
Explore the foundations of AWS with a broad, pragmatic intro that outlines services, architecture, costs, and certification exam strategies, while encouraging hands-on practice after the course.
Explore AWS as a tech grocery store of services, from S3 and EC2 to Lambda and CloudFront. See how regions, availability zones, and edge locations power fast, pay-as-you-go computing.
Follow a data flow from login with an sms one-time code to viewing orders, pressing call me soon, and receiving emails or WhatsApp reminders if not called within 48 hours.
Trace how a customer request moves from dns lookup to tls handshake, http requests, jwt-based authentication, and api-driven data access across database and back-end servers.
Trace how a user request moves from Route 53 to CloudFront, ACM TLS, and S3 caching, then through Cognito (two-factor via SMS), API Gateway, DynamoDB, and SES.
Discover how fully managed, serverless AWS services reduce maintenance and enable reliable systems. Learn how tools like Lambda and Step Functions automate state, configure workflows, minimize code, and accelerate development.
Explore the AWS ecosystem and its services by quickly introducing key concepts and terms, helping beginners become familiar with ideas and build a mental model for later, deeper learning.
Explore why AWS emphasizes undifferentiated heavy lifting, customer obsession, shared responsibility, long term thinking, and regional isolation.
Explore AWS physical infrastructure: data centers and availability zones forming regions, with edge locations (pops), a private global network, local and wavelength zones, and Direct Connect.
Explore how AWS pricing works by contrasting provisioned capacity with pay as you go, including examples like EC2 reserved instances and S3's metered charges, and serverless pricing and the calculator.
Explore AWS control options from the https rest api and management console to CLI and SDK across languages, plus infrastructure as code with CloudFormation, CDK, and Terraform for multi-cloud deployments.
Explore how the AWS Well-Architected framework guides secure, high performing, reliable, and cost-efficient cloud architectures through its six pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability.
Learn to map AWS services quickly, uncover opportunities, and fix blind spots by reviewing a comprehensive, category-based service list, focusing on main services and avoiding deprecated ones.
Explore how AWS regions act like outlets, revealing varying services while highlighting core services universally available, including IAM, Step Functions, and regional considerations.
Explore AWS compute options from EC2 to Lambda, including auto scaling and serverless offerings, to achieve scalable, pay per use cloud workloads.
Learn AWS container orchestration with ECS and EKS, container registries with ECR, serverless options with Fargate, and OpenShift on AWS Rosa, plus tools App to Container and Copilot.
Discover that AWS offers far more than the official container services, exploring Corey Quinn’s 17 ways, 17 more, and 17 final ways to run containers on AWS, with caveats.
Explore AWS storage options from S3 durable object storage and EBS block storage to EFS, FSX, Glacier, storage gateway, Snow Family devices, backups, and disaster recovery.
Explore AWS database services from relational RDS and Aurora to NoSQL DynamoDB and Redshift, highlighting managed backups, replication, serverless options, and cross-region analytics and storage.
Learn how CloudFront, ELB, VPC, Route 53, Direct Connect, Privatelink, Global Accelerator, Transit Gateway, Cloud WAN, Verified Access, and VPC Lattice enable scalable, secure content delivery and cross-VPC networking.
Explore AWS analytics services for data ingestion, processing, and discovery, including EMR, Kinesis, OpenSearch, Athena, Glue, and QuickSight, plus governance with Lake Formation and Datazone.
Explore a comprehensive overview of AWS machine learning services, including SageMaker, Textract, Comprehend, Transcribe, Polly, Rekognition, Personalize, and more, to build, deploy, and scale AI solutions.
Explore generative AI services in AWS, including CodeWhisperer, Bedrock foundation models, Health Scribe for medical notes, Q business, App Studio for low-code workflows, and Nova Foundation models.
Explore AWS security, identity, and compliance services, from IAM access control to KMS and WAF, and discover practical tools for threat detection and certificate management.
Discover how AWS services like SQS and SNS enable decoupled, serverless architectures, with long-polling patterns for near-instant work delivery, and explore event-driven orchestration with EventBridge, Step Functions, and Appflow.
Amazon Managed Blockchain lets you build Web3 ready solutions with reliable APIs and no specialized infrastructure. Supports Ethereum, Polygon, Bitcoin, and Hyperledger Fabric for fully managed blockchain networks.
Explore Amazon Workmail, Amazon Connect, Chime SDK, AWS Wickr, AWS Supply Chain, AWS App Fabric, Amazon One Enterprise, and SAP on AWS to build scalable, secure business applications.
Navigate the AWS marketplace to access third-party services and data, and optimize spending with cost explorer, budgets, cost and usage reports, savings plans, compute optimizer, and billing conductor.
Explore AWS support's technical and advisory help, navigate support tiers, and learn how AWS Activate Startup program offers credits and resources, plus managed services for building, launching, and scaling.
