AWS From Zero to Hero - The Complete Guide

Compare on-premises servers and maintenance with cloud scalability, and learn how peak events like Black Friday reveal wasted capacity and how the cloud solves these performance and cost issues.

Explore how the cloud offloads compute, networking, and storage to providers, with global data centers and hundreds of services, from AI to Kubernetes, all managed and billed by usage.

Learn the five characteristics of cloud computing — on demand self‑service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service — and how automated provisioning enables pay-as-you-go, scalable resources.

Explore capex vs opex in cloud computing, comparing upfront investments for data centers and ongoing payments, and see how cloud opex offers flexibility and financial efficiency.

Understand the three cloud service models—IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS—and how each defines the cloud's provision and the client's control.

Explore the three cloud types - public, private, and hybrid - and their setup and access. Focus on the public cloud and its providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

Explore major cloud providers in Gartner's magic quadrant and their IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS services. See why AWS leads the public cloud market with 90% growth in Q4 2024.

Explore AWS, the largest public cloud launched in 2006 with the S3 object store and EC2, delivering IaaS and PaaS to Fortune 500 clients.

Explore how AWS regions group data centers globally, how region naming works, and how availability zones provide isolation within a region. See how global, regional, and zonal services differ.

Explore AWS edge locations, how they differ from regions, and how they boost performance by delivering content closer to end users via CDN, DNS, and Lambda at edge.

Enable AWS local zones to deploy services closer to end users, extending the parent region with private high-bandwidth connections. Use local zones for low-latency apps, data residency, or legacy migrations.

Explore the AWS resources hierarchy from organization to accounts, and how policies propagate. Accounts are the main containers for services and costs; organizational units group accounts for controls.

Explore aws cloud services across compute, containers, and databases in the aws from zero to hero course, with ec2, lambda, ecs, eks, aurora, dynamodb, and ai user management.

Learn how the AWS free tier for new accounts works, activated immediately and automatically, offering free EC2 hours and S3 storage for experimentation while noting potential small costs.

Create an AWS account using the free tier, verify email and phone, set a password and personal details, add credit card, choose basic support, and access the AWS management console.

Explore the AWS management console, learn to set a default region (us-east-1) for resources, navigate services via search and menus, and understand the homepage, notifications, and region-aware URLs.

Navigate the AWS management console to create resources, using storage and S3 to deploy your first bucket. Pick a unique bucket name and note that deployment speed can vary.

Learn to locate and interpret the Amazon resource name (ARN) as the unique identifier for AWS resources, understand its format including cloud type, service, region, account ID, and resource name.

Navigate the AWS management console, use the recently visited widget to open the S3 console, and view the bucket list in storage to locate resources.

select the bucket, paste its name to confirm deletion, and click delete to remove the bucket in AWS S3, with a verification notification.

Explore Cloud Shell as a browser-based command line with the AWS CLI to manage AWS resources, featuring pre-installed tools like Git and Docker SDK and one gigabyte of persistent storage.

Define service level agreement concepts and uptime expectations for cloud services, using examples like 95% and 99.9% SLAs to gauge downtime.

Explore cloud cost models such as per resource, per consumption, and reservations. Use the AWS pricing calculator to estimate costs before provisioning resources like EC2 and RDS.

Set up budgets to monitor cloud costs and trigger alerts, using template and custom budgets with monthly thresholds to keep spend in check.

Learn how cloud-based architects blend traditional design with infrastructure knowledge, including networking, security, and cloud hands-on expertise, to design cloud infrastructure and implement security measures.

Explore cloud basics and build read it, a bookshop on the cloud, using dotnet core and Node.js, with four services: books catalog, shopping cart, inventory management, and order engine.

Install the dotnet sdk version eight to run your app. Download the sdk from dotnet.microsoft.com/net eight, choose your OS and architecture, run the installer, and complete installation.

Download and install VS Code, the development tool used to develop the Reddit app, select the compatible version, launch it, and pin the icon for quick access.

Install vscode extensions for c sharp development and the aws toolkit, choosing the base c sharp extension over the dev kit, to view resources and perform cloud actions.

Download the catalog baseline zip, extract it into a reddit folder, run in VS Code to load books to an in-memory database, and accept the self-signed certificate for https.

Explore the catalog code behind html page, including a Razor loop over books and add-to-cart button, and how the on-get method loads data from an in-memory database and Redis cache.

discover AWS basics via EC2, the elastic compute cloud IaaS for creating and managing virtual machines, and map cloud service models from on premises to SaaS.

Explore EC2 virtual machines: host and guest architecture with a hypervisor, single availability zone SLA 99.5%, and how to choose region, image, size, and pricing.

