Cloud Computing and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Fundamentals

Identify the five essential characteristics of cloud computing—resource pooling, rapid elasticity, on-demand self-service, broad network access, and measured service—based on NIST definitions.

Explore rapid elasticity in cloud computing, where resources scale rapidly and automatically to meet demand, unlike fixed on-premises capacity, with on-demand self-service and broad network access enabling real-time provisioning.

Describe the measured service characteristic where cloud providers meter, monitor, and bill resource usage across tenants in a multitenant model, enabling pay-as-you-go access to storage, processing, and bandwidth.

Explore virtualization as the backbone of cloud computing, abstracting IT resources from hardware into scalable pools and enabling virtual machines that provide on-demand storage, computational power, memory, and networking.

Explore cloud service models—IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS—and compare them with on-premises setups to reveal how they simplify administration and deployment.

Explore the IaaS model, where providers manage the underlying infrastructure while you provision processing, storage, and networking and deploy your own operating systems and applications.

Explore platform as a service (PaaS) where the pay-as-you-go model lets customers deploy applications and manage data while the cloud provider provisions operating system, runtime, database, and infrastructure.

Learn software as a service, an on-demand subscription model hosted centrally and accessible via web or apps, with examples like Google apps, Salesforce, Dropbox, Gmail, Zoom, and AWS SaaS offerings.

Explore the four cloud deployment models: private, community, public, and hybrid, and learn how private cloud provides single tenant environments, on premises hosting with IT control and security.

Understand community cloud, where exclusive-use infrastructure serves a community with shared security and compliance concerns, and compare it to public cloud’s multi-tenant, scalable resources and pricing.

Explains the hybrid cloud as a composition of two or more cloud infrastructures, private, community, or public, enabling data and application portability and cloud bursting for load balancing between clouds.

Explore how a virtual private cloud isolates workloads in a public cloud using subnets, virtual local area networks, and VPNs to secure and scale resources.

Explore the explosive growth of cloud computing, with statistics on public, private, and hybrid cloud adoption, workloads, and SAS dominance shaping the market.

Trace Amazon's origins from a 1995 online bookstore to the AWS history, highlighting EC2 launch, S3 and SQS, Amazon Prime, and rapid growth fueling enterprise adoption and AI services.

Highlight AWS market dominance with a forty-one point five percent share, 175 services, and global reach across 24 regions and 77 availability zones, plus 99.99% S3 durability.

Explore the cloud platform’s broad services, on-demand billing, and interface across global regions. Develop foundational billing knowledge and security practices to control budgets and protect your account.

Explore AWS pricing foundations, including pay-as-you-go resources, tiered S3 storage costs, and volume discounts, plus reserved instance options with upfront payment for substantial savings.

Explore the AWS acceptable use policy, including prohibited uses, warnings and enforcement, the possibility of immediate account suspension for serious violations, and key legal agreements and privacy considerations.

Register an AWB account to access the AWS free tier and begin hands-on cloud practice, then explore the management console, sign-in as root or IAM user, and use core services.

Explore AWS cloud practitioner topics by examining IAM access controls, compute and storage services (EC2, S3, EBS, RDS, DynamoDB, Redshift, Athena), networking (VPC, Direct Connect, Route 53, CloudFront), and CloudWatch.

Explore how AWS classifies services as global or regional, the eight U.S. regions, and how regions and availability zones enable high availability, fault tolerance, and low-latency deployment, including local zones.

Understand global versus regional services in AWS through a Los Angeles case study, highlighting IAM as global, EC2 and S3 as regional, and Route 53 and CloudFront for routing.

Learn to set up AWS billing alerts using CloudWatch and SNS to email you when charges exceed a threshold, such as $10, with steps to confirm subscriptions.

Enable MFA on your AWS root account to add a verification step beyond password. Set up Google authenticator on your smartphone to generate sign-in codes, understanding knowledge and possession factors.

Enable MFA on the AWS root account using Google Authenticator, scan the QR code, enter two codes, and verify access by re-logging in.

Configure a branded custom sign-in link for IAM users by creating a unique alias. Log in as the new user, set a new password, and consider enabling multifactor authentication.

Configure a password policy in the AWS management console to enforce strong IAM credentials, requiring eight characters with upper and lower case letters, numbers, and a non alphanumeric character.