AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Module 01 Student Guide
Version 2.0.5
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Contents
Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting 4
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting.
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
This module includes the following sections:
1. Course objectives and overview
2. Café business case introduction
3. Roles in cloud computing
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
At the end of this module, you should be able to:
• Identify course prerequisites and objectives
• Recognize the café business case
• Indicate the role of cloud architects
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Introducing Section 1: Course objectives and overview.
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
To begin, it is important to have an understanding of the prerequisites for this course.
The curriculum in this course assumes that you previously attended the AWS Academy Cloud
Foundations course. Alternatively, you might have a level of familiarity with the AWS Cloud
that is similar to what the AWS Academy Cloud Foundations course provides.
It is also assumed that you have general IT technical knowledge. You must have some
foundational computer literacy skills to be successful in this course. These skills include a
knowledge of basic computer concepts, file management, and a good understanding of the
internet.
You should also have general IT business knowledge, which includes insight into how
businesses and other organizations use information technology.
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
After completing this course, you should be able to:
• Make architectural decisions based on AWS architectural principles and best practices
• Use AWS services to make your infrastructure scalable, reliable, and highly available
• Use AWS managed services to enable greater flexibility and resiliency in an infrastructure
• Indicate how to increase the performance efficiency and reduce costs of infrastructures
built on AWS
• Use the AWS Well-Architected Framework to improve architectures that use AWS
solutions
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
To achieve the course objectives, the course consists of the 15 modules that are shown. The
next slides provide more detail on what subtopics are covered in each module.
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Module 2 introduces cloud architecting concepts. The sections in Module 2 include:
• What is cloud architecting?
• The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Well-Architected Framework
• Best practices for building solutions on AWS
• AWS global infrastructure
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Module 3 focuses on storage and Amazon S3 in particular. The sections in Module 3 include:
• The simplest architecture
• Using Amazon S3
• Storing data in Amazon S3
• Moving data to and from Amazon S3
• Choosing Regions for your architecture
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Module 4 focuses on the compute layer. The sections in Module 4 include:
• Architectural need
• Adding compute with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)
• Choosing an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) to launch an Amazon EC2 instance
• Selecting an Amazon EC2 instance type
• Using user data to configure an Amazon EC2 instance
• Adding storage to an Amazon EC2 instance
• Amazon EC2 pricing options
• Amazon EC2 considerations
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Module 5 focuses on the database layer. The sections in Module 5 include:
• Architectural need
• Database layer considerations
• Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)
• Amazon DynamoDB
• Database security controls
• Migrating data into AWS databases
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Module 6 focuses on the network layer. The sections in Module 6 include:
• Architectural need
• Creating an AWS networking environment
• Connecting your AWS networking environment to the internet
• Securing your AWS networking environment
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Module 7 focuses on connecting networks. The sections in Module 7 include:
• Architectural need
• Connecting to your remote network with AWS Site-to-Site VPN
• Connecting to your remote network with AWS Direct Connect
• Connecting virtual private clouds (VPCs) in AWS with VPC peering
• Scaling your VPC network with AWS Transit Gateway
• Connecting your VPC to supported AWS services
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Module 8 focuses on securing user and application access. The sections in Module 8 include:
• Architectural need
• Account users and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
• Organizing users
• Federating users
• Multiple accounts
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Module 9 focuses on implementing elasticity, high availability, and monitoring. The sections
in Module 9 include:
• Architectural need
• Scaling your compute resources
• Scaling your databases
• Designing an environment that's highly available
• Monitoring
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Module 10 focuses on automating your architecture. The sections in Module 10 include:
• Architectural need
• Reasons to automate
• Automating your infrastructure
• Automating deployments
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Module 11 focuses on caching content. The sections in Module 11 include:
• Architectural need
• Overview of caching
• Edge caching
• Caching web sessions
• Caching databases
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Module 12 focuses on building decoupled architectures. The sections in Module 12 include:
• Architectural need
• Decoupling your architecture
• Decoupling with Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)
• Decoupling with Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)
• Sending messages between cloud applications and on-premises with Amazon MQ
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Module 13 focuses on building microservices and serverless architectures. The sections in
Module 13 include:
• Architectural need
• Introducing microservices
• Building microservice applications with AWS container services
• Introducing serverless architectures
• Building serverless architectures with AWS Lambda
• Extending serverless architectures with Amazon API Gateway
• Orchestrating microservices with AWS Step Functions
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Module 14 focuses on disaster planning. The sections in Module 14 include:
• Architectural need
• Disaster planning strategies
• Disaster recovery patterns
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Module 15 focuses on bridging your learning in this course to attaining an AWS certification.
The sections in Module 15 include:
• Certification exam resources
• Additional resources
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Introducing Section 2: Café business case introduction.
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
The challenge labs in this course are built around a fictional business case. The business case
provides a way to explore cloud-computing topics in the context of relatable business needs.
This scenario is intended to provide an example of the real-world applicability of technical
concepts that you will learn.
Frank and Martha opened a café and bakery that had its start from a retirement dream.
Frank and Martha were not yet ready to live out their retirement around the house. Instead,
they wanted to do something that included their love of baking and supplemented their
income. They enjoy interacting with the people in their neighborhood. They also like to
support community events across town with their baked goods and coffees.
To make their dreams a reality, Frank and Martha recently decided to open their café and
bakery at the base of their flat. Their daughter, Sofía, and a local school student, Nikhil, help
out and work at the café. Since they opened the café, they have experienced an increase in
local business. They also sometimes receive inquiries from people who travel through the
area either for business or as tourists.
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Sofía is the daughter of Frank and Martha. She runs the café, which includes managing the
supply chain for sourcing ingredients and tracking inventory. She took some programming
classes in secondary school and plans to start working toward a university degree in business
administration later this year.
Sofía just learned about Amazon Web Services. She has talked to her parents about how they
could use AWS services to automate some aspects of the café business, reduce manual
administrative work, and improve the customer experience.
Nikhil works at the café part time. He is going to finish secondary school in the spring. He
works behind the counter, serving customers and doing other tasks under Sofía’s supervision.
He has some experience with visual design, and wants to learn more about web development
and cloud computing. He plans to get a university degree that will build his existing design
skills, and also enable him to learn cloud computing skills.
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Olivia is an AWS solutions architect (SA) who recently moved to the downtown area. She
frequently visits the café and enjoys talking with Sofía. Through their conversations, Sofía has
learned that Olivia is an expert in AWS and cloud technologies. Olivia used to be a network
engineer, and she also has a strong background in database technologies.
Faythe is an AWS developer who recently completed an AWS internship program. She likes to
use her programming skills to apply the appropriate technology to a business problem. She
recently achieved the AWS Certified Security – Specialty and is interested in developing big
data solutions. Faythe is friends with Olivia and Mateo, and she also frequently visits the café.
Mateo is an experienced AWS SysOps engineer. He is skilled at bringing automation and fault
tolerance to the solutions that he builds. He also likes to design for backup and disaster
recovery. Mateo previously worked as a developer, and has been mentoring Faythe since she
started as an intern with AWS. Mateo is happy to help Faythe and anyone who is interested
in learning. Mateo is friends with Nikhil, Sofía, Olivia, and Faythe, and he frequently grabs a
coffee at the café on his way to work.
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
In the hands-on labs in this course, you gain hands-on practice building on AWS. Two types of
labs are available: guided labs and challenge labs.
Guided labs provide you with step-by-step instructions, to help you gain experience in
creating and configuring AWS resources in the different AWS service areas. The guided labs
do not mention the café business; however, the skills that you gain in these guided labs
prepare you for the challenge labs.
The challenge labs present new business requirements that are based on the evolving needs
of the café. These labs contain sections where the instructions do not provide full click-level
guidance or detailed step-by-step instructions. Rather, you will be challenged to apply the
skills that you gained from the guided labs and the concepts that are presented in the
lectures.
In the challenge labs, you take on the role of Sofía or Nikhil. With the assistance of the AWS
consultants who occasionally pass through the café offering advice, you will architect cloud
solutions that help fulfill the business needs of the café.
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Introducing Section 3: Roles in cloud computing.
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
In this section, you will learn about five common roles in cloud computing.
You might want to start your career in cloud computing, or to transition your career to a
cloud computing role. Maybe you would like to work in an organization where some
employees have cloud computing responsibilities. For any of these reasons, it is helpful to
understand the common job titles or roles that individuals, teams, or departments perform.
IT professionals are generalists. They typically have a broad range of skills. For example, they
might manage the infrastructure for an entire application and have a strong understanding of
the components that make up the solution. However, they might not always have detailed
knowledge of any one service that is part of the application. IT professionals are typically
highly technical.
Common job titles include IT Administrator, Systems Administrator, or Network
Administrator.
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
IT leaders are managers. They typically lead a team of IT professionals, and decide on the
type of technology that will be used for a project. They might be significantly involved in the
implementation details early on in the project lifecycle. Then, they delegate the team to
handle the details as the project gets closer to completion.
Typical job titles include IT Manager, IT Director, and IT Supervisor.
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Another common role in cloud computing is the developer role. Developers like to code. They
work with the details—writing, testing, and fixing the code that makes an application work.
Developers are likely to borrow ideas from sample code. They work with application
programming interfaces (APIs) and software development kits (SDKs).
Common job titles include Software Developer, Systems Architect, or Software Development
Manager.
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
DevOps engineers spend their time building out the infrastructure that applications run on.
They often create or improve on the code that installs and configures servers and application
deployments. DevOps staff prefer to experiment and learn by doing. They create repeatable
deployment solutions, and they work to apply engineering skills to the business needs of
operations teams.
Common job titles include DevOps Engineer, Build Engineer, or Reliability Engineer.
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
The final cloud computing role that you will learn about in this section is the cloud architect
role.
Cloud architects spend their time reading and staying up-to-date with the latest
developments and trends in cloud computing. They are responsible for the design
architecture of applications and selecting which technologies should be used to meet the
needs of a technical business objective. They should be aware of the capabilities of the many
cloud service options that are available. Thus, they can decide which ones should be adopted,
given a specific set of business requirements. Cloud architects provide guidance to
developers through architectural diagrams and documentation. They also provide tooling,
but they give the development team room to innovate if they meet the success criteria.
Common challenges for the cloud architect role include resource management, cost
optimization, and defining best practices for performance, reliability, and security.
The responsibilities of cloud architects closely align with the pillars of the AWS Well-
Architected Framework, which is discussed in detail in this course.
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
AWS Certification helps learners build credibility and confidence by validating their cloud
expertise with an industry-recognized credential. It helps organizations identify skilled
professionals who can lead cloud initiatives by using AWS.
You must earn a passing score on a proctored exam to earn an AWS Certification.
AWS Certification does not publish a list of all services or features that are covered in a
certification exam. However, the exam guide for each exam lists the current topic areas and
objectives that are covered in the exam. Exam guides can be found on the Prepare for Your
AWS Certification Exam webpage.
You are required to update your certification (or recertify) every 3 years. View the AWS
Certification Recertification page for more details.
The information on this slide is current as of June 2020. However, exams are frequently
updated, and the details regarding which exams are available—and what is tested by each
exam—are subject to change. For the latest AWS certification exam information, view the
details on the AWS Certification webpage.
The final module in this course provides more information to supplement what you learn in
this course. It will also guide you in how to apply this knowledge toward achieving the AWS
Solutions Architect – Associate certification.
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
It’s now time to review the module.
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
In summary, in this module, you learned how to:
• Identify course prerequisites and objectives
• Recognize the café business case
• Indicate the role of cloud architects
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AWS Academy Cloud Architecting Module 1: Welcome to AWS Academy Cloud Architecting
Thank you for completing this module.
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