[NEW] AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - UPDATED for 2026

Explore the business rationale for cloud adoption and AWS solutions, highlighting a real-world case of migrating parts of an aging infrastructure to reduce outages with low upfront costs.

Explore the traditional it model, including data centers, application servers, web servers, storage, and databases connected by switches and routers, and learn why it remains capital-intensive and inflexible.

Explore cloud computing: on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service. Understand IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, public/private/hybrid deployments, and resources like EC2, S3, RDS, SageMaker, and VPC.

Trace the evolution of AWS and understand how regions, availability zones, and edge locations boost performance and high availability. Learn services like CloudFront, Route 53, Shield, WAF, and Firewall Manager.

Identify the five key cloud characteristics and contrast cloud service and deployment models while noting AWS global infrastructure like regions, availability zones, and edge locations.

Explore how migrating noncritical workloads to AWS reduces upfront costs, boosts reliability, and scales on demand. Learn how pay-as-you-go cloud services enable a pilot and hardware decommissioning.

Explore the AWS shared responsibility model and clarify security and compliance responsibilities in cloud versus on-premises and for hybrid environments.

Explain the AWS shared responsibility model, contrasting security of the cloud (AWS) with security in the cloud (customer), and illustrate with IAM, networking, and S3 responsibilities.

Explore the AWS shared responsibility model, identifying which security tasks fall to AWS and which to the customer, from data center security to user accounts and permissions.

Explore why identity and access management matters in AWS by showing why root credentials should not govern environments and how separate accounts for different users improve security.

Explain why use identity and access management instead of shared root credentials, create admin users, and introduce IAM components: users, groups, roles, and policies under the least privileged principle.

Explore identity and access management components: users, groups, roles, and policies. Apply best practices by granting permissions through groups, using roles for temporary access, and enforcing multi-factor authentication (mfa).

Create a non privileged IAM user, attach IAM read only access, and examine the policy JSON to see exact actions and how permissions change access.

Learn about multi factor authentication in AWS, pairing passwords with virtual or hardware devices to secure root and privileged accounts, including Google Authenticator and U2F keys.

Demonstrates setting up multi-factor authentication for an AWS IAM user using an authenticator app, scanning a QR code, generating codes, and managing MFA devices for secure sign-in.

Learn AWS access methods, including the management console for interactive use, the CLI for bulk and automated tasks, and the SDK for programmatic access, using access key pairs securely.

Learn AWS access methods with a hands-on CLI demo, configuring access keys, IAM users and groups, and using CloudShell to run commands securely.

Apply iam best practices to secure the aws environment via individual users and groups, minimal root use, mfa, key rotation, least privilege, monitor activity.

Create individual iam users, avoid the root account, apply permissions via groups with administrator access, enable MFA for privileged accounts, manage access keys with kms, and enforce a password policy.

Explore IAM components - users, groups, roles, policies - MFA, and review access via the AWS management console, CLI, CloudShell, and SDKs; apply least privilege with group-based permissions.

Learn how to secure an AWS environment by creating IAM accounts, enabling MFA, using admin groups with policies, applying least privilege, and setting billing alerts to prevent unauthorized access.

Understand how AWS compute relates to a startup's IT environment that relies on leased servers and virtual machines, causing downtime during host failures and draining development time before investor pitch.

Discover how AWS compute centers on EC2 instances, hosting applications on virtual machines, enabling easy migration, cloning, and maintenance with reduced downtime.

Provision flexible ec2 instances on aws to tailor compute power and cost, using ami images, instance types, storage, security groups, and iam roles across regions.

Launch an EC2 instance in us-west-2 using the amazon linux 2023 AMI and a free tier micro size with a new key pair.

Learn about EC2 instance types, from the t family general purpose to storage-optimized instances, and when to use them for web servers, databases, batch processing, or Hadoop.

Explore EC2 purchasing options including on demand, reserved instances, spot instances, and dedicated hosts; compare standard, convertible, and scheduled reservations to meet cost and capacity needs.

Explore LightSail, a simplified aws interface for virtual servers, storage, a simple database, and domains with transparent, predictable pricing designed for cloud beginners.

Explore AWS outposts as on-premises, exclusive-use hardware that enables a seamless hybrid cloud with low latency and data residency benefits, backed by monthly pricing and three-year commitments with EC2/ECS support.

Explore the AWS compute section by outlining AMI, instance type, EBS storage, security groups, VPC settings, and purchasing options like on-demand, reserved, and spot, plus Lightsail and outposts.

Explore how AWS compute services like EC2 enable rapid provisioning of development and testing environments, with reserved and spot instances to optimize cost and scalability across regions.

Transition from on-prem VM management to EC2 instance management, automate rapid deployment of two instances with pre-installed applications, and avoid maintaining many images.

