Ultimate AWS Bootcamp by School of Devops ®

DevOps and the cloud grew up together, so this section sets the base before you touch AWS. You will see where cloud computing came from, what makes up its fundamentals, and why public and private clouds matter for a DevOps engineer. By the end you will know why cloud knowledge is essential groundwork for everything that follows.

Trace how we got to the cloud, from John McCarthy's 1960s idea of computing sold like a utility to mainframes, distributed computing, and virtualization. You will understand the client-server and P2P models, why virtualization became the backbone of cloud, and how the pay-per-use utility model works. This history helps you see why cloud is built the way it is today.

Learn why teams move to the cloud, covering both business and technology gains. On the business side you will see the shift from capital expense to operational expense, economies of scale, and going global in minutes. On the tech side you will understand self-service, automation, APIs, auto scaling, and disaster recovery, so you can judge when the cloud is the right call.

Get clear on the three service models, IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, with real examples like AWS EC2, Google App Engine, and Gmail. You will also learn the public, private, and hybrid deployment models and when each fits. After this you can tell which type of cloud a service belongs to and pick the right level of control for your workload.

See why cloud and DevOps fit so well together. Automation, infrastructure as code, and fast scaling are what let small teams and startups build and grow on the cloud, using tools like Terraform, CloudFormation, and Ansible. You will understand how each one feeds the other and why automation is essential when you manage infrastructure at scale.

Start your tour of Amazon Web Services, the first and most popular public cloud. You will learn how AWS is spread across global regions and availability zones, and how its huge catalog of services is grouped by category. This intro sets you up to explore the core AWS services that the rest of the section covers by type.

Understand the main AWS compute services and when to use each. You will learn EC2 for running virtual machines with auto scaling and load balancers, Lambda for serverless functions triggered by events, and ECS for running Docker containers at scale. After this you can match a workload to the right compute option instead of defaulting to a server that runs all the time.

Learn how AWS handles storage and content delivery. You will cover S3 object storage with its durability and replication, EBS block storage for instances, Glacier for cheap long-term archival, and CloudFront as a CDN that serves content from a cache close to your users. You will also see how S3 lifecycle rules move old data to Glacier automatically.

Get to know the managed database services on AWS and where each fits. You will learn RDS for relational databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle, DynamoDB for NoSQL key-value workloads that need scale over transactions, ElastiCache for in-memory caching with Memcached and Redis, and Redshift for data warehousing. This helps you pick the right database for transactional versus high-scale needs.

Get a tour of the AWS networking and admin services you'll use every day. You'll see how a VPC gives you your own private network on the public cloud, what Route 53 does as a managed DNS service, and how IAM controls who can touch which resource. By the end you can tell apart CloudTrail for auditing, CloudWatch for monitoring, and Trusted Advisor for optimisation advice, and know when to reach for each.

A quick look at what this section covers before you start clicking around AWS. You'll see the plan for setting up your environment, the sample application used through the training, and the order we'll follow so the hands-on work makes sense. After this you'll know what's coming and can move straight into creating your account.

Set up your own AWS Free Tier account so you can practise everything in this course without a big bill. You'll learn exactly what the free tier covers, how the 750 EC2 hours per month really work across multiple instances, and what stays free for S3, RDS and Lambda. After this you can sign up, add your payment and verify your identity, and know which instance types to stick to so you stay inside the free limits.

Log in and find your way around the AWS Management Console. You'll learn how to search and pin the services you use often, why the region selector in the top right matters and how to switch regions, and where the billing dashboard, organizations and account settings live. By the end you can move confidently around the console and know where to set budgets, billing alerts and security credentials.

Build a clear mental model of AWS IAM before you touch it. You'll learn how users, groups, roles and policies fit together, what an ARN is and why every resource has one, and how policies map specific access to specific services. After this you'll understand when to give a human user keys versus attaching a role to an EC2 instance for access to something like S3, and why multi-factor authentication matters for the root account.

Lock down your AWS account by turning on multi-factor authentication. You'll walk through the IAM console, see why a password alone leaves the root account exposed, and set up a virtual MFA device using Google Authenticator on your phone. By the end you can enable MFA, scan the barcode, confirm it with two codes, and log back in with the extra code to prove it works.

Stop using the root account for daily work and create proper IAM users and groups instead. You'll customise your account sign-in link, create users with console and programmatic access, and put them in a group so permissions are managed together. After this you can attach policies like read-only or system administrator to a group, hand out access and secret keys safely, and see first-hand how a read-only user is blocked from making changes.

Move your users from read-only to real working access by updating IAM policies. You'll create an admin group with full administrator access, set a password policy, and attach system administrator and database administrator policies to the right users. You'll also use the IAM policy simulator to check exactly which EC2 and RDS actions a user is allowed to run, so you can verify access before anyone hits a permission error.

