100 Days of AWS: From Cloud Basics to Real-World Mastery

A step-by-step journey through AWS fundamentals, security, DevOps, data, and capstone projects.

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Created bySchool of AI, Arjun Vaid

Last updated 7/2026

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What you'll learn

Understand core AWS concepts, global infrastructure, regions, Availability Zones, and the Well-Architected Framework.
Launch, configure, secure, and manage EC2 instances, storage, networking, and load balancing.
Build secure cloud environments using IAM, KMS, Secrets Manager, Organizations, and security services.
Create serverless applications with Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, EventBridge, and Step Functions.
Design scalable architectures using Auto Scaling, CloudFront, Route 53, RDS, Aurora, and ElastiCache.
Build CI/CD pipelines using CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CloudFormation, and AWS SAM.
Deploy containerized applications with ECS, Fargate, ECR, and Amazon EKS.
Implement monitoring, logging, auditing, and observability using CloudWatch, CloudTrail, X-Ray, and AWS Config.
Build data lakes, ETL pipelines, analytics solutions, and dashboards using Glue, Athena, Redshift, and QuickSight.
Explore machine learning and generative AI services using SageMaker, Amazon Bedrock, Lex, and Comprehend.
Apply cost optimization, disaster recovery, migration, governance, and multi-account architecture patterns.
Complete portfolio-ready AWS projects and prepare for AWS interviews and certification exams.

Course content

5 sections • 100 lectures • 15h 15m total length

Create AWS account, explore Console, set up MFA and billing alerts8:54
AWS Free Tier, Well-Architected Framework, regions/AZs9:15
Explore AWS free tier and the well-architected framework, a decision framework for operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability across regions and AZs.
IAM users, groups, roles, policies (least privilege)8:51
AWS CLI install, config, profiles, basic commands9:04
Master AWS CLI install, config, and profiles through a practical lab, linking identity, scope, and evidence to safe, idempotent command execution.
EC2 basics: launch, connect (SSH/RDP), key pairs, security groups9:15
EBS volumes, snapshots, AMIs, instance types/families9:22
S3 fundamentals: buckets, objects, versioning, lifecycle rules9:14
S3 security: bucket policies, encryption, pre-signed URLs9:14
VPC basics: CIDR, subnets, route tables, IGW, NAT9:01
Security groups vs NACLs; bastion hosts; VPC flow logs9:15
Elastic Load Balancing (ALB/NLB) and target groups9:20
Auto Scaling Groups: scaling policies, launch templates9:07
Explore how auto scaling groups maintain desired capacity, replace unhealthy instances, and work with launch templates and execution units to scale based on policies, with hands-on labs and monitoring.
CloudWatch basics: metrics, logs, dashboards, alarms9:27
Explore CloudWatch basics—metrics, logs, dashboards, alarms, and traces—and learn how to map access patterns, availability, and the request path to observable evidence.
SNS & SQS basics: pub/sub and queues9:05
Lambda fundamentals: runtimes, triggers, permissions9:15
API Gateway (REST/HTTP): integrate with Lambda9:19
Explore how API gateway REST/HTTP integrates with AWS Lambda to route requests, enforce identity, run serverless workloads, and support retries, observability, and clean up in an event-driven workflow.
DynamoDB basics: tables, keys, partitions, simple queries9:17
RDS (MySQL/Postgres): create, connect, backups9:04
CloudFormation intro: templates, stacks, parameters8:57
Explore CloudFormation templates, stacks, and parameters to create, update, and roll back versioned resources, and connect artifact and quality gate to ensure safe releases.
AWS SAM intro: serverless templates, local testing9:02

