My journey learning Amazon Web Services
In 2021 I have decided to concentrate some of my learning efforts on the three famous cloud services platforms: AWS, Azure and GCP.
To start my journey I worked on earning my Azure AZ-900 and my AWS Certified Cloud Professional certifications.
In 2022 I want to expand my knowledge regarding Azure and AWS and also learn about GCP.
In this article I want to document the key resources that I really enjoyed while learning AWS.
Please note that this publication is a work in progress that I will keep enriching as I continue to learn AWS and discover new resources.
Video Resources
ExamPro free AWS courses on YouTube
Andrew Brown from https://www.exampro.co/ has donated to freeCodeCamp a course on AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification.
There are a 2020 version that is 4 hours long and a 2021 version that is 13 hours long.
It is really worth watching the 2020 one (the one I did watch).
Whizlabs Exam Questions & Answers on YouTube
For AWS CCP this video proved really useful to watch and hear the answer explanations.
Practice Tests
I mainly used the following websites where I could practice before the real exams.
AWSBoy
AWSBoy practice tests for the CCP or SAA-C02 certifications are really good for a free resource and they helped me identify weak areas where I need to work my knowledge.
I also bought (for around 10 USD) access to a set of practice tests on bitdegree.org. While those tests were also useful I for earning my CCP certification, I don’t think I will use this website again given that I now have access to practice tests on Whizlabs.com and Cloudacademy.com (I took a discounted yearly subscription on both of these platforms in 2022).
Hand-on Labs
Below is a selected list of AWS related hands-on labs that I found having a good quality, easy to follow and extremely helpful to learn and practice.
AWS official workshops
Learning Platforms
Whizlabs
CloudAcademy
Books
I highly recommend you also have a reference book about AWS.
I chose to buy the SAA-C02 study guide published by Sybex in paper format and keep it in my personal book shelf for easy and future reference.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect Study Guide, 3rd Edition [Book] (oreilly.com)
Other Resources
The following websites proved also extremely useful in my AWS learning journey:
- AWS in plain english: New AWS and Cloud content every day.
- AWS Cheat Sheets by DigitalCloud Training.
Dear reader, if you happen to stumble on my article, I hope it will prove useful for you and I wish you a happy AWS learning journey.
Articles worth referencing
Design for Highly-Available Database Using Amazon Aurora (link)
Explains the different high-availability configuration options that are available in Aurora:
- Aurora Replica: single-master configuration with up to 15 read replicas that can be distributed across the availability zones of a single region. Replication typically happens within 100 milliseconds and is handled by the physical storage layer. Master promotion is automatic. This is the best configuration for workloads that require read scale-out and can tolerate a single region configuration.
- Logical Replication: This is replication at the database logical layer (relies on MySQL or PostgreSQL mechanisms). This is also a single-master configuration. Can be across AWS regions (read replicas can be added). Failover is manual. The advantage compared to the above is that we can failover to another region. Compatibility with RDS.
- Aurora Multi-Master: Up to 4 read/write nodes in a cluster that can be distributed in the availability zones of a single region. Only MySQL is supported. This could be a good choice for write scale-out configurations that can tolerate operating from a single region.
- Aurora Global Database: In a nutshell this is a single-master configuration where read replicas can be distributed in other regions. One cluster in one of the regions is designated as the primary cluster and therefore all write operations have to go to the unique master in that cluster. The real power is that we can have up to 5 read-only clusters and each cluster can have up to 16 read replicas. Ideal for global footprint applications (massive read scale-out. Up to 1 second replication latency. Automatic cross-region failover. Write scale-out is not yet possible but a feature called write-forwarding is possible (simplifies endpoint management).
