AWS Cert Prep - Cloud Essentials - Outline

AWS Cert Prep 

Cloud Essentials - Outline

1.1: Cloud Benefits.

Knowledge of:  Value proposition of the Cloud

Skills in:

• Benefits of global infrastructure (for example, speed of deployment, global reach)

• Advantages of high availability, elasticity, and agility

1.2: Cloud design principles.

Knowledge of: Well-Architected Framework

Skills in:

• Pillars of the Well-Architected Framework (for example, operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, sustainability)

• Differences between the pillars of the Well-Architected Framework

1.3: Cloud migration benefits and strategies.

Knowledge of:

• Cloud adoption strategies

• Resources to support the cloud migration journey

Skills in:

• Components of the Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) (for example, reduced business risk; improved environmental, social, and governance [ESG] performance; increased revenue; increased operational efficiency)

• Appropriate migration strategies (for example, database replication, use of Snowball)

1.4: Concepts of cloud economics.

Knowledge of:

• Aspects of cloud economics

• Cost savings of moving to the cloud

Skills in:

• Role of fixed costs compared with variable costs

• Costs that are associated with on-premises environments

• Licensing strategies (for example, Bring Your Own License [BYOL] model compared with included licenses)

• Concept of rightsizing

• Benefits of automation

• Economies of scale (for example, cost savings)

2.1: Shared responsibility model.

Knowledge of: Shared responsibility model

Skills in:

• Recognizing the components of the shared responsibility model

• Customer's vs. AWS responsibilities

• Shared responsibilities of customer and AWS

• How AWS and customer responsibilities can shift, depending on the service used (for example, RDS, Lambda, EC2)

2.2: Cloud security, governance, and compliance.

Knowledge of:

• Compliance and governance concepts

• Benefits of cloud security (for example, encryption)

• Where to capture and locate logs that are associated with cloud security

Skills in:

• Where to find compliance info (for example, Artifact)

• Compliance needs among geographic locations or industries (for example, compliance)

• How customers secure resources (i.e., Inspector, Security Hub, GuardDuty, Shield)

• Encryption options (for example, encryption in transit, encryption at rest)

• Governance and compliance services (i.e., monitoring with CloudWatch; auditing with CloudTrail, Audit Manager, and Config; reporting with access reports)

• Compliance requirements that vary among services

2.3: Access mgmt capabilities.

Knowledge of:

• Identity and access mgmt (for example, Id and Access Mgmt [IAM])

• Importance of protecting the root user account

• Principle of least privilege

• IAM Identity Center (Single Sign-On)

Skills in:

• Access keys, password policies, and credential storage (i.e., Secrets Manager, Systems Manager)

• Id auth methods (for example, multi-factor auth [MFA], IAM Identity Center, cross-account IAM roles)

• Defining groups, users, custom policies, and managed policies in compliance with the principle of least privilege

• Tasks that only the account root user can perform

• Methods can achieve root user protection

• Types of id mgmt (for example, federated)

2.4: Components and resources for security.

Knowledge of:

• Security capabilities that provides

• Security-related documentation that provides

Skills in:

• Security features and services (i.e., WAF, Firewall Manager, Shield, GuardDuty)

• Third-party security products are available from Marketplace

• Identifying where security info is available (i.e., Knowledge Center, Security Center, Security Blog)

• Use of services for identifying security issues (i.e., Trusted Advisor)

3.1: Deploying and operating ways in the Cloud.

Knowledge of:

• Provisioning and operating in the Cloud

• Ways to access services

• Types of cloud deploy models

Skills in:

• Programmatic access (i.e., APIs, SDKs, CLI), the Mgmt Console, IaC

• Use one-time operations or repeatable processes

• Deployment models (i.e., cloud, hybrid, on-premises)

3.2: Global infrastructure.

Knowledge of:

• Regions, Availability Zones, and edge locations

• High availability

• Use of multiple Regions

• Benefits of edge locations

Skills in:

• Regions, Availability Zones, and edge locations

• How to achieve high availability by using multiple Availability Zones

• Recognizing that Availability Zones do not share single points of failure

• When to use multiple Regions (i.e., disaster recovery, business continuity, low latency for end users, data sovereignty)

3.3: Compute services.

