A Comprehensive Guide to AWS for Beginners
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Chapter 1: Understanding AWS Basics
This document serves as a succinct introduction for individuals new to AWS or those seeking a refresher. It is part of a five-part series inspired by the extensive 14-hour Cloud Practitioner course on freeCodeCamp.org. This guide is designed to save time for quick revisions and facilitate efficient searches for AWS fundamentals, which can also aid in preparing for the Cloud Practitioner exam. Essentially, this serves as a set of condensed notes.
Menu: E1 E2 E3 E4 E5 (links to E4-E5 are not yet available)
Section 1.1: Regions vs. Global Services
When creating services, it's essential to set your region as a universal configuration. The AWS Management Console will reflect this setting. Some global services that operate independently of regions include:
- S3 (storage)
- CloudFront (low-latency global content distribution)
- Route 53 (domain management)
- IAM (user accounts & groups)
Availability Zones (AZs) refer to actual physical sites that house multiple local data centers. Each region (e.g., us-east-1) typically contains three AZs, interconnected with under 10 milliseconds of latency. AZs are identified by Roman numerals, such as us-east-1a. Subnets are linked to each AZ, and resources must be manually associated with a subnet at the time of creation, specifically for virtual machines, not for managed services.
For workloads requiring high availability, it is advisable to operate across at least three AZs to mitigate the risk of data center outages.
Section 1.2: Service Creation and Regions
To create services within the AWS Management Console (or by searching for EC2, S3, CloudFront, or IAM), follow these examples:
Example 1: EC2 (Compute)
- Ensure the region is set to your default.
- Navigate to "Instances."
- Click "Launch Instances."
- Select a machine image (e.g., Amazon Linux 2).
- Choose an instance type (e.g., t2.micro, which offers 1 vCPU and 1 GB of memory, and is marked green for the free tier).
- At this stage, you can select the subnet, which corresponds to the availability zone if necessary to match with existing resources to reduce latency.
Example 2: S3 (Storage)
- Note that the region is global.
- Create a bucket, where you will select a region.
- No subnet or availability zone is required, as AWS automatically manages appropriate subnets for redundancy.
Example 3: CloudFront (Ultra-Low Latency Content Distribution)
- Create a distribution and select a price class.
- Choose either all edge locations, North America & Europe, or all locations.
Example 4: IAM (Identity and Access Management)
- This service is region-agnostic, allowing you to add users and groups without specific location constraints.
Chapter 2: Fault Tolerance and Isolation
Fault tolerance refers to the ability to isolate issues to prevent cascading failures in interconnected systems. The concept of fault domains is crucial, where a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) ensures that faults can be contained within defined boundaries.
Fault domains might include:
- An AWS region (e.g., us-east-1)
- A rack of servers
- A data center room or building
Independent availability zones exist within separate flood plains and are powered by distinct substations. They are also backed up by uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and on-site backup generation.
Multi-AZ deployment helps shield against various risks, including:
- Power outages
- Natural disasters such as lightning, tornadoes, and earthquakes
AWS Global Networks ensure rapid interconnections through their backbone.
Edge locations serve as access points, facilitating quick connections to end-users and reducing costs for providers. Points of Presence (PoP) enhance speed and efficiency:
- Regional Edge Locations (larger caches)
- Edge Locations (caches of popular files)
Amazon CloudFront acts as a content distribution network (CDN) that routes requests to the nearest edge location cache.
AWS Global Accelerator optimizes the path from end-users to your servers using edge locations.
This video provides an in-depth review of the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Certification Course, aiding in exam preparation.
A beginner's guide to AWS, offering a step-by-step introduction to the platform and its services.
For further exploration of AWS regions, additional content may be added in the future regarding specific services like AWS in China. For now, let’s proceed to the next section, E3, which delves deeper into core concepts.