lambda:

AWS Lambda is a serverless computing solution that enables developers to run code without the need for server provisioning or management. It allows you to concentrate on writing code and developing applications while AWS Lambda manages infrastructure and scalability automatically. You only pay for the compute time used by your code when using Lambda, making it a cost-effective and efficient alternative for operating event-driven apps and microservices.

Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service):

Amazon RDS is a managed database service that makes it easier to set up, run, and scale relational databases in the cloud. It provides high availability, automatic backups, and automated software patching for common database engines such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and SQL Server. RDS enables enterprises to offload the administrative responsibilities associated with database management, allowing them to focus on application development.

Amazon CloudFront:

Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) service that speeds up web content delivery to end users. It caches static and dynamic content at global edge locations to reduce latency and improve performance. CloudFront connects easily with other AWS services, making it simple to distribute content, stream media, and serve APIs with minimal latency and high data transfer speeds.

Conclusion:

Understanding the key services provided by AWS is critical as you begin your AWS journey. This article presented an overview of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and emphasized essential services such as Amazon EC2, S3, AWS Lambda, Amazon RDS, and Amazon CloudFront. These services serve as the foundation for developing scalable and robust cloud applications.

AWS provides a diverse ecosystem of services, each designed for different business demands and technical requirements. Exploring these services in greater depth will allow you to fully utilize AWS and reap the benefits of cloud computing.

In the following articles in this 30-day AWS series, we'll delve deeper into each of these services, investigating their capabilities, use cases, and best practices. Stay tuned as we explore the many possibilities that AWS provides and assist you toward being a skilled cloud user.

Securing Your AWS Infrastructure : Best Practices for Cloud Security

Prasad Lakshan — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 23:47:04 +0000

As more businesses migrate their applications to the cloud, the security of their cloud infrastructure has become more critical. AWS offers a variety of tools and services to help secure your environment. But it's critical to understand how to configure and utilize them properly. This blog article will go through some best practices for safeguarding your AWS environment, such as defining security groups, configuring IAM roles and policies, and leveraging third-party security tools.

Understanding AWS Security Features

Overview of AWS Shared Responsibility Model
AWS Security Compliance Program and Certifications
Understanding AWS Security Features such as Security Groups, Network ACLs, Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS Key Management Service (KMS), AWS Certificate Manager (ACM), Amazon GuardDuty, and more.

Best Practices for Securing Your AWS Environment

Securing your AWS account: Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), strong passwords, and credential management
Using Security Groups and Network ACLs to control network traffic
Managing AWS IAM roles and policies for fine-grained access control
Implementing encryption with AWS Key Management Service (KMS) and AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)
Logging, monitoring, and auditing your AWS environment for security events
Implementing third-party security tools to supplement AWS security features

AWS Compliance and Governance

Understanding and complying with regulatory requirements and best practices
AWS Compliance Programs and Services
Best practices for governance of AWS resources, such as tagging, naming conventions, and AWS Resource Access Manager (RAM)

Conclusion:

It is crucial to secure your AWS infrastructure to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your applications and data. You may limit the risk of security breaches and data loss by applying best practices for AWS security. such as defining security groups, configuring IAM roles and policies, and employing third-party security solutions. AWS offers a variety of security tools and compliance initiatives to assist you in securing your environment, But it is critical that you understand how to utilize them effectively. You may assist ensure the security of your AWS environment by following the standards and best practices provided in this article.

How to effectively manage multiple AWS accounts: Best practices and tool

Prasad Lakshan — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 11:14:09 +0000

Assume you're a software engineer for a rapidly expanding startup. You've been responsible for managing AWS resources across various AWS accounts for multiple environments - development, staging, and production. You initially believe it won't be too tough to manage several accounts, but as you begin exploring the specifics of managing multiple accounts, you rapidly discover it's a difficult undertaking with this blog post.

The following are some best practices for managing multiple AWS accounts:

Use AWS Organizations

AWS Organizations is a free service that allows you to combine multiple AWS accounts into a single organization, making it easier to manage and secure your resources. You can create and handle AWS accounts, and then use AWS Organizations to apply policies to those accounts.

