AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

Learn how to connect to your EC2 instance directly from the browser using EC2 Instance Connect, including the connect button, public IP, and SSH options.

Explore the concept of regions in AWS and why choosing a region matters for EC2 resources. Data centers host physical hardware and EBS, with instances in North Virginia region (us-east-1).

Learn to connect to a Windows server on AWS EC2 via Remote Desktop, configure inbound RDP rules, retrieve the Administrator password with a private key, and select regions for latency.

Install a web server on a windows machine using server manager to add the IIS web server role, open port 80, and verify the IIS home page.

Explore how EC2 offers different instance types for varied workloads, including burstable t2/t3 general purpose, memory-optimized, and storage-optimized options, for caching or database workloads.

Launch an EC2 instance from a WordPress pre-installed AMI in the AWS marketplace, then subscribe and pay only for the instance while accessing the WordPress homepage.

Explore how regions provide separate geographic areas and how availability zones, each with one or more data centers, boost redundancy and uptime for resources like EC2 instances.

Explore serverless computing with AWS Lambda, comparing it to Amazon EC2 and learning how serverless shifts responsibility for high availability and OS patching away from you.

Learn to create and test a hello world AWS Lambda function from a blueprint, deploy code, and view logs in CloudWatch to understand serverless compute.

Build two EC2 instances on Ubuntu Server, install nginx, create default pages, and prepare to deploy an AWS Elastic Load Balancer to distribute incoming requests across the two web servers.

Explore elastic block storage (EBS) volumes, attach them to EC2 instances in the same availability zone, and understand durability, encryption at rest, and data persistence across lifecycles.

Launch a Linux-based EC2 instance with an 8‑GB EBS root volume, attach a 10‑GB data volume, format it, and mount to a data directory.

Learn to create a point-in-time EBS snapshot, build a new volume from it, attach to an EC2 instance, and clean up.

Explore Amazon Elastic File System, a fully managed serverless service that provides elastic file storage you neither provision nor maintain, enabling shareable mounts across EC2, ECS, EKS, Lambda, and Fargate.

Launch an EC2 instance, install EFS utilities, and mount a centralized Amazon elastic file system. Observe how files sync across subnets and availability zones.

Explore Amazon FSx for Windows File Server as a fully managed, native Windows file system that supports SMB, offering a centralized file server for Windows devices.

Explore Amazon S3, a simple object storage service for cloud data, demonstrate storing images from an EC2 app and using S3 as a data lake.

Enable bucket versioning in Amazon S3 to create and manage object versions, assign version IDs, and restore previous object states when changes occur.

Learn how Amazon S3 lifecycle rules automatically transition objects to lower storage classes and delete expired versions, applying rules to all bucket objects for cost-efficient storage management.

Learn to set up S3 object replication between a source and destination bucket, enable versioning, apply a replication rule with IAM permissions, and perform a one-time batch for existing objects.

Empty the contents of S3 buckets and permanently delete them after using AWS resources. Remove all objects from within the bucket and delete the bucket to complete the cleanup.

Explore DynamoDB, a managed NoSQL database service, and learn to create a table with a partition key (course id), store items with attributes, and view data as JSON.

Explore AWS database migration services to migrate relational databases, data warehouses, and NoSQL from on premises to the cloud, using DMS, Fleet Advisor, and the AWS Schema Conversion Tool.

Explore AWS Trusted Advisor, a tool that provides recommendations based on best practices. Discover how cost optimization, performance, security, and reliability insights rely on your support plan for full checks.

Explore how AWS Batch runs batch computing workloads on AWS, automatically manages compute resources, and processes uploaded videos in parallel by submitting jobs to a queue defined by job definitions.

Explore Amazon Kinesis, a fully managed service that ingests, processes, and analyzes real-time streaming data from devices and social media, with data streams, Kinesis Data Firehose, and Kinesis Video Streams.

Learn about the Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS): create topics, publish messages, and subscribe receivers—email, mobile push, or other AWS services; manage standard or FIFO topics.

Define infrastructure as code with AWS CloudFormation templates in JSON or YAML to deploy resources as stacks, such as S3 buckets.

Explore the AWS DevOps tools that automate the full lifecycle, from planning and coding to building, deploying, and monitoring, using CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline, and CodeArtifact.

Explore how AWS Elastic Beanstalk deploys apps by creating a managed environment that handles capacity, load balancing, scaling, and health monitoring across platforms like .NET, Java, and Node.js.

Explore the Amazon Connect cloud-based contact center service that personalizes customer experiences and eases agent workflows by creating an instance, setting up phone numbers, queues, and a customer flow.

Provision Windows or Amazon Linux desktops with Amazon Workspaces; create workspaces, deploy apps via Amazon Workspaces Application Manager for Windows, bring your licenses and applications, and patching remains your responsibility.

Explore Amazon Route 53 routing policies, including simple, failover, and latency policies, to route traffic via hosted zones and records across regions for resilience.

Create a CloudFront distribution for an S3 bucket origin to deliver objects worldwide. Observe edge locations cache content and dramatically reduce response times for subsequent requests.

Explore Amazon Rekognition, a cloud service that analyzes images and videos to detect objects, scenes, faces, and unsafe content, and supports face comparison and content moderation.

Explore Amazon Transcribe, an automatic speech recognition service that converts audio to text using machine learning. Learn how to upload audio to S3, create a transcription job, and view results.

Explore the amazon polly service to convert text to speech, select languages and voices, and embed the service in applications by entering input text and listening to the output.