Get the networking basics you need before configuring a VPC. You'll learn IP addressing in dotted-quad form, how class-based addressing and subnet masks work, and why NAT lets a whole office share one public IP. By the end you can read CIDR notation like /24 and /26, work out how many hosts a subnet holds, and split a network into smaller subnets on purpose.

Learn the protocols and ports behind the firewall rules you'll write in AWS. You'll see how TCP, UDP, IP and ICMP differ, why DNS uses UDP and ping uses ICMP, and which common services sit on which ports, like SSH on 22, HTTP on 80 and DNS on 53. After this you can open the right port and protocol in a security group and reach for tools like ifconfig and traceroute when you need to debug a network.

Get comfortable with the network utilities you reach for when something on a remote server stops working. You will use ifconfig to read interface details and IP addresses, dig to query DNS and check name resolution, ping and traceroute (or mtr) to spot packet loss and see the hops to a host, and whois to look up who owns a domain. After this you can troubleshoot common connectivity and DNS problems on any Linux machine.

Understand what a VPC really is: your own private network inside the AWS public cloud, with your own IP range, subnets, firewalls, and routing. You will see how one account can be split into separate development and production networks, how to control public and internal IP addressing, and why this is software defined networking. By the end you will know the key pieces coming next, including subnets, internet gateway, route tables, elastic IPs, security groups, and NACLs.

Learn how subnets partition your VPC into smaller networks, the same way you would in a data center. You will see the difference between public, private, and VPN-only subnets, when to keep databases and queues on a private subnet, and how CIDR blocks size your networks. After this you can plan your own IP addressing, take a /16 VPC range, and split it into /24 subnets that match how you want traffic to flow.

See how instances actually reach the internet and how the outside reaches them. You will learn what an internet gateway does for a public subnet, how a NAT instance gives private instances outbound-only access to pull updates, how an elastic network interface (ENI) works like a virtual LAN card you can attach and move, and how route tables and elastic IPs fit in. After this you can decide which piece each subnet needs.

Learn the two layers of firewall AWS gives you: security groups at the instance level and network ACLs at the subnet level. You will see why a NACL can block traffic even when a security group allows it, how allow and deny rules differ between the two, and where IAM policies fit for access control. You will also cover connectivity options, including customer and virtual private gateways, OpenVPN for road-warrior access, and VPC peering within a region.

Walk through the four common ways to configure a VPC: a single public subnet, public plus private subnets, public and private with hardware VPN access, and a VPN-only network. For each one you will learn how to tell a public subnet from a private one by its route table, where a NAT instance or bastion host fits, and when to route traffic through your corporate network. This gives you a mental map for picking the right layout for real workloads.

Build a real VPC using the AWS wizard for a WordPress setup, with the web server on a public subnet and the database on a private one. You will explore the VPC console, choose a CIDR block, create a public subnet in an availability zone, and see how the wizard sets up the internet gateway and route tables for you. You will also learn to read a route table to confirm whether a subnet is public or private, and why AWS reserves five IPs per subnet.

Start EC2 by understanding where your servers actually live. You will learn what a region is, why you pick different regions for global reach or disaster recovery, and how availability zones are separate data centers inside a region connected by low-latency links. After this you can choose multiple AZs when you want high availability and different regions when you want geographic separation or a DR copy of your infrastructure.

Get clear on EC2 instances, the virtual machines you run on the cloud, and how to pick the right one. You will learn the instance families for general purpose, compute, memory, storage, and GPU workloads, plus how the generations (like C4) progress. On pricing you will compare on-demand, spot instances and their bidding model, reserved instances for big discounts, and dedicated hosts for compliance. After this you can match an instance type and pricing model to your workload and budget.

Learn what an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is: a template, like a golden image, that holds your base OS, packages, and files so you can launch many identical servers from one. You will see the AMI lifecycle, where to find AWS QuickStart, community, and marketplace images, and how to copy an AMI across regions. You will also cover instance networking again, including private and public IPs, elastic IPs, user data scripts, tags, and placement groups.

Understand the two storage choices for an EC2 instance and when each one fits. You'll see why instance store is fast but ephemeral (data is gone after a stop-start), while EBS gives you persistent block storage that survives the instance life cycle. We also cover the EBS volume types: magnetic, general purpose SSD, and provisioned IOPS, plus how security groups act as firewalls and how key pairs handle authentication. After this you can pick the right disk and lock down access with confidence.

Set up the two things you need before launching any EC2 instance: a key pair and a security group. You'll create an RSA key pair (with the region baked into the name), download the private key, and lock its permissions to read-only. Then you'll build a security group that opens SSH and HTTP for your WordPress web server. After this you'll have a public subnet ready and the access and firewall pieces in place to launch.