Set up cross-account access

You can access resources in one account from another via cross-account access. This can be handy for managing resources shared by several accounts, such as Amazon S3 buckets or Amazon EC2 instances. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles can be used to enable cross-account access.

Use AWS Config

AWS Config is a service that allows you to inspect, audit, and review the configuration of your Amazon Web Services (AWS) resources. AWS Config can be used to monitor and report on resource changes across various AWS accounts.

Use AWS CloudFormation

AWS CloudFormation is a service that allows you to use code to create and manage AWS resources. AWS CloudFormation templates may be used to build and manage resources across many AWS accounts, making infrastructure as code management easier.

Use AWS Security Hub

AWS Security Hub is a security service that allows you to view and manage your security alerts and compliance status across different AWS accounts from one place. AWS Security Hub allows you to automate compliance checks and view compliance outcomes across various accounts.

Use AWS Trusted Advisor

The AWS Trusted Advisor service provides best-practice advice to assist you in optimizing your AWS resources. AWS Trusted Advisor will help you find places where you can save money, enhance performance, and strengthen security across various AWS accounts.

Implement AWS Resource Groups

AWS Resource Groups enable you to organize related resources across different accounts and regions for easier management and monitoring. Resource Groups allow you to establish a single dashboard for a specified group of resources, making it easier to discover and troubleshoot problems.

Conclusion

To summarize, maintaining several AWS accounts can be a difficult task, but with the correct strategies and tools, it can be greatly simplified. You may effectively manage your resources, monitor your compliance and security status, and optimize your expenses and performance by using services such as AWS Organizations, cross-account access, AWS Config, AWS CloudFormation, AWS Security Hub, AWS Trusted Advisor, and AWS Resource Groups.

What is IAM? — AWS Identity and Access Management

Prasad Lakshan — Sat, 15 Apr 2023 06:00:22 +0000

Understanding the Basics of AWS IAM with Best Practices

If you are new to Cloud computing, It can be hard to understand all the different aspects of cloud computing and how they work together. My suggestion is to start with a single step. That is IAM.

What do you think when I say IAM? In the real world, you use “I am” to express who you are. What are you doing, and what are your abilities and weaknesses like that? Yeah, that is the same as in AWS. AWS IAM is one of the key components of cloud security. IAM stands for Identity and Access Management. It is used to identify you and find the abilities and disabilities you currently have. I think it is the same as the real world. Also, you will agree with me. Any way If you are not familiar with this. I am pretty sure you will be confused. However, understanding IAM is crucial for ensuring the security of your cloud-based infrastructure.

In this blog post, I will provide a brief introduction to AWS IAM. Especially, if you are new to the cloud, I will explain what AWS IAM is, how it works, and why it is important. Also, you will be able to learn some best practices related to the IAM as well. At the end of this post, you will have a good understanding of IAM and be able to manage your resources more securely

What is IAM?

Permission system that regulates access to AWS resources — It helps you as the administrator defined who can access what resource on an AWS account.
Allows you to assign permissions to a group of users — IAM users allow you to assign broad or specific permissions could include things like providing access to entire AWS services such as DynamoDB. Whereas specific permissions could include fine-grain access to a particular S# bucket to perform read and write operations.
IAM provides a mechanism to monitor and audit access to specific resources by enabling AWS CloudTrail.
Integrates with other Identity Tech( Microsoft ActiveDirectory) — you are in a large organization with existing identity technologies, you will be pleased to know that AWS IAM can easily integrate with them.

That is the high-level overview of what IAM is so let’s get an idea about how it works.

How IAM Works

There are four main key concepts that you need to be aware of when using IAM those are Users, Groups, Roles, and Policies/Permissions. Let’s discuss one by One

1. Users — Specific Individuals, can receive personal logins

Users refer to specific individuals, and using IAM, you can grant each user a login and password so they can access the AWS console on their own. Although they’ll have a limited set of permissions that you define, Also, they have secret keys and secret access keys. which are used as inputs when setting up clients in your application-level code.

2. Groups — Collection of users

Then there are groups, which simply refer to a collection of users with a common theme or set of permissions. An example could be intern students and senior developers. We want intern students to have a very different set of permissions than senior developers.