S3 advanced: replication, transfer acceleration, Select/Glacier9:12
Explore S3 advanced replication, transfer acceleration, and select/glacier to optimize durability and performance. Build architectural intuition by tracing the request path, design decisions, and validation evidence.
EFS vs FSx: shared file systems and use cases9:11
Explore comparing Amazon EFS and FSx for shared Linux and Windows file access, with use cases, design decisions, labs, and monitoring, covering request paths, durability, snapshots, and recovery.
Route 53: hosted zones, records, health checks9:19
CloudFront: distributions, caching, signed URLs8:55
RDS advanced: Multi-AZ, read replicas, parameter groups9:19
Aurora (MySQL/Postgres): serverless, global database9:11
ElastiCache (Redis/Memcached): caching patterns9:25
Lambda advanced: layers, destinations, concurrency, Provisioned Concurrency9:21
Explore advanced AWS Lambda concepts, including layers, destinations, concurrency, and provisioned concurrency, and learn to map event-driven flows from input to work and results.
Step Functions: orchestration patterns with Lambda/DynamoDB9:27
EventBridge: schemas, rules, SaaS integrations9:12
Explore how EventBridge acts as a managed event bus routing events from AWS services, custom apps, and SaaS integrations, guided by schemas and rules.
Secrets Manager & Parameter Store: secrets rotation9:09
Learn how secrets manager and parameter store provide encrypted secret storage with secrets rotation, integrate with identity, policy evaluation, and audit, and map the request path from principle to audit.
KMS & envelope encryption: CMKs, key policies, grant tokens9:05
CloudWatch Logs Insights, metric filters, anomaly detection9:11
AWS Config: rules, compliance, conformance packs9:06
CloudTrail: logging, insights, S3 + Athena queries8:56
CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy basics8:59
CodePipeline: multi-stage CI/CD, approvals8:54
Elastic Beanstalk: environments, deployment policies8:57
Systems Manager: Session Manager, Patch Manager, Run Command9:09
Cost Explorer, Budgets, Cost Anomaly Detection8:55

ECS fundamentals: clusters, services, task definitions9:01
Master ECS fundamentals, including clusters, services, and task definitions, and trace a request path through execution units, capacity providers, and health checks to guide design decisions and labs.
ECS Fargate: serverless containers, networking modes9:27
ECR: repositories, image scanning, lifecycle policies9:00
EKS fundamentals: clusters, nodes, kubectl, IAM roles for pods9:11
EKS add-ons: ALB Ingress, Fargate profiles, managed node groups9:03
VPC advanced: peering, TGW, VPC endpoints (Interface/Gateway)9:06
PrivateLink, Transit Gateway attachments, route propagation9:14
Explore how Private Link, Transit Gateway Attachments, and Route Propagation enable a regional hub for centralized routing across VPCs and on-prem networks, with hands-on labs, design decisions, and evidence-driven monitoring.
Direct Connect vs Site-to-Site VPN; Site-to-Site setup9:15
WAF: rules, rate limiting, bot control on ALB/CloudFront9:16
Shield (Standard/Advanced), DDoS patterns and protections8:58
IAM advanced: conditions, permission boundaries, SCPs9:17
Organizations: OU design, SCP governance patterns9:15
Control Tower: guardrails, account factory, landing zone9:00
Security Hub: findings, standards, automated remediation8:59
Macie: S3 data discovery, sensitive data alerts9:18
Explore Amazon Macie for S3 data discovery and sensitive data alerts, linking S3 governance with detection, evidence, and remediation along the request path.
Inspector, GuardDuty, Detective: threat detection triad9:22
Backup & Disaster Recovery: AWS Backup, cross-region copies9:05
DMS & SCT: migrate DBs to RDS/Aurora9:15
Explain how AWS DMS and SCT migrate databases to Amazon Aurora and RDS, trace the request path, evaluate design trade-offs, and validate with safe labs and evidence-based monitoring.
DataSync, Storage Gateway, Migration strategies (6 Rs)9:17
Tagging strategy, resource groups, Resource Explorer8:59
Explore tagging strategy, resource groups, and resource explorer to implement governance, inventory, evidence, and remediation across AWS accounts.