Learn how AWS EC2 instance families group workloads by series and generation, and how to decode names like c7.2xlarge with g and n options.

Deploy an EC2 virtual machine using the pricing calculator, select US East region, choose a T2 micro instance, enable on-demand with the free tier, and launch with a key pair.

Learn to connect to a running EC2 instance via EC2 Instance Connect, view public and private IPs, manage instance state, and stop to save costs.

Discover techniques to reduce the cost of virtual machines running on ec2, including scheduled shutdown, spot instances, and saving plans, with practical guidance on choosing wisely.

Schedule start and stop of virtual machines with the AWS Systems Manager resource scheduler to save costs on test, dev, and batch-processing workloads via tag-based targeting and times.

Spot instances cut costs by up to 90% by allowing AWS to stop and reallocate capacity, not suitable for always-on web apps, ideal for batch processing and data analytics.

Save costs with saving plans offering 72% discounts for 1 or 3 years. Compute saving plan covers EC2, Lambda, and Fargate; EC2 instance plan is EC2-only with higher discounts.

Explore EC2 disc types, comparing instance store (ephemeral and high performance) with EBS (durable and detachable). Learn common volume types like GP3 and GP2, plus Io1/Io2 and cost considerations.

Explain elastic file system (efs) as shared storage attachable to EC2, ECS, EKS, and Lambda with auto scale and 99.99% availability, plus FSX for Windows as an SMB, AD-integrated alternative.

Assign a static Elastic IP to EC2 instances to prevent dynamic IP changes. Move Elastic IPs between resources, note they are regional, and cost about $4 per month.

Terminate a specific EC2 instance in the AWS Management Console, ensuring the boot disk is deleted, as demonstrated in this lecture.

Create a catalog VM by launching an Amazon Linux t2.micro instance, naming it catalog VM, selecting the pre-created key pair, and launching the instance in the management console.

Explore EC2 instance metadata and the secure v2 token-based access, retrieving hostname, instance id, and availability zone from the 169.254.169.254 endpoint for boot tasks and maintenance planning.

Explore dedicated instance and dedicated host options for EC2, understanding resource isolation and security benefits alongside higher costs. Learn how to configure tenancy during EC2 launch.

Launch templates define a virtual machine configuration for EC2 instances with identical settings, and are versioned, immutable, free to create, and you pay only for the instances you launch.

Create an ec2 launch template with Amazon Linux and t2.micro instance type, attach the keeper, launch an instance, and understand templates are immutable and require a version to modify.

Setting up the catalog vm on aws, this lecture guides publishing the dotnet app, deploying to ec2, opening port 8080, and configuring a systemd service to run on boot.

Explore how to back up ec2 instances using aws backup, a central hub for managing resource backups. Create backup plans and rules, monitor backups, and restore resources as needed.

Create and configure an AWS backup plan for the catalog VM, set a daily backup with a 35-day retention, assign only the catalog VM EC2 instance, and manage plan deletion.

Create an exact copy of a disk at a specific time for backups, using incremental snapshots to save space and cost, stored in an AWS managed S3 bucket.

Learn to create and manage EC2 volume snapshots, monitor status, and derive volumes or images from a snapshot, with options to copy, archive, and schedule snapshots via the lifecycle manager.

Learn how Amazon machine images (ami) store the operating system and applications for backup, maintenance, and cloning, including Amazon managed, shared ami, and custom ami.

Create a custom image from an existing vm to clone it for load. Launch a new instance from the ami, adjust the security group for 8080, then test the catalog.

Learn how auto scaling groups manage EC2 instances, scale with load, balance across availability zones with balanced best effort, lifecycle hooks, monitor health, and launch templates.

Create a launch template from the catalog image and deploy auto scaling group with two instances, using a cpu utilization 80% policy, then test the catalog and delete the group.

Explore placement groups in AWS to control instance placement for low latency and resiliency. Compare cluster, partition, and spread strategies across availability zones to balance performance and fault tolerance.

Create a placement group in the EC2 console using the partition strategy with three partitions, assign the catalog VM to it, and start the instance to verify partition placement.

Set up a weather API on AWS by launching an EC2 instance and installing node.js. Configure security groups to allow the catalog VM on port 8080.

Explore AWS Systems Manager to centrally manage virtual machine fleets with OS patch management, automation, and simple node management, enabling on-demand patches, remote tasks, and automatic remediation.

Enable the new experience in AWS Systems Manager, configure default host management via Fleet Manager to make EC2 instances managed, and explore inventory, terminal sessions, and automation runbooks.

Explore the AWS Well-Architected framework to build secure, reliable, and cost-efficient cloud solutions. Learn its six pillars and how the guidance, lenses, hands-on labs, and the Well-Architected tool improve architectures.