3. Roles — Collection of policies

There are roles in AWS IAM. You can define a role, for example, as a collection of policies. That has both read and write permissions to a specific AWS DynamoDB table. Roles are typically not directly tied to individual users and are meant to be assumed by anyone who needs them, for instance. You can use roles to allow users within a different AWS account to access one of your DynamoDB tables by creating a role with the right permissions and then granting them the ability to assume or use that role.

4. Policies — Low-level permission to resources

There are policies, which are the bread and butter of IAM. These things define the specific low-level permissions for access to AWS resources. And there are two variations to these: allow or deny, so you can allow or deny permissions to resources.

So here’s an example of what a policy looks like in JSON format. So, if we take a look at this a little closer, we have a version of a statement, and this is really where the meat of the policy is. We have a SID, which stands for statement ID. This can be anything. We have an effect, and that is allowed in this case, so that can either allow or deny. We have action, and these are the specific permissions that we want to permit, so we have a dynamo to be scan and a dynamo DB query. So, these two permissions are what is allowed with this policy. We also have another factor here, which is resources, and in this example, we are providing a specific AWS resource. So this policy or this permission only provides users with these scan and query operations on this specific table. Now, optionally, you can put a wild card in here, which is a star (*), and this would give the user that is using this policy access to all DynamoDB tables.

How IAM Works — Example

Let’s move on now to a practical example. How an organization may set up IAM So, in this example, we’re working with one group of intern students, and we have three users. They’ve defined John, Mary, and Steven. Now Mary and Steven are intern students, so, like I was alluding to before, I want to give them fewer or more restrictive permissions than other users.

We have two policies now. Those are DynamoDBBasicWrite and DynamoDBBasicRead. DynamoDBBasicWrite gives the ability to perform a put item operation on a specific table. DynamoDBBasicRead gives the query and gets item permissions on this table, too. So in this example, we want to associate this intern student group with DynamoDB to have basic read permissions to give Mary and Steven access to this DynamoDB table, and that’s very simple to do in the AWS console. You just go to the group section and add a policy, and then select this policy that has the permissions that you need now.

What about John, who’s left all alone now that John wants to access this table as well? He wants to access the put item and the query and get item APIs. So, how can we do this? Well, we can create a DynamoDBReadWrite role, and with that role, we can associate these two policies with it. So now anyone who is using this role will have access to these resources. and these specific API endpoints, so when we go to the user section for John, we can grant him this dynamoDB role in doing so, giving him access to this table for the put item and the query and get item APIs. So that’s a pretty simple example of how you may set this up in an organization; now hopefully that made sense.

Best Practices

So let’s move on to best practices when using IAM. By applying the following best practices, you can improve your IAM strategies and reduce the risk of data breaches and other security incidents.

Principle of Least Privilege: This principle involves granting the minimum necessary privileges to users, applications, and services to perform their job functions. This ensures that users only have access to the resources they need and prevents unnecessary exposure of sensitive data.
Strong Authentication: The use of strong authentication mechanisms such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) or biometric authentication can help prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information.
Role-based Access Control: Implementing role-based access control (RBAC) helps to ensure that users only have access to the resources they need to perform their specific job functions.
Regular Auditing: Regular auditing and reviewing access logs can help organizations identify any unauthorized access attempts or policy violations.
Separation of Duties: Separating duties between different users or groups can help prevent conflicts of interest and reduce the risk of fraud or errors.
Continuous Monitoring: Implementing continuous monitoring mechanisms can help organizations quickly identify and respond to security incidents, such as attempts to access sensitive data or changes to access policies.
Automation: Automating IAM processes such as user provisioning, access requests, and de-provisioning can help improve efficiency, reduce errors, and ensure compliance with policies and regulations.

Conclusion

Finally, now you have a good understanding of what AWS IAM is, how it works, and the best practices. Applying this knowledge, you will be able to manage your cloud-based infrastructure securely.

