AWS Academy Cloud Foundations

The journey started mid-November, when my lecturer informed me that I need to register for the AWS Academy Cloud Foundations course. I received and invitation in my email to join the course after registering an account. I did not really have any prior knowledge to cloud computing other than the previous Industry Talk 3 on AWS. The course with all the modules seemed like another 3 credit course and I was afraid I would not be able to manage while doing my studies. But I decided to carry on while making some notes for the knowledge checks in each module. Knowledge checks are like quizzes consisting of 10 questions. But then I realized that the notes presented are already near the end of each module. I also filled in the pre-course survey and joined a discussion.

On the first module, I've learnt about six different types of cloud computing models and how to define them. I've learnt about six advantages of cloud computing and I was introduced to the main AWS service categories and the core web services. I have also reviewed the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework.

On the second, I've learnt about the AWS pricing models, the TCO concepts and the AWS Pricing Calculator estimate. I also got to review the Billing dashboard within AWS and saw the Technical Support options, including costs.

For the third one, I've understood the differences between AWS Regions, Availability Zones and edge locations. I've also learnt how to identify AWS services and their categories.

For the fourth module, I've understood the concept of the shared responsibility model, I've understood the responsibilities as a customer and from the side of AWS. I got an introductory lab to IAM, explored users, groups and roles and learnt how to use different types of security credentials in IAM. I also realized how to secure the AWS data.

Moving on to the fifth, which marks halfway of the course. I was introduced to the fundamentals of networking and I've seen basic VPC architectures. Then I've done a lab to understand the steps to build a VPC, create my own VPC and add additional components to it and assign security groups. I've also been introduced to Amazon Route 53, Amazon CloudFront and their benefits.

Onwards to the sixth module, which caught the most of my attention. This was the largest module and it is about the Compute services. I was provided and overview of different AWS Compute services. I've understood how to identify and demonstrate the functionalities of EC2, EC2 console. I've done labs to perform basic functions in EC2 instances and learnt how to optimize the costs of EC2 elements. Then I learnt about Elastic Beanstalk and Lambda.

The seventh module taught me about Amazon S3, Amazon EBS, Amazon EFS, Amazon S3 Glacier and their functionalities. I've also learnt how to differentiate between them.

The eighth module was about Amazon RDS, DynamoDB, Redshift and Aurora. They were basic introductions. But I did a lab which made me perform tasks with the RDS database service. Like I've learnt how to launch, configure and interact with it.

The ninth module descried the five pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework and the principles. It also explained the importance of reliability and high availability. An introduction to AWS Trusted Advisor and how to interpret the recommendations given by it was also described.

The final modules taught me the distribution of traffic across multiple EC2 instances using Elastic Load Balancing. I did a lab on AWS CloudWatch to learn how it enables us to monitor AWS resources and applications in real time. The module also explained how EC2 Auto Scaling launches and releases servers in response to workload changes. I've understood the importance of these scaling and load balancing tasks to improve an architecture.

And this marks the end of my journey. I've learnt a lot but I'm also confused about a lot of modules. I have so many questions to ask. However, I've gotten 100 points on all the modules and I think I have a fair understanding of how everything works. I've used this knowledge in my project for the Technology and Information System course. I look forward to doing more AWS Academy courses.