Launch your first EC2 instance step by step, from picking an AMI to reviewing it before it boots. You'll choose an Amazon Machine Image, select a free-tier eligible t2.micro instance type, place it in your VPC's public subnet with a public IP, add storage, tag it with role and owner, and attach your security group. We also cover system vs instance status checks so you know when it's truly ready. After this you can spin up an instance from scratch inside your own network.

Connect to your running EC2 instance over SSH using the private key you created. You'll learn how the login username depends on the AMI (ec2-user, ubuntu, or root), how to reach a public instance from your terminal, and why you can't SSH straight into a private subnet instance. We also cover converting your key to PPK for PuTTY on Windows and changing the default SSH port for better security. After this you can log in and manage your server directly.

Turn a configured EC2 instance into your own reusable Amazon Machine Image. After patching the system and installing your apps, you'll create an AMI so every future instance starts with the same setup already baked in. We cover the reboot-on-snapshot option, sharing an AMI publicly or with specific accounts, copying it to another region like Frankfurt, and deregistering it when done. You'll also understand where the snapshot storage lives and what you pay for. After this you can build golden images for repeatable launches.

Understand what Amazon RDS gives you as a managed relational database service, so you no longer handle installation, patching, backups, replication, and failover yourself. You'll learn how RDS scales vertically and with read replicas, how Multi-AZ deployments keep you running when a zone goes down, and which engines are supported: MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server, and Amazon Aurora. We also cover parameter groups, option groups, storage types, and pricing. After this you'll know when RDS is the right call and how it's put together.

Prepare everything RDS needs before you launch a MySQL database. You'll create a VPC security group that allows MySQL traffic on port 3306 only from your WordPress web server's security group, keeping the database closed to the outside world. Then you'll build a DB subnet group spanning two private subnets in two different availability zones, which is required for Multi-AZ to work. After this your environment is ready and locked down for a secure database launch.

Launch a MySQL RDS instance and walk through every option that matters. You'll pick the engine and license, choose a free-tier db.t2.micro instance class, decide on Multi-AZ, set general purpose SSD storage, and place the database in your private subnets with no public access. We also set the master username and password, the initial database name, automated backups with a seven-day retention window, and the maintenance window. After this you'll have a running database and know the endpoint you'll use to connect.

Connect your web server to the RDS database and wire up WordPress end to end. You'll install the MySQL client on the EC2 instance, connect to the RDS endpoint on port 3306, and confirm your WordPress database is there. Then you'll run the WordPress setup in the browser, fix the file permissions blocking wp-config by setting ownership to www-data, and finish the install. After this you'll have a live WordPress site talking to a managed database, and you'll know how to debug the connection when it fails.

Go beyond a basic RDS setup and handle the operations you'll actually use in production. You'll create a custom parameter group to tune MySQL settings like buffers and cache sizes, then apply it to your instance immediately or in the maintenance window. You'll also take manual snapshots before a risky change, restore a new database from a snapshot, and use automated backups for point-in-time recovery. After this you can tune, back up, and roll back your database safely.

Get the core ideas behind Amazon S3, the object storage service that early Dropbox was built on. You will learn how buckets, objects, and unique keys work, why S3 gives eleven nines of durability, and how storage classes, ACLs, IAM policies, encryption, and cross-region replication fit together. After this you will understand why S3 uses a global namespace and why its eventual consistency means you should never mount a bucket like a disk.

Create your first S3 bucket from the console and upload a file to it. You will pick a globally unique DNS-compliant bucket name, choose a region, set public read access, and select a storage class while uploading. You will also see why a public bucket alone does not make an object public, and how to set object-level permissions so a file becomes accessible over its S3 link.

Host a full static website out of an S3 bucket with no server to run, patch, or pay for. You will create a bucket named for your domain, upload your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files, grant public read access, and turn on static website hosting with an index document. After this you will have a live site served from AWS infrastructure at very low cost.

Walk through the S3 bucket properties tab and go deep on versioning. You will see what access logging, server-side encryption, tags, transfer acceleration, event notifications, and requester pays each do, then turn on versioning to keep multiple copies of the same object. After this you can upload a new version of a file, roll back to an earlier one, and track changes over time.

Move S3 objects you rarely touch into Glacier to cut storage cost with lifecycle rules. You will set up a rule that transitions objects to Glacier after a set number of days and expires old versions automatically. You will also learn why a Glacier object cannot be downloaded directly, and how to initiate a restore with bulk, standard, or expedited retrieval to get your data back.

Offload images, media, and other static content from a WordPress site to S3 using the WP Offload Media plugin. You will create an IAM user with programmatic access and S3 permissions, generate access and secret keys, and connect the plugin to a bucket. After this your media is served from S3 instead of your EC2 instance, and you will know why to rotate exposed keys right away.