Learn how Amazon Comprehend extracts insights from documents, detects entities and key phrases, identifies language, and enables real-time text analysis with pre-trained models.

Explore Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed machine learning service that lets you build, train, and deploy models to production while analyzing data to generate results.

Explore a fully managed backup service that protects data with backup policies, automated schedules, and retention settings, while creating backup plans and vaults for Amazon EBS volumes.

Learn AWS migration services to move on-premises servers and databases to the cloud with server migration service, database migration service, and schema conversion tool for migration with ongoing replication.

Explore identity and access management in AWS, focusing on securing access to resources through authentication and authorization. Learn about IAM concepts like principals, users, policies, and programmatic access.

Attach IAM policies to users to grant permissions by using built in or custom policies, and compare read-only versus actionable access for services such as stopping an instance.

Define and apply a custom IAM policy to grant granular EC2 permissions, including describe, start, and stop actions, using either visual editor or JSON.

Manage IAM access keys to enable programmatic access, creating and activating keys (Access key ID and Secret Access Key), and configure the AWS CLI to list S3 bucket objects.

Explore how multi-factor authentication adds an extra protection layer to user logins beyond username and password. Learn about virtual MFA on phones, hardware devices, and FIDO security keys.

Explore how IAM roles enable services to assume permissions without embedded keys, enabling secure EC2 to S3 access and reducing exposure.

Learn why root user credentials are reserved for high-level tasks in AWS, and how to perform account changes, close your account, or adjust your support plan using root access.

Generate and download the IAM credential report to view your users and their status for compliance, including access key details, region, and the last used service.

Use the IAM access analyzer to identify resources shared with external entities, such as S3 buckets and IAM roles, and assess unintended access for the cloud practitioner exam.

Learn how Amazon GuardDuty detects malicious activity by analyzing data from CloudTrail, S3 logs, and DNS logs with threat intelligence and machine learning, and start the 30-day trial.

Explore how AWS Secrets Manager securely stores database credentials, enables rotation without updating your application, and works with the Key Management Service to encrypt secret values.

Use Amazon Detective to analyze security findings and investigate root causes by collecting database logs, using machine learning, with GuardDuty as a prerequisite and a 30-day trial.

Explore Amazon CloudWatch to monitor resources in real time, view metrics like CPU utilization and network in/out, build dashboards, and trigger alarms with actions such as stopping an instance.

Explore Amazon CloudWatch Logs as the central repository for log storage, streaming from sources like EC2, and analyze with queries; observe Lambda function log groups and streams.

Explore the AWS CloudTrail service for auditing and governance, logging actions by users, roles, or services to flag suspicious activity and support 90-day event history with S3 archiving.

Explore the AWS Health Dashboard to view events, scheduled maintenance, and service history that can impact your account, and use the event log to identify outages and regional issues.

Amazon EventBridge delivers real-time events to targets like Lambda with rules and replay. Stopping an EC2 instance triggers an SQS queue message and potential actions.

Explore AWS Config service to discover resources, track configuration changes, and maintain historical records; deliver results to S3, with rules to trigger Lambda on changes.

Explore AWS Systems Manager to manage applications and infrastructure, using tools like application manager, app config, change manager, automation, inventory, patch manager, state manager, and incident manager.

Learn how the AWS Systems Manager parameter store saves configuration data and secrets as parameters such as database passwords and license codes, and reference them in your scripts.

Explore how VPC endpoints enable private communication from your VPC to Amazon S3 and DynamoDB without an Internet gateway or NAT, enhancing security.

Deploy aws resources across regions by switching regions to spin up instances in your chosen location. Note regional pricing and that many resources are hard to move between regions.

Explore the six advantages of cloud computing: trading fixed for variable costs, economies of scale, scalable capacity, faster feature delivery, reduced data center maintenance, and global reach via regions.

Explore elasticity and scalability as the ability to scale resources on demand, with services like Amazon S3 and elastic load balancer that auto scales based on demand.

Explore how high availability keeps apps running by using multi-az deployments, standby replicas, and cross-zone durability for S3 and RDS.

Explore the AWS well-architected framework, detailing the six pillars—operational excellence, security, reliability, performance, efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability—and how to design, deploy, and manage cloud workloads with infrastructure as code.

Explore cloud computing deployment models, including the cloud model, on premises, and hybrid, with examples of hosting apps on cloud services like EC2 and databases on AWS.

Explore AWS billing and pricing, compare spot, reserved, and on-demand pricing, and review AWS support plans and Cost Explorer for cost management.

Master the AWS pricing calculator to estimate hosting costs by selecting services, region, instance specs, utilization, and pricing options such as on-demand, reserved, upfront, and view monthly totals.

Explore how AWS consolidated billing via AWS Organizations lets a parent management account consolidate bills from multiple member accounts, enabling one payment and shared volume discounts across the organization.

Understand AWS support plans for large organizations, from basic to enterprise on-ramp, with pricing, trusted advisor checks, and dedicated technical account managers guiding production and critical system down cases.

Learn how resource tagging uses key-value tags to organize resources by department and enable cost allocation, with Cost Explorer filtering by tags.

Learn to create and manage AWS budgets—cost, usage, reserve instance utilization, and savings plan budgets; set eight monthly budgets, thresholds, and email notifications, and apply budget actions across all services.

Explore AWS certified cloud practitioner sample questions and review answers on on-demand instances, migration services, marketplace solutions, and the shared responsibility model.