Knowledge of: Compute services

Skills in:

• EC2 instance types (for example, compute optimized, storage optimized)

• Container options (i.e., Elastic Container Service [ECS], Elastic Kubernetes Service [EKS])

• Serverless compute options (for example, Fargate, Lambda)

• Recognizing that auto scaling provides elasticity

• Purposes of load balancers

3.4: DB services.

Knowledge of:   DB services  and DB migration

Skills in:

• Deciding when to use EC2 hosted DBs or managed DBs

• Relational DBs (for example, RDS, Aurora)

• NoSQL DBs (for example, DynamoDB)

• Memory-based DBs (for example, ElastiCache)

• DB migration tools (i.e., DB Migration Service [AWS DMS], Schema Conversion Tool [AWS SCT])

3.5: Network services.

Knowledge of: Network services

Skills in:

• Components of a VPC (for example, subnets, gateways)

• Security in a VPC (for example, network ACLs, security groups, Inspector)

• Purpose of Route 53

• Network connectivity options (for example VPN, Direct Connect)

3.6: Storage services.

Knowledge of:  Storage services

Skills in:

• Uses for object storage

• Recognizing the differences in S3 storage classes

• Block storage solutions (for example, Elastic Block Store [EBS], instance store)

• File services (for example, Elastic File System [EFS], FSx)

• Cached file systems (for example, Storage Gateway)

• Use cases for lifecycle policies

• Use cases for Backup

3.7: AI/ML and analytics services.

Knowledge of: AI/ML  and Analytics services

Skills in:

• AI/ML services and the tasks that they accomplish (i.e., SageMaker AI, Lex, Kendra)

• Services for data analytics (for example, Athena, Kinesis, Glue, QuickSight)

3.8: Services from other in-scope service categories.

Knowledge of:

• Services of EventBridge, Simple Notification Service (SNS), and Simple Queue Service (SQS)

• Business app services of Connect and Simple Email Service (SES)

• Customer enablement services (for example, Support)

• Developer tool services and capabilities (i.e., CodeBuild, CodePipeline, and X-Ray)

• End-user computing services of AppStream 2.0, WorkSpaces, and WorkSpaces Secure Browser

• Frontend web and mobile services of Amplify and AppSync

• IoT services (for example, IoT Core)

Skills in:

• Service to deliver messages and to send alerts and notifications

• Service to meet business app needs

• Option for business support assistance

• Tools to develop, deploy, and troubleshoot apps

• Services that output of VMs on end-user machines

• Services that create and deploy frontend and mobile services

• Services that manage IoT devices

4.1: Pricing models.

Knowledge of:

• Compute purchasing options (for example, On-Demand Instances, Reserved Instances, Spot Instances, Savings Plans, Dedicated Hosts, Dedicated Instances, Capacity Reservations)

• Storage options and tiers

Skills in:

• Compute purchasing options

• Reserved Instance flexibility

• Reserved Instance behavior in Organizations

• Incoming and outgoing data transfer costs (for example, from one Region to another Region, within the same Region)

• Pricing options for various storage options and tiers

4.2: Resources for billing, budget, and cost mgmt.

Knowledge of:

• Billing support and info

• Pricing info for services

• Organizations

• Cost allocation tags

Skills in:

• Uses and capabilities of Budgets, and Cost Explorer

• Uses and capabilities of Pricing Calculator

• Organizations consolidated billing and allocation of costs

• Cost allocation tags and their relation to billing reports (for example, Cost and Usage Report)

4.3: Technical resources and Support options.

Knowledge of:

• Resources and documentation available on official websites

• Support plans

• Role of the Partner Network, including independent software vendors and system integrators

• Support Center

Skills in:

• Whitepapers, blogs, and documentation on official websites

• Technical resources (for example Prescriptive Guidance, Knowledge Center, re:Post)

• Customer support options (for example, customer service and communities, Developer Support, Business Support, Enterprise On-Ramp Support, Enterprise Support)

• Role of Trusted Advisor, Health Dashboard, and the Health API to help manage and monitor environments for cost optimization

• Trust and Safety team role to report abuse of resources

• Partners Roles (for example Marketplace, independent software vendors, system integrators)

• Partner Benefits (for example, training and certification, events, volume discounts)

• Key services that Marketplace offers (for example, cost mgmt, governance and entitlement)

• Technical assist options available (for example, Pro Services, Solutions Architects)