Glue: crawlers, Data Catalog, ETL jobs (Spark/Python)9:14
Athena: query S3 with SQL, partitioning, CTAS9:13
Redshift basics: clusters, COPY, WLM, distributions9:18
Redshift advanced: RA3, serverless, materialized views9:20
Kinesis Data Streams vs Firehose vs Data Analytics9:13
MSK (Managed Kafka): clusters, IAM auth, connectors9:01
OpenSearch Service: domains, indexing, Kibana9:13
EMR: clusters, steps, Spark on AWS8:56
Lake Formation: governed data lake, row/column-level security9:16
AppFlow, AppSync, Data Pipeline patterns9:14
Master Amazon AppFlow, AppSync, and data pipeline patterns for SaaS to AWS data transfers. Explore migration patterns using Glue, Step Functions, or MWA, and learn design trade-offs.
SageMaker fundamentals: notebooks, training, hosting9:04
SageMaker pipelines, feature store, model registry9:07
Bedrock (foundation models): prompts, guardrails, knowledge bases9:05
Explore Amazon Bedrock and foundation models, mastering prompts, guardrails, and knowledge bases to manage inference, evaluate quality, and monitor deployment across the ML lifecycle.
Lex, Polly, Transcribe, Comprehend: conversational & NLP9:09
Explore Lex, Polly, Transcribe, and Comprehend for conversational NLP, learning how evaluation, life cycle, and responsible access shape a production request path, with lab experiments, monitoring, and cleanup.
QuickSight: datasets, visuals, SPICE, Row-Level Security9:32
Event-driven architectures: saga, outbox, CQRS on AWS8:39
Multi-account strategies: central logging, security, shared services8:58
CI/CD for infrastructure: CloudFormation/CDK pipelines9:09
Explore declarative infrastructure as code with CloudFormation and CDK pipelines, and learn to design, test, and monitor artifact-driven CI/CD with a quality gate, rollback, and observability.
GitOps on EKS: Argo CD, Flux, Helm on AWS9:15
Observability stack: CloudWatch, X-Ray, OpenTelemetry9:18
Explore the observability stack with CloudWatch, X-Ray, and OpenTelemetry to monitor metrics, logs, and traces. Learn how these tools fit the request path and inform design decisions.

Project 1: Serverless web app (S3 + CloudFront + API Gateway + Lambda + DynamoDB9:21
Explore a serverless web app using S3, CloudFront, API Gateway, Lambda, and DynamoDB, tracing the request path, making design decisions, building a lab, monitoring, and cleanup strategies.
Add auth: Cognito user pools, protected routes, OIDC9:13
Add CI/CD: SAM/CloudFormation pipelines, automated tests9:15
Add monitoring & alerting: CloudWatch dashboards, alarms, Canaries9:10
Project 2: Containerized microservices on ECS Fargate with ALB9:19
Add service discovery, secrets, centralized logging8:54
Project 3: Data lake + analytics (S3 + Lake Formation + Glue + Athena + QuickSig9:17
Add data quality checks, partitioning, cost controls8:52
Project 4: EKS app with GitOps, Helm, and autoscaling9:23
Add multi-AZ, HPA, and basic security hardening8:43
Architecture deep dive: 3-tier web, event-driven, lakehouse9:09
Security deep dive: IAM boundaries, SCPs, KMS strategies9:16
Networking deep dive: TGW designs, hybrid connectivity9:04
Explore Transit Gateway designs for hybrid connectivity, map the request path, and evaluate requirements, trade-offs, and evidence through hands-on labs and dashboards.
Cost optimization deep dive: right-sizing, Savings Plans, S3 Intelligent Tiering9:11
DR/BCP: RTO/RPO, pilot light vs warm standby vs multi-region active9:12
Explore how regions define disaster recovery boundaries and how RTO and RPO shape pilot light, warm standby, and multi-region active strategies, mapping the request path and evaluating trade-offs.
Interview prep: common AWS scenario questions, whiteboard patterns9:09
Frame AWS interview prep by tracing a request path from discovery to explain, highlighting requirement, trade-off, and evidence, with a lab and monitoring to demonstrate real architecture decisions.
Cert alignment: Solutions Architect Associate blueprint mapping8:59
Cert alignment: Developer Associate or SysOps/Admin mapping8:51
Trace a single AWS request from discovery to explain, identifying where identity is evaluated, where work happens, and where evidence appears, using logs, metrics, and cost narratives.
Mock exam + review weak areas; build personal cheat sheets9:07
Final capstone demo day: present architecture, trade-offs, and cost/security sto9:11

Requirements

No previous AWS or cloud computing experience is required.
Basic computer skills and familiarity with web browsers are sufficient.
A computer with a reliable internet connection is recommended.
An email address and payment card may be required to create an AWS account.
Basic programming knowledge is helpful but not mandatory.
Familiarity with command-line tools is useful, but all essential steps are explained.
Students should be willing to practice consistently and complete hands-on exercises.
AWS Free Tier services can be used for many activities, but students should monitor usage and billing carefully.

