AWS Practitioner Course

Lesson 1 • What Is Cloud Computing

Defines cloud computing, its essential characteristics, and deployment models. Anchors all subsequent AWS service discussions in shared vocabulary.

Lesson 2 • Cloud Service Models Explained

Differentiates IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS with concrete examples. Helps students map AWS services to the correct responsibility layer.

Lesson 3 • AWS Global Infrastructure Overview

Covers regions, Availability Zones, edge locations, and Local Zones. Students understand how geography affects latency, compliance, and resilience.

Lesson 4 • AWS Value Proposition and Economics

Explains the pay-as-you-go model, economies of scale, and total cost of ownership. Connects cloud economics to business decision-making.

Lesson 1 • Multi-Factor Authentication and Credentials

Covers MFA device types, access key rotation, and credential best practices. Students implement controls that reduce identity-based attack surfaces.

Lesson 2 • IAM Core Concepts

Introduces the IAM data model: users, groups, roles, and policies. Establishes the mental model needed for all permission design tasks.

Lesson 3 • Federated Access and SSO

Explains identity federation, SAML 2.0, and AWS IAM Identity Center. Students understand how enterprise directories integrate with AWS.

Lesson 4 • Writing and Attaching IAM Policies

Covers JSON policy structure, effect/action/resource elements, and condition keys. Students write and test policies using the IAM policy simulator.

Lesson 1 • Auto Scaling and Load Balancing

Introduces EC2 Auto Scaling groups and Elastic Load Balancing types. Students design horizontally scalable, fault-tolerant compute tiers.

Lesson 2 • Amazon EC2 Essentials

Covers instance types, AMIs, key pairs, and security groups. Students launch and connect to EC2 instances as the baseline compute skill.

Lesson 3 • EC2 Pricing and Purchase Options

Compares On-Demand, Reserved, Spot, and Savings Plans pricing models. Students optimise compute costs for predictable and variable workloads.

Lesson 4 • Containers on AWS

Covers ECS, EKS, and Fargate as managed container platforms. Students understand container orchestration options without deep Kubernetes expertise.

Lesson 1 • S3 Security and Access Control

Explains bucket policies, ACLs, Block Public Access, and pre-signed URLs. Students secure data at rest and control cross-account access patterns.

Lesson 2 • Amazon EFS and FSx File Systems

Introduces managed NFS and Windows file systems for shared access. Students understand when file storage outperforms block or object alternatives.

Lesson 3 • Data Transfer and Migration Services

Covers AWS DataSync, Transfer Family, and Snow family devices. Students plan data movement strategies for hybrid and migration scenarios.

Lesson 4 • Amazon EBS and Instance Storage

Covers EBS volume types, snapshots, and ephemeral instance store. Students choose block storage configurations for database and OS workloads.

Lesson 1 • VPC Connectivity Options

Covers VPC peering, Transit Gateway, VPN, and Direct Connect. Students select the right connectivity model for hybrid and multi-VPC architectures.

Lesson 2 • Network Security Controls

Explains security groups versus network ACLs and their stateful differences. Students layer defences to protect resources at the subnet and instance level.

Lesson 3 • DNS and Route 53

Introduces Route 53 routing policies, health checks, and private hosted zones. Students configure DNS for high availability and geographic distribution.

Lesson 4 • Amazon VPC Architecture

Covers VPC creation, CIDR blocks, subnets, and route tables. Networking is the backbone of every AWS deployment covered in subsequent chapters.

Lesson 1 • Additional Database Services

Surveys Redshift, Neptune, DocumentDB, and Timestream for specialised needs. Students match purpose-built databases to analytics, graph, and time-series workloads.

Lesson 2 • Amazon DynamoDB for NoSQL

Covers tables, partition keys, read/write capacity, and DynamoDB Streams. Students design NoSQL schemas for high-throughput, low-latency applications.

Lesson 3 • Amazon RDS Fundamentals

Covers supported engines, Multi-AZ deployments, and automated backups. RDS is the primary managed relational database service used in most architectures.

Lesson 4 • Amazon Aurora Architecture

Explains Aurora's distributed storage, cluster endpoints, and Serverless v2. Students understand when Aurora outperforms standard RDS engines.

Lesson 1 • Monitoring with CloudWatch

Introduces CloudWatch metrics, alarms, dashboards, and Logs Insights. Students build observability pipelines that trigger automated remediation actions.

Lesson 2 • Threat Detection and Incident Response

Covers GuardDuty, Security Hub, Detective, and Macie for threat visibility. Students build automated detection pipelines that surface anomalies quickly.

Lesson 3 • AWS Shared Responsibility Model

Clarifies which security tasks AWS owns versus customer responsibilities. This model governs every security decision made in subsequent sections.

Lesson 4 • Data Protection and Encryption

Explains AWS KMS, CloudHSM, and encryption at rest and in transit. Students apply encryption controls to storage, database, and network services.

Lesson 1 • High Availability and Fault Tolerance

Covers multi-AZ, multi-region, and active-passive failover patterns. Students design systems that meet recovery time and recovery point objectives.

Lesson 2 • Decoupling with Messaging Services

Explains SQS, SNS, and EventBridge for asynchronous communication. Students replace tight coupling with event-driven patterns that improve resilience.

Lesson 3 • AWS Cost Management Tools

Covers Cost Explorer, Budgets, Cost Allocation Tags, and Trusted Advisor. Students identify waste, forecast spend, and enforce budget guardrails.

Lesson 4 • AWS Well-Architected Framework

Introduces the six pillars and the Well-Architected Tool for reviews. Students use pillar lenses to evaluate trade-offs in real architecture decisions.