AWS Essentials Course

Lesson 1 • AWS Shared Responsibility Model

Clarifies security duties split between AWS and the customer. Understanding this model is prerequisite to designing secure architectures in later chapters.

Lesson 2 • AWS Global Infrastructure Overview

Maps AWS Regions, Availability Zones, and edge locations. Explains how physical infrastructure choices affect latency, resilience, and compliance.

Lesson 3 • What Is Cloud Computing

Defines cloud computing, its service models, and deployment types. Provides the conceptual baseline required for all subsequent AWS topics.

Lesson 1 • AWS IAM Core Concepts

Covers users, groups, roles, and policies as IAM building blocks. Establishes the access control vocabulary used throughout the entire course.

Lesson 2 • Foundational Security Services

Introduces AWS CloudTrail, AWS Config, and AWS Trusted Advisor for visibility and compliance. Prepares students to audit and govern accounts before deploying workloads.

Lesson 3 • Multi-Factor Authentication and Credentials

Enforces strong authentication practices for console and programmatic access. Directly reduces credential-compromise risk identified in the shared responsibility model.

Lesson 1 • EC2 Pricing and Purchase Options

Compares On-Demand, Reserved, Spot, and Savings Plans pricing models. Enables cost-aware instance selection aligned with workload predictability.

Lesson 2 • Amazon EC2 Instance Fundamentals

Covers instance types, AMIs, and the launch wizard workflow. Provides the hands-on compute foundation that underpins networking and storage chapters.

Lesson 3 • AWS Lambda and Serverless Compute

Introduces event-driven functions, triggers, and execution environments. Learners contrast serverless with EC2 to choose compute appropriately for each scenario.

Lesson 4 • Elastic Beanstalk and Managed Compute

Shows how Elastic Beanstalk abstracts infrastructure for application deployment. Bridges raw EC2 management and fully managed PaaS patterns.

Lesson 1 • NAT, VPN, and Peering Connectivity

Covers NAT Gateways, Site-to-Site VPN, and VPC Peering for extended connectivity. Enables private subnet resources to reach the internet and on-premises networks securely.

Lesson 2 • Security Groups and Network ACLs

Contrasts stateful security groups with stateless network ACLs for traffic control. Learners apply both layers to enforce defence-in-depth within a VPC.

Lesson 3 • Amazon CloudFront and DNS with Route 53

Delivers content globally via CloudFront distributions and manages DNS with Route 53. Completes the network layer from origin to end user.

Lesson 4 • Amazon VPC Architecture

Explains VPC CIDR blocks, subnets, and route tables as network building blocks. Establishes the isolated network environment required for all deployed workloads.

Lesson 1 • Amazon S3 Core Concepts

Covers buckets, objects, keys, and the S3 consistency model. Establishes object storage fundamentals that underpin data lake and backup architectures.

Lesson 2 • Block and File Storage: EBS and EFS

Differentiates EBS block storage from EFS shared file storage for EC2 workloads. Learners match storage type to application I/O patterns and durability requirements.

Lesson 3 • S3 Storage Classes and Lifecycle Policies

Compares Standard, Intelligent-Tiering, Glacier, and other classes by cost and retrieval speed. Lifecycle rules automate cost optimisation without manual intervention.

Lesson 1 • Amazon DynamoDB for NoSQL Workloads

Teaches DynamoDB tables, partition keys, and capacity modes for key-value and document data. Contrasts NoSQL design patterns with relational schemas.

Lesson 2 • Amazon Aurora Architecture

Explains Aurora's distributed storage, cluster endpoints, and serverless option. Positions Aurora as a high-performance alternative to standard RDS engines.

Lesson 3 • Caching with ElastiCache

Introduces Redis and Memcached clusters to reduce database load and latency. Completes the data tier by adding an in-memory caching layer to application architectures.

Lesson 4 • RDS High Availability and Read Replicas

Covers Multi-AZ deployments and read replicas for resilience and read scaling. Builds on VPC and networking knowledge to place DB instances correctly.

Lesson 1 • EC2 Auto Scaling Groups

Configures launch templates, scaling policies, and health checks for dynamic capacity. Directly applies load balancer and CloudWatch knowledge to automate fleet management.

Lesson 2 • CloudWatch Logs and Insights

Centralises application and infrastructure logs for search and analysis. Extends metric-based monitoring with log-level diagnostics for deeper troubleshooting.

Lesson 3 • High Availability and Fault Tolerance Patterns

Applies multi-AZ and multi-region design patterns to eliminate single points of failure. Synthesises VPC, load balancing, database, and scaling knowledge into resilient architectures.

Lesson 1 • Cost Monitoring and Budgets

Uses Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets, and Cost Allocation Tags to track and control spend. Enables proactive cost governance before bills exceed acceptable thresholds.

Lesson 2 • AWS Well-Architected Framework

Introduces the six pillars and the Well-Architected Tool for workload review. Provides a structured evaluation lens applied to all architectures built in the course.

Lesson 3 • AWS Pricing Fundamentals

Explains pay-as-you-go pricing, free tier limits, and data transfer costs. Provides the economic literacy needed to make informed architecture and purchasing decisions.

Lesson 4 • Architecting for the Cloud: Key Principles

Translates Well-Architected pillars into actionable design decisions for real workloads. Serves as the capstone synthesis of all core chapters into a coherent architecture mindset.