Originally Published at https://medium.com/enlear-academy/what-is-iam-aws-identity-and-access-management-bcba8092f465 on 13 Apr 2023

How to Optimize Costs in AWS: Best Practices and Strategies

Prasad Lakshan — Sat, 15 Apr 2023 05:47:32 +0000

Assume you're running a small online business on AWS. And your monthly cloud fee is steadily increasing. You're not sure what's causing the cost increase, and you're worried about how much it'll cost you in the long run. You understand that cost optimization is crucial to the success of your company. but you're not sure where to begin.

In this article, I'll tackle best practices and strategies for optimizing costs in AWS.

1. Using AWS Cost Explore

AWS Cost Explorer is one of the first tools you should utilize to optimize your AWS charges. This tool is free for all AWS customers and gives a detailed breakdown of your AWS usage and expenses. You may use Cost Explorer to discover where your costs are coming from. And also uncover cost drivers including unused resources, data transmission, and storage charges.

You can also use Cost Explorer to generate custom reports to track your expenditure over time. For example, you could develop a report indicating how much money you're spending on a specific service or region, and then utilize that information to identify cost-cutting opportunities.

2. Right-Sizing Instances

Another option to reduce AWS costs is to right-size your instances. AWS has a variety of instance types, and determining which one is best for your workload can be difficult. You are squandering money on unused resources if you use an instance that is too large for your workload. On the other side, if you use a too-small instance, you will sacrifice performance and efficiency.

You can use a tool like AWS Trusted Advisor to right-size your instances. This tool recommends ways to optimize your AWS infrastructure, such as detecting unused instances that can be reduced to a lower instance type.

3. Using AWS Spot Instances

AWS Spot Instances are yet another option to reduce your AWS charges. Spot Instances enable you to place bids on unused EC2 capacity and execute workloads at a significantly lower cost. Using Spot Instances instead of on-demand or Reserved Instances can save you up to 90% on your EC2 charges.

Spot instances are best suited for workloads that can withstand interruptions, such as batch processing processes or non-critical workloads. Spot instances can be configured to automatically scale up and down based on demand, and you just pay for the time your instances are running.

4. Implementing Auto-Scaling

Another option to reduce AWS expenses is to use auto-scaling, which automatically adjusts your resources based on demand. You can use auto-scaling to ensure that you have enough capacity to handle your workload without over-provisioning. This can assist you in avoiding unused capacity and costs.

To enable auto-scaling, you must first create policies that define when and how your resources should scale. You could, for example, create a policy that adds extra instances when CPU consumption hits a particular threshold and removes instances when CPU usage falls below a specific level.

5. Using AWS Reserved Instances

Finally, if you have consistent consumption patterns, AWS Reserved Instances might be a cost-effective option to execute your applications. Reserved Instances allow you to pay for an instance once and obtain a big reduction off the hourly pricing. When compared to On-Demand Instances, this can save you up to 75% on instance fees.

Reserved Instances are best suited for workloads with a predictable usage pattern, such as a database or web application. Reserved Instances can be purchased for a specified instance type, operating system, and region and then used for a set period of time.

Conclusion

Optimizing your AWS costs is crucial to your company's success. You can keep your AWS prices under control and ensure that you're getting the most value from your cloud infrastructure by using tools like Cost Explorer, right-sizing your instances, leveraging Spot Instances, adopting auto-scaling, and using Reserved Instances. So don't put it off any longer; start minimizing your AWS costs today and reap the many benefits that AWS has to offer. Remember that a penny saved is a penny earned, and by reducing your AWS expenditures, you're not only saving money but also freeing up resources to spend on new products, features, and growth prospects for your company. You can ensure that your AWS expenditures are constantly under control with the correct cost optimization measures in place, allowing you to focus on what really counts-expanding your business and serving your customers.

7 Challenges Facing Beginners in the Cloud - with Solutions

Prasad Lakshan — Sat, 15 Apr 2023 01:59:25 +0000

Today, more and more businesses and individuals are moving their computing to the cloud, and beginners may face a number of challenges as they navigate this new journey. I am pretty sure there are more challenges you have to face as a beginner. Today I am going to tackle the seven challenges that beginners face when they enter the cloud and solutions for that challenges.

1. Familiar with Cloud concepts

When every beginner enters this cloud journey and masters cloud concepts, such as what the cloud is, why it is important, and what can I use it for. Those are the problems every beginner faces. You can find free training on YouTube as well as AWS Skill Builder, AWS Documentation, as well as third-party providers like ACloudGuru, Udemy

2. How to handle security and compliance

The second-most common challenge for beginners in the cloud is how to handle security and compliance in your cloud infrastructures. At that time, you will need to learn about data privacy, data security, identities, access management, and encryption.

3. Cost management

When you begin this journey, have some idea about cost management. So you will need to learn how to use pricing calculators and diagramming tools to estimate the spending on your architecture. Additionally, you will need to understand budgeting, alerting, and monitoring tools that apply to your tech stack of choice.

4. Picking up Cloud native development

The fourth challenge I see beginner struggle with is picking up Cloud native development. So once you already have development skills, you can use self-directed projects to pick up Cloud native open-source tools like Kubernetes, Prometheus, Linkerd, and Rook in order to deepen your cloud experience.

5. Infrastructure as code

The fifth one is infrastructure as code. There are a lot of different tools that allow you to accomplish infrastructures as code. Such as CloudFormation, Terraform, and the Cloud Development Kit(CDK). But whichever tools you choose, be familiar with creating repeatable patterns that you can reuse between projects. This will save you tons of time.

6. Networking

The number six challenge that I see beginners really struggling with is networking. After all, it is called Amazon Web Services, Make sure you are familiar with HTTP, as well as OSI model as well as CIDR blocks and subnetting, as well as HTTPS and TLS. These concepts will take you far in the cloud.

7. Disaster Recovery

Seven challenges that I see beginners to Cloud struggling with the most is disaster recovery. So read the white papers, familiarize yourself with what disaster recovery strategies are out there and once you have chosen: "pilot light, active-active, active-passive", then you can move forward with figuring out how to implement that strategy with your chosen Technologies.

Everyone is a beginner in the cloud at one point in time.

So I think this post will be helpful for you to overcome these challenges as a beginner.

Best FREE AWS Cloud Courses for 2023

Prasad Lakshan — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 14:46:25 +0000

All right, so around one and a half years ago, I remember searching on the internet, trying to figure out how to start my own cloud learning journey. At that time, I barely knew anything about the cloud, and it seemed like on every website I went on, people were recommending a different cloud course. It was really confusing for me. I jumped from resource to resource, trying to figure out which one to use. I eventually found some amazing AWS courses, but all that googling probably wasn't the best use of my time. I've spent one and a half years learning AWS.

And now, I help people build their technical skills and land a job in the cloud, and so in this blog post, I'm going to share with you the best free AWS Cloud courses I recommend for beginners. These resources have been really useful for me, and by sharing them with you, I want to help you save some time and money when it comes to choosing what course you should use if you find this type of content helpful.

🚀AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials - AWS Skill Builder

Resource number one is free. The AWS Cloud course I'd recommend is this six-hour Cloud Practitioner Essentials course. This course is part of the AWS Skill Builder, which is a platform designed by AWS for cloud learners. It's a foundational level course for beginners and helps you prepare for the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam. In this course, you'll learn about AWS Cloud Concepts, the core AWS services, and other cloud topics like security and pricing. So whether or not you end up paying the 100 USD to sit the exam, the course itself provides you with a great foundational understanding of AWS cloud. And another reason I'd recommend this course is that it's created by AWS itself, so if AWS makes any major changes to their cloud offerings, it'll update the course to reflect those changes. AWS skill builder also has a bunch of other free courses, like this mini-course that explains the different job roles available in the cloud. They also have Hands-On Labs, where they provide you with a sandbox environment, but that's only offered in their paid subscription plan. If you're learning AWS and haven't started using the AWS skill builder yet, I highly recommend signing up for a free account and trying out their courses.

https://aws.amazon.com/training/learn-about/cloud-practitioner/

🚀Udemy

The next resource I'd recommend is Udemy courses. Many people don't know this, but Udemy doesn't just have paid courses; they actually have an entire library of free courses and tutorials. With free courses, they don't provide a certificate or instructor support. but you'll be able to access the online video content for free. You can see here that they have an AWS Zero to Hero course that competes with AWS courses and even a career-focused course to help you start your career with AWS. All three of these are completely free, and there are many more AWS courses available that don't cost you anything. I'll leave links below to some of these free Udemy courses if you'd like to check them out.