Explore how to connect to and manage EC2 instances, including internal and external IP addresses, ports, remote connectivity, authentication, imaging, and scalable cloud workloads.

Define and manage security groups to control inbound and outbound connectivity for EC2 instances, including default inbound denial, using rules, ports, 0.0.0.0/0 sources, and multiple groups.

Learn to manage AWS security groups for EC2 by editing inbound rules and creating a security group with SSH, HTTP, and RDP for Linux and Windows instances.

Connect to a Windows EC2 instance via RDP, decrypt the administrator password with your key, and then terminate the instance and remove its 30 GB EBS volume.

Demonstrate SSH from a Windows computer to a Linux EC2 instance using PowerShell or Putty, including key preparation, permissions, and logging in as the EC2-user.

Launch an EC2 instance, configure the key pair and security group, then SSH from Mac or Linux using the EC2-user and the instance IP address, testing hostname.

Identify common SSH connection issues to EC2 instances, including security group rules, IP changes, and key pair problems, and know when to move on.

Demonstrates SSH into an EC2 instance via Instance Connect and Session Manager, configuring IAM role and security group, with port 22, then stopping the instance to conserve free tier hours.

Launch an EC2 instance, configure the AWS CLI, and compare access keys with IAM roles, demonstrating that roles provide temporary credentials and avoid plain-text key exposure.

Build a web server on AWS using a Linux EC2 instance, configure security groups, connect via EC2 Instance Connect, install and start the server, and test on public IP.

Start with a public AMI to launch EC2, customize OS and software to fit your organization, then create a private AMI to deploy across regions.

Demonstrates creating a custom AMI from an EC2 instance, using user data to automate Apache, testing the web server, and launching from the private AMI with cleanup.

Discover how EC2 image builder automates creating and updating private AMIs and Docker containers using pipelines and recipes. Schedule updates across regions and test, while the service incurs no charge.

Follow an demonstration of creating an IAM role, building an EC2 image with Image Builder pipeline using Amazon Linux 2023, and deploying the resulting AMI while managing costs and cleanup.

Review ec2 instance management focusing on security groups, connectivity options (rdp, ssh, aws instance connect, session manager), and amis, image builder, and the shared responsibility model.

Explore ec2 access methods—ssh, ec2 instance connect, and session manager—and how roles and security groups ensure connectivity and automate image updates. Use ami and ec2 image builder for scalable deployments.

Explore how elastic load balancers and auto scaling groups optimize capacity for game apps, balancing performance, cost, and growth to support demand.

Learn how high availability, scalability, and elasticity in AWS enable fault-tolerant architectures using auto scaling groups and elastic load balancers across multiple availability zones.

Elastic load balancers provide a single entry point and distribute requests across a resource pool in multiple availability zones, performing health checks and enabling horizontal scaling with auto scaling groups.

learn how to set up elastic load balancers with multiple EC2 instances across availability zones, register targets, configure an application load balancer, monitor health checks, and clean up after testing.

Auto scaling groups enable scalability, elasticity, and fault tolerance by provisioning or terminating EC2 instances based on demand and health checks, with manual, dynamic, scheduled, and predictive scaling.

demonstrates building an auto scaling group with a launch template, amazon linux 2023 ami, t2 micro instances, and an application load balancer with a target group for high availability.

Explore how aws elastic load balancers and auto scaling groups enable horizontal scaling, fault tolerance, and elasticity, with targets like target tracking, simple, step, schedule, and predictive scaling.

Elastic load balancers provide a single access point and high availability for the login service, while auto scaling groups adjust instances based on CPU usage to meet demand.

Discover why moving from a monolithic e-commerce app to AWS application and integration services improves resilience, aligns processing times, streamlines order routing to warehouse teams, and helps prevent lost orders.

Explore how Docker containers and microservices enable faster, cheaper cloud deployments through decoupling with simple queue service and serverless concepts across AWS.

Explore elastic container service (ECS) on EC2 and Fargate serverless, compare ECS with EKS, and learn about elastic container registry (ECR) for Docker images.

Explore how AWS Batch, a fully managed service, automates batch jobs, reads and writes from S3 or DynamoDB, and provisions resources behind the scenes to optimize cost and performance.

Explore how simple queue service (sqs) enables asynchronous integration by decoupling sender and receiver and buffering messages for fault-tolerant, scalable microservices. Understand standard versus fifo queues, throughput, and delivery guarantees.

Create and test an SQS queue, send and poll messages, and explore standard vs FIFO options, retention, delays, encryption, access policies, and dead-letter queues before cleaning up.

Explore the simple notification service (sns) and its one-to-many pub-sub model that connects publishers, topics, and subscribers for app-to-app and app-to-people communications, enabling decoupled microservices.

Explore setting up a simple SNS topic, create subscriptions to SQS and email, publish a test message, and review delivery policies and message attributes.