Description

This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

Build practical cloud skills through a structured, hands-on journey in 100 Days of AWS: From Cloud Basics to Real-World Mastery. This comprehensive course is designed to help beginners, developers, system administrators, DevOps engineers, and technology professionals learn Amazon Web Services step by step while building real-world cloud solutions.

You will begin with essential AWS fundamentals, including regions, Availability Zones, the AWS Free Tier, billing alerts, account security, and the AWS Well-Architected Framework. You will then gain hands-on experience with core AWS services such as Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Elastic Block Store, Virtual Private Cloud, Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, CloudWatch, IAM, Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, and Amazon RDS.

As the course progresses, you will move beyond basic cloud administration and learn how to design secure, scalable, reliable, and cost-effective cloud environments. You will explore serverless computing, event-driven architectures, messaging systems, infrastructure automation, databases, content delivery, monitoring, and application deployment. Services such as AWS Step Functions, EventBridge, CloudFront, Route 53, CloudFormation, AWS SAM, CodePipeline, CodeBuild, Systems Manager, and Secrets Manager are covered through practical exercises.

The course also introduces modern DevOps and container technologies on AWS. You will work with Amazon ECS, AWS Fargate, Amazon ECR, and Amazon EKS while learning container orchestration, image management, load balancing, service discovery, autoscaling, GitOps, Helm, Argo CD, and CI/CD automation.

Security and governance are integrated throughout the learning journey. You will explore AWS IAM, KMS encryption, AWS Organizations, Service Control Policies, Control Tower, Security Hub, GuardDuty, Inspector, Macie, WAF, and AWS Shield. You will also learn enterprise cloud patterns involving multi-account environments, centralized logging, compliance monitoring, disaster recovery, hybrid networking, and cloud migration.

For learners interested in data and artificial intelligence, the course covers AWS Glue, Athena, Redshift, Kinesis, Amazon MSK, OpenSearch, EMR, Lake Formation, QuickSight, Amazon SageMaker, and Amazon Bedrock. You will create data pipelines, governed data lakes, analytics dashboards, machine learning workflows, and generative AI applications using AWS-managed services.

During the final 20 days, you will complete multiple portfolio-ready AWS projects. These include a serverless web application, containerized microservices on ECS Fargate, an enterprise data lake and analytics platform, and an EKS application managed through GitOps. Each project emphasizes architecture decisions, security, monitoring, automation, scalability, reliability, and cost optimization.

The course concludes with AWS interview preparation, scenario-based architecture exercises, certification blueprint mapping, mock exams, personal cheat sheets, and a final capstone presentation. By the end, you will be prepared to build real-world AWS solutions, strengthen your cloud portfolio, prepare for AWS certifications, and confidently discuss cloud architecture during technical interviews.

Who this course is for:

Beginners who want to learn AWS through a structured 100-day learning path.
Students and recent graduates preparing for cloud computing careers.
Software developers who want to deploy applications on AWS.
System administrators transitioning into cloud engineering roles.
DevOps engineers who want hands-on experience with AWS automation and CI/CD.
Cloud engineers seeking broader knowledge of AWS services and architecture patterns.
Data professionals interested in AWS analytics, data lakes, and machine learning services.
IT professionals preparing for AWS certification exams.
Technical professionals preparing for AWS interviews and architecture discussions.
Entrepreneurs and solution architects who want to design secure, scalable, and cost-effective cloud solutions.

100 Days of AWS: From Cloud Basics to Real-World Mastery

What you'll learn

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Course content

Foundations and core services20 lectures • 3hr 3min

Data, serverless, DevOps, and reliability20 lectures • 3hr 3min

Containers, advanced networking, security, and governance20 lectures • 3hr 3min

Data/analytics, ML, and enterprise patterns20 lectures • 3hr 3min

Capstone projects, interviews, and cert alignment20 lectures • 3hr 3min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: