Cloud Fundamentals

Understand the request-response cycle and the physical components that make up a server.

Learn how infrastructure was traditionally built and why Cloud Computing was created to solve its biggest problems.

Explain cloud computing in one simple sentence and identify three key differences from on-premises computing.

Learn the 5 essential characteristics that define cloud computing, with concrete examples.

Understand the core difference between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS using the 'Who Manages What' mental model.

Learn to distinguish between public, private, and hybrid cloud deployment models and choose the right one for your needs.

Learn how cloud systems stay reliable through redundancy, failure domains, and regional design.

Understand the critical boundary between what your cloud provider secures and what you must secure yourself.

Understand why cloud bills happen, the main cost drivers, and how to set up guardrails to avoid surprise costs.

Review everything from Module 1, check your readiness for AWS-specific learning, and take the final assessment.

Learn AWS's official six advantages of cloud computing and why they explain how organizations think about moving to the cloud.

Master the core design principles that guide every well-built cloud system — from designing for failure to loose coupling and disposable resources.

Learn how AWS is laid out globally: Regions, AZs, Edge Locations, and how to choose where to build.

Lock down your AWS account on day one: protect root, enable MFA, set up everyday admin access, and turn on CloudTrail.

Learn the IAM building blocks and the permission evaluation rules that explain most AccessDenied errors.

Learn how Console, CLI, and SDK authentication works and how to choose the safest credential method for each.

Learn what S3, EC2, Lambda, VPC, RDS, and CloudWatch do and how they connect in a typical application.

Your first safe AWS lab: create a private S3 bucket, upload a file, read an IAM policy, and understand CloudTrail vs CloudWatch visibility.

Learn when to choose a server you manage (EC2) versus serverless code execution (Lambda), with cost, scaling, and simplicity tradeoffs.

Learn where different data should live: S3 for files, RDS for relational data, EBS for server disks, and why putting everything on one server is a bad habit.

Learn the three CloudWatch signals — metrics, logs, and alarms — and how to use them for monitoring and troubleshooting.

Hands-on lab: trigger Lambda success and failure, inspect CloudWatch metrics and logs, create your first alarm, and learn the troubleshooting order.

Hands-on lab: create an AWS Budget, add alert thresholds, learn Cost Explorer, and build a cleanup workflow for your learning account.

Tie together IAM, Regions, S3, Lambda, EC2, RDS, CloudWatch, and Budgets into one practical AWS mental map.

Learn the differences between AWS CloudTrail, Amazon CloudWatch, and AWS Config — three services that are often confused on the exam.

Learn how Trusted Advisor inspects your AWS environment across five categories, and how Health Dashboards keep you informed about AWS operational issues.

Learn the 6 pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework — the structured approach AWS uses to evaluate and improve cloud architectures.

Learn what AWS Artifact is, how to access compliance reports, and understand key compliance programs like SOC, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and ISO 27001.

Understand encryption at rest with KMS and CloudHSM, S3 SSE options, EBS encryption, plus encryption in transit with TLS/SSL and AWS Certificate Manager.

Build a mental map of AWS security services: GuardDuty, Inspector, Macie, Security Hub, Detective, and Firewall Manager — and know which one to pick for each scenario.

Hands-on lab: create an S3 bucket, upload an index.html, enable static website hosting, and make it publicly readable.

Choose between S3-only, CloudFront, or Amplify for custom domains and HTTPS — and understand the tradeoffs.

Hands-on lab: upload a file to S3, trigger a Lambda function, read the event, and verify the result in CloudWatch Logs.

Save upload metadata from an S3-triggered Lambda function into a DynamoDB table with a composite primary key.

Build a simple HTTP API using API Gateway and Lambda to read metadata from a DynamoDB table.

Build an API endpoint that lists multiple metadata records from DynamoDB using the Query operation and prefix filtering.

Build a small HTML frontend that calls the metadata list API and configure CORS for your API Gateway.

Add a detail view for uploaded files and return presigned S3 URLs to allow safe, temporary access to private files.

Let a browser upload directly to S3 without giving it AWS credentials by generating a temporary upload ticket from Lambda.