Explore AWS architecture center and the well-architected framework, learning the six pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance, cost optimization, sustainability, and practical guidance for lenses, migration, and reference architectures.

Discover how to design AWS diagrams using official architecture icons with Draw.io and PowerPoint, following best practices for grouping, icons, arrows, and clear labeling.

Shut down the two EC2 instances to save costs by stopping them from the instances page. Select both, then choose stop to complete the shutdown.

Beanstalk provides a fully managed runtime platform that runs your code and scales automatically, so you upload only your application code and data, unlike EC2 IaaS.

Explore Beanstalk components by examining applications, version lifecycles in S3, environments of EC2-backed resources, and platforms with web server and worker tiers.

Deploy code to beanstalk using the management console for simplicity, and understand the app url structure with environment id, region, elastic beanstalk.com, and dns options.

Deploy the inventory service to AWS Beanstalk as a web server, package with dotnet publish, create inventory.zip, upload, and run in a single-instance environment on Linux.

Discover how Beanstalk assigns a single version per environment, applies a lifecycle policy, and uses traffic splitting to gradually route 20% of traffic to new versions.

Create a v2 of the inventory site, then use a new environment and traffic splitting to route 50% of traffic to v2 for testing, before cleaning up.

Discover deployment types for AWS Beanstalk, including basic, rolling, blue-green, and canary, with their pros, cons, and how to implement them.

Present the Reddit app architecture with catalog vm, weather vm, and beanstalk-hosted inventory app; only the catalog vm can access the weather vm, while inventory is accessible to all users.

Learn how to work with containers in AWS, understand why containers boost isolation and host density, and explore the Elastic Container Service and Elastic Kubernetes Service.

Explore how containers package software, dependencies, and configurations into an atomic unit that runs on the host OS, improving predictability, startup time, and density.

discover docker's architecture, including the daemon, images, container registry, containers, and client, and learn to build custom images with a Dockerfile.

Explore AWS Elastic Container Registry (ECR), a regional registry for Docker images with image scanning, cross-region replication, and private or public repositories, plus pricing insights.

Create an elastic container registry repository, name it my-repo, and explore features like image scanning options and cross-region replication.

Deploy the shopping cart app to AWS ECR by building a Docker image from the cart code, then authenticate, tag, and push to the ECR repository.

Learn to deploy containers with AWS ECS, using provisioning tools and the ECS scheduler, pulling images from ECR, and choosing EC2 or Fargate for scalable, serverless workloads.

Deploy a cart container to AWS ECS with Fargate by creating a cluster, defining a task from an ECR image, and running it to expose port 504.

Discover how containers enable easy deployment, scalable capacity, and effective routing with load balancing. Learn how to monitor containers, handle crashes, and use container management tools to achieve high availability.

Kubernetes is the de facto standard for container management, using pods as the atomic unit and services to expose Docker containers with IPs, load balancing, and high availability.

Explore EKS, a fully managed Kubernetes environment in the cloud, handling clusters, nodes, and pods. Learn about EC2 or Fargate deployment, auto mode, automated upgrades, security configuration, and monitoring.

Deploy a shopping cart container to an AWS Kubernetes cluster using eksctl and kubectl, configure deployment.yaml from ECR, and expose it with a load balancer service.

The architecture of Reddit app centers on compute, with two virtual machines for catalog and weather, a beanstalk inventory app, two container cart apps in ECR, and ECS service work.

Explore lambda functions, AWS's serverless, event-driven compute service for running single-purpose tasks in the cloud. Discover event-driven, serverless computing for files, streams, web APIs, mobile backends, and IoT backends.

Discover how Lambda functions run in serverless environments, driven by triggers and events, deployed as zip or container, with memory, timeout, environment variables, and cold start mitigation via provisioned concurrency.

Compare lambda pricing factors including requests, execution duration, and memory usage, while noting the generous free tier and extra charges for snapstart, provisioned concurrency, and ephemeral storage.

Develop a lambda function to handle book orders from a Reddit store, triggered by the cart's order button. Test and prepare locally with dotnet templates, git, SAM, and AWS extension.

Create and configure a lambda function using the aws extension, select dotnet eight runtime, test locally with sam and api gateway, and simulate an order post to verify function deployment.

Deploy a locally tested lambda function to AWS using SAM deploy --guided, configure CloudFormation stack, region, roles, and REST API endpoints, then test with Postman and monitor via CloudWatch logs.

Explore Step Functions, a visual workflow for distributed applications that directly integrates with around 200 AWS services, enables high availability and parallel processing, and differentiates it from lambda functions.

Explore the current architecture of the Reddit app, including the new order lambda function at the bottom of the diagram, used to process orders from the shopping cart.