🌟 𝗔𝗪𝗦 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹𝘀:
🌐A Practical Introduction to Cloud Computing: https://bit.ly/3iU2Skd
🌐Cloud Computing With AWS: https://bit.ly/3PqS3Cj
🌐Starting your Career with AWS: http://bit.ly/3WaRUF8

🚀 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗲 & 𝗔𝗱𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝗧𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰𝘀:
🌐AWS - Zero to Hero: https://bit.ly/3hg1fga
🌐Learning and Implementing AWS Solution: https://bit.ly/3FIreGs
🌐Serverless computing in AWS: https://bit.ly/3FJ2KwL

🏅 𝗔𝗪𝗦 𝗖𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀:
🌐AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Introduction: https://bit.ly/3hg6zjL

🧩 𝗔𝗪𝗦 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀:
🌐All About AWS Lambda and Serverless: https://bit.ly/3Hp5Zed
🌐DynamoDB and Database Migration Service: https://bit.ly/3Hth7H4
🌐Multitier architecture with AWS: https://bit.ly/3W7H5DN
🌐 CloudFormation: https://bit.ly/3VLb0lw
🌐AWS VPC Transit Gateway - Hands On Learning!: https://bit.ly/3W1LM2g

🚀CloudQuest

At this point, you might be kind of sick of watching video courses. Is there a more engaging way to learn if you're in that situation? I'd recommend AWS CloudQuest. It's pretty much an online game that teaches you about AWS Cloud, but what's really good about CloudQuest is that it helps you build skills through hands-on exercises and activities where you actually get to work with AWS services. So as a player, you enter a virtual city and choose a role, like a cloud practitioner, and you complete missions tailored towards that role. By the end of it, you receive a digital badge that you can showcase on LinkedIn.

https://aws.amazon.com/training/digital/aws-cloud-quest/

🚀AWS Workshops & Hands-on Labs

And there are also some other ways you can learn AWS without having to watch videos or take courses, and one of them is by doing AWS workshops and hands-on labs. I really believe that the best way to learn cloud computing is by playing around with the services, so if you're new to AWS Cloud, make sure you check it out.

https://workshops.aws/
https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/hands-on/

These two websites feature over a hundred step-by-step guided AWS tutorials. A common question I get asked is, I know many of these tutorials are available for free, but does it cost anything for me to use AWS Services? The good news is AWS does have a free tier for certain services, so you can experiment and learn without incurring a high cost. But you do have to be aware of what's free and what isn't, so make sure you take a look at this page before you start building things in your AWS account.

🚀Andrew Brown's YouTube Course

Video Another free course I'd recommend is this AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification course taught by Andrew Brown on the Free Code Camp YouTube channel. If you don't want to sign up for any accounts and just want to start learning about the cloud straight away, then I'd suggest watching this 13-hour course directly through YouTube. I watched the entire course end to end back when I was first starting to learn about cloud computing, and what I liked about it was that there were a lot of demos and diagrams that made it easier for me to understand new cloud concepts. The final resource I'd recommend.

https://youtu.be/SOTamWNgDKc

🚀Free AWS Live Training

"Like to Share" is a free live training provided by AWS. This is something I haven't seen shared around very much, but AWS actually provides instructor-led training completely for free that anyone can attend, and they have cloud training days as well as exam readiness sessions to help you pass AWS certification exams. For example, you can see that they have this AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials day that's five hours long and provides a detailed overview of cloud concepts. AWS Services security architecture
pricing and support So if you're looking for free training, I'll leave a link down below to the AWS training and certification events page. Okay, so now that I've shared with you the top three resources to learn AWS, I'd highly recommend watching this AWS certification roadmap video, where I share a step-by-step roadmap on how you can start your AWS certification journey.

https://aws.amazon.com/training/events/

Don't let this opportunity pass you by - level up your AWS skills today! 🌟