Add a delete endpoint for uploaded files, removing them from both S3 and DynamoDB, and keep your frontend dashboard updated.

Review the full serverless upload dashboard architecture, understand operational risks, and follow a hardening checklist for production readiness.

Protect your dashboard API by requiring user authentication through Amazon Cognito and validating JWT tokens in API Gateway.

Understand the tradeoffs between CloudFront and Amplify for secure static hosting and learn why S3 website endpoints are only for development.

Learn how to deploy your dashboard frontend to AWS Amplify Hosting using manual zip uploads and connect a custom domain.

Review your finished dashboard architecture, learn how to safely clean up AWS resources, and identify the next steps for production hardening.

Learn how to apply the principle of least privilege by scoping Lambda execution roles to specific AWS actions and resources.

Learn how to decouple your code from your configuration using Lambda environment variables and API Gateway stages.

Learn how to monitor your serverless application using CloudWatch Alarms for errors and latency, and implement a simple health check endpoint.

Learn how to return consistent JSON error responses from Lambda and handle them gracefully in your frontend to improve user experience.

Ensure your dashboard is truly production-ready by reviewing authentication, secure hosting, least privilege, and monitoring.

Understand the core compute options in AWS: virtual servers (EC2) and serverless functions (Lambda).

A deep dive into the six key choices you make when launching an Amazon EC2 instance.

Learn how to secure your virtual servers using security groups, and understand the core principles of inbound/outbound rules.

Understand the differences between persistent (EBS) and temporary (Instance Store) block storage for EC2.

Understand how Elastic Load Balancing improves application availability and fault tolerance by distributing traffic across multiple targets.

Learn how Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling helps you maintain application availability and handle traffic changes automatically.

Learn the difference between adding more servers (Horizontal) and making one server bigger (Vertical).

Test your knowledge on Amazon EC2, Security Groups, EBS, Load Balancing, and Auto Scaling.

Master the different Amazon S3 storage classes to optimize your storage costs and performance.

Learn the differences between block storage (EBS) and file storage (EFS, FSx) and when to use each.

Understand how the AWS Snow Family enables physical data transfer and edge computing in remote or disconnected environments.

Test your knowledge on AWS storage services, including S3 storage classes, block storage, and file storage.

Understand the managed relational database options in AWS: Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora.

Learn about Amazon DynamoDB, AWS's serverless NoSQL database designed for performance at any scale.

Learn how Amazon ElastiCache improves application performance using in-memory caching with Redis and Memcached.

Understand the difference between a cloud data warehouse (Redshift) and a big data processing platform (EMR).

Understand the roles of graph databases (Neptune) and ledger databases (QLDB) in AWS, including important status updates.

Test your knowledge on AWS database and data services, including RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, Redshift, and Neptune.

Learn what containers are, what Amazon ECS does, and how clusters, tasks, and services fit together.

Understand Amazon Lightsail as the simpler bundled AWS starting point for common websites and apps.

Learn the basics of infrastructure as code, AWS CloudFormation templates, stacks, change sets, and drift.

Learn when to choose Amazon EKS (Kubernetes) over ECS (AWS-native), understand Fargate's role with both, and recognize ECR as the container registry for both.

Practice choosing between ECS, Lightsail, and CloudFormation for common AWS scenarios.

Review Unit 4 by choosing the right AWS service for common compute, storage, database, container, and infrastructure scenarios.

Practice combining AWS services into common architecture patterns for apps, data, analytics, and infrastructure.

Wrap up Unit 4 with a self-check drill and review guidance before moving on.

Learn how Amazon VPC gives you an isolated virtual network in AWS — including subnets, gateways, NAT, and route tables.

Understand the two layers of VPC network security — stateful security groups at the instance level and stateless NACLs at the subnet level.

Learn how Amazon Route 53 translates domain names to IP addresses, registers domains, and routes traffic with health-aware policies.

Learn how Amazon CloudFront caches content at edge locations worldwide to deliver low-latency experiences for users everywhere.

Learn how to connect on-premises data centers to AWS using Site-to-Site VPN and AWS Direct Connect — and when to choose each.

Test your knowledge across all networking topics — VPC, subnets, security groups, NACLs, Route 53, CloudFront, Direct Connect, and VPN.