Explore AWS developer tools, including SDKs and the AWS CLI, for building on AWS. Learn CodeDeploy, CodePipeline, CodeBuild, and CDK to automate CI/CD and infrastructure deployments.
Explore end user computing services in AWS, including Amazon WorkSpaces and AppStream 2.0, that provide fully managed desktops, desktop streaming, and lightweight thin clients.
Explore AWS front-end and mobile services for building, testing, and deploying serverless apps. Discover SES, API Gateway, Device Farm, Amplify, AppSync, Location Service, and End User Messaging.
Explore Amazon Gamelift servers for scalable, low-latency multiplayer back-end for games. Discover Gamelift streams, a GPU-based game streaming service released in 2025, enabling immediate online gameplay on basic hardware.
Explore AWS IoT Core as the serverless backbone for device communication via MQTT, HTTPS, and LoRaWAN, with Greengrass, Freertos, and Twinmaker guiding edge, security, and digital twins.
Explore AWS management and governance tools, from the AWS Health Dashboard, console and CloudWatch to CloudTrail, CloudFormation, Config, Trusted Advisor, Control Tower, Organizations, and guardrails for secure, scalable multi-account governance.
Explore AWS media services and Thinkbox Deadline tools for render management, transcoding, live video, packaging, ad insertion, and serverless workflows across on-premises and cloud.
Explore AWS migration and transfer services, including Snowball, DataSync, and Application Migration, to move databases, VMware workloads, and mainframes to AWS efficiently.
Explore Amazon Braket, a fully managed, multi hardware quantum experimentation environment. Test superconducting, trapped ion, and neutral atom devices for academic or business quantum research without building a quantum computer.
Discover AWS Ground Station, a fully managed satellite connectivity service for real-time downlink and command, with per-minute antenna usage and integration with S3, Kinesis, and SageMaker.
Demonstrate your expertise to others to earn their trust. Recognize expertise as a social activity within teams and stakeholders in a technology career.
Apply the a-e-i-o-u framework to assess context, eliminate infeasible options, weigh tradeoffs, and verify chosen solutions, using data flow considerations for AWS exam readiness.
Apply the a e i o u technique to ace AWS certification questions by assessing context, reading questions and options, eliminating invalid choices, weighing trade-offs, and selecting the best options.
Apply the a-e-i-o-u process to sample certification exam questions to learn how to pass exams and harness the power of practice testing for effective learning.
Apply the a.e.i.o.u. process to practice exam questions under a timer, budgeting one minute per question and reviewing to find and close gaps in your AWS knowledge.
Identify which responsibilities are shared between Amazon and the AWS customer using the shared responsibility model, with data residency requirements highlighted as the shared duty.
Identify the most direct on-prem to AWS database migration with minimal downtime using the AWS Database Migration Service, the correct choice among transfer options.
Stay up to date with AWS by following course updates, the official AWS news page and blog, and newsletters like Last Week in AWS, Off by None, and Burning Monk.
Review the vast AWS ecosystem, emphasize hands-on practice with labs, and plan next steps like the Solutions Architect Associate certification and the Cloud Resume Challenge to build robust systems.
This is a super-efficient crash course for REALLY understanding the full scope of AWS—whether you’re seeing it for the first time or needing a refresher.
[June 2025 Update (Another)]: Added newly-released Elastic VMware Service (EVS)
[June 2025 Update]: Added newly-released Transform service and updated newly-GA Aurora DSQL
[May 2025 Update]: Removed newly-deprecated services so you won't waste any of your precious time on them!
[April 2025 Update]: Improved visuals/flow for several lessons.
AWS Overview section includes:
Super-quick intro to AWS
Example scenario of how we can offload responsibility to AWS
Breakdown of AWS Structure: Why (Principles), What (Physical), How Much (Pricing), Where (Control), and How (Using it well)
AWS Services section includes, for each service:
A DENSE single-sentence short description of the service
Brief commentary about what the service does and when it should be used—ranging from 15 seconds to 2.5 minutes
Quick links to all the official helpful info: Product, Pricing, FAQs, sample reference architectures, service launch blogs/demos, sometimes more
Because we QUICKLY go through the entire catalog of services, you'll gain a good sense for when each one might be worth your time to investigate more deeply.
IF YOU ARE AN AWS NOVICE, you should start with THIS course—to quickly learn how it’s structured and how powerful it is. And if you want to get AWS certified, afterwards, what you learn here will make that much easier.
IF YOU ARE AN AWS EXPERT, you can greatly benefit from rewatching the Service Categories section on high playback speed right before each cert exam and whenever you’re architecting a new type of system—to freshen your mind and make sure you’re not missing out on big value from services you’ve missed or forgotten about.
IF YOU ARE AN AWS PRACTITIONER, this course will fill in gaps that you might have in your understanding of AWS and you'll learn about many AWS services you probably didn't even know existed.
If you want to succeed with AWS and don't want to spend 1000 hours researching everything yourself, then this course is for you! See you in the first video!