Discover Lambda, a serverless compute platform that runs code as functions triggered by events like S3 uploads, with pay-for-use pricing and language support including Java, Go, Node.js, Python, and more.

Build and test a Lambda function triggered by an SQS queue in an SNS-SQS workflow, logging messages to CloudWatch and validating end-to-end delivery. Clean up resources after demonstration.

Discover AWS EventBridge, a serverless event router that uses event sources, an event bus, and rules to route to targets such as Lambda, SQS, SNS, or API targets.

Learn to test EventBridge by setting up an EC2 instance and an SQS queue, then create a rule to capture EC2 instance state change notifications and test event patterns.

Explore AWS Step Functions as a centralized orchestrator—a visual workflow that tracks executions across over 200 AWS services, enabling error handling and routing via SQS, Lambda, and SES.

Explore AWS step functions in the console, start with a hello world template, wire Lambda functions, add branches and choice logic, run executions, review logs, and clean up.

Explore microservices and asynchronous decoupling through AWS application integration services, including Docker containers on EC2 via ECS and Fargate, alongside ECR, EKS, Batch, SQS, SNS, Lambda, EventBridge, and Step Functions.

Break a monolithic e-commerce app into microservices with SQS, SNS, and Lambda for scalable, resilient asynchronous integration across payment, warehouse, inventory, and shipping, via EventBridge.

Discover how AWS application build and deployment services streamline tool integrations, provide a unified view of the development cycle, and simplify status updates for teams.

Explore the software development life cycle from analysis to deployment, including solution development, integration, and testing in AWS application build and deployment services. Git enables branching and merging for collaboration.

Explore Cloud9, a cloud-based ide optimized for AWS that runs on EC2 or SSH servers with browser-based coding and code commit workflow. It enables real-time collaboration and lambda debugging.

CodeArtifact is a fully managed artifact repository service that can be configured to update software packages from public repositories automatically, enabling a shared repository of pre-approved packages reused across applications.

Learn how AWS CodeCommit, CodeBuild, and CodeDeploy enable private git repositories with IAM access control, serverless CI, and smooth deployment across EC2, Fargate, Lambda, and on premises, with workflows.

Discover how CodePipeline, a continuous delivery service, enables release workflows by integrating with code commit, code build, and code deploy, connecting GitHub and AWS CodeCommit to deliver consistent pipelines.

CodeStar provides a unified interface to code commit, code build, and code deploy on AWS with a single dashboard, and integrates with Cloud9, Visual Studio, and IAM for team management.

Explore AWS application build and deployment services, from Cloud9 IDE to CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, and CodePipeline, plus CodeStar governance and the shared responsibility model.

Learn how AWS application build and deployment services streamline workflows with web based tools like CodeCommit, Cloud9, and CodeStar, delivering a single interface and credentials for seamless integration.

Discover how developers can self-serve infrastructure and back end for microservices, streamline testing across devices and browsers, and manage on-premises and cloud integration using APIs.

Explore how APIs enable applications to communicate, including authentication and request verbs like get, post, and put. Understand ssl/tls certificates, certificate authorities, and public-private keys that secure https connections.

Elastic Beanstalk is a developer-centric platform as a service that provisions resources to run applications, and manages auto scaling, load balancing, and health monitoring for quick deployments.

Launch an aws elastic beanstalk web server environment with a python sample application, deploy it to a single instance in the free tier, and monitor health, logs, and termination steps.

Explore AWS Amplify, a back end as a service that quickly adds authentication, storage, and data stores to mobile or web apps via a unified interface and Amplify Studio.

Launch Wizard automatically sizes, configures, and deploys specific third-party apps on AWS without manual provisioning, covering SQL Server, Active Directory, and SAP Hana.

Explore device farm, an AWS testing service for web and mobile apps that lets you test across real devices and browsers concurrently, with remote device access to reproduce customer issues.

Discover how x ray traces end-to-end requests across microservices and monolithic apps, providing logs, application metrics, and a detailed service map to identify bottlenecks and support secure audits.

Explore how api gateway creates restful and websocket APIs to connect apps with aws services like Lambda and DynamoDB, and secure access with Amazon Cognito and CloudWatch logging.

Explore AppSync to connect apps with AWS via GraphQL and pub-sub APIs, consolidating data sources into a single endpoint for economical, real-time access.

Learn how AWS Certificate Manager provisions and manages SSL/TLS certificates for public and private use, integrates with CloudFront, and enables automated renewal to simplify certificate management.

Compare Elastic Beanstalk and Amplify for infrastructure provisioning versus backend services. Explore API Gateway, AppSync, ACM, and X-Ray to design, connect, secure, and monitor cloud applications.

Explore how AWS application development tools accelerate development and testing with Amplify, Elastic Beanstalk, API Gateway, AppSync, X-Ray, and Device Farm for microservices and containerized apps.