Learn how Amazon SQS (message queues) and Amazon SNS (pub/sub) help you build loosely coupled, resilient architectures.

Learn how Elastic Beanstalk lets you deploy web applications by uploading code — while AWS handles provisioning, scaling, and monitoring.

Test your knowledge on SNS, SQS, decoupling patterns, and Elastic Beanstalk.

Map AWS AI/ML services to their specific use cases. Distinguish between building ML models (SageMaker) and using pre-trained APIs.

Understand the data lake analytics pattern and when to use streaming vs batch analytics on AWS.

Match CodeBuild, CodePipeline, and X-Ray to their roles. Understand CI/CD pipeline components on AWS.

Recognize AWS services for contact centers and email communication.

Recognize AWS services for virtual desktops and application streaming.

Recognize AWS services for full-stack web/mobile development.

Recognize AWS IoT Core for connecting and managing IoT devices at scale.

Recognize AWS Batch for large-scale batch processing and Outposts for on-premises AWS.

Review of cloud computing value proposition, agility, scalability, elasticity, and AWS global infrastructure including Regions and Availability Zones.

Review of cloud deployment models (cloud, private, hybrid), service models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), and key cloud characteristics including agility, elasticity, and pay-as-you-go pricing.

Learn the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) and its six perspectives, the structured guidance for planning a successful cloud migration.

Learn the six common migration strategies (the 6 Rs) that organizations use when moving workloads to the cloud, from lift-and-shift to full re-architecture.

Comprehensive review quiz covering cloud value, agility, scalability, elasticity, global infrastructure, deployment models, service models, shared responsibility, Well-Architected Framework, Cloud Adoption Framework, migration strategies, and design principles from Module 5.1.

Review of the AWS Shared Responsibility Model and the AWS value proposition including global infrastructure concepts.

Review of AWS IAM concepts including users, groups, roles, policies, MFA, and least privilege as foundational security habits.

Review of the differences between AWS root user, IAM users, and IAM roles, including when to use each and why AWS prefers temporary credentials and role-based access.

Learn how IAM Identity Center enables single sign-on for workforce users across multiple AWS accounts, including permission sets, the AWS access portal, and directory integration.

Learn how AWS Organizations enables multi-account management with Organizational Units, Service Control Policies, and cross-account resource sharing with RAM.

Understand federated identity concepts, Amazon Cognito for app users, and the differences between SAML for workforce and OIDC for customer identity.

Comprehensive review quiz covering IAM, root user, roles, policies, MFA, least privilege, AWS security service recognition, Artifact, encryption, Organizations, and SCPs from Module 5.2.

Review of AWS pricing models, Free Tier, Cost Explorer, Budgets, pricing calculators, and support plans.

Review of AWS pay-as-you-go pricing, Free Tier awareness, Cost Explorer vs Budgets, and cost-awareness habits.

Review of AWS Support plans (Basic, Business Support+, Enterprise Support, AWS Unified Operations) and how they differ from cost tools.

Comprehensive review quiz covering AWS pricing models, Free Tier, Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets, Savings Plans, cost allocation tags, CUR, Dedicated Hosts, and Support plans from Module 5.3.

Learn about the AWS Billing Dashboard, Cost & Usage Reports, cost allocation tags, and how AWS Professional Services and the Partner Network can help.

A structured comparison of the five main AWS pricing models, when to use each, how they differ in commitment, flexibility, and cost.

Mixed practice with real-world scenarios requiring service selection, architecture decisions, and trade-off analysis across compute, storage, database, and networking.

Comparison drills for closely related AWS services including EC2 vs Lightsail, RDS vs DynamoDB, Redshift vs EMR, WAF vs Shield, KMS vs Secrets Manager, and more.

Architecture reasoning drills covering multi-service patterns for web apps, high availability, scalability, security, serverless, and big data on AWS.

Comprehensive mixed-domain review covering all AWS core concepts. Final assessment of readiness for AWS cloud fundamentals.

Adaptive practice questions across all four AWS Cloud Practitioner exam domains. The engine tracks your performance, identifies weak spots, and targets them with focused drills.