AWS – Core Services

AWS Solutions Architect Associate Level

 

AWS Core Services

 

Compute: Services that replicate the traditional role of local physical servers for the cloud, offering advanced configurations including autoscaling, load balancing, and also serverless architectures

 

Networking: Application connectivity, access control, and enhanced remote connections

 

Storage:  Diverse storage platforms which provide for a range of both immediate accessibility and long-term backup needs

 

Database: Managed data solutions for use cases that require multiple data formats, eg relational, NoSQL, or caching

 

Application Management: Monitoring, auditing, and configuring AWS account services and running resources

 

Security and identity: Services for managing authentication and authorization, data and connection encryption, and integration with third-party authentication management systems

 

 

Regions: There are currently 21 AWS regions

 

Example:

 

Region name Region Endpoint
US East (Ohio) us-east-2 us-east-2.amazonaws.com

 

Endpoint addresses are used to access AWS resources remotely from within application code or scripts.

 

Prefixes like ec2 , apigateway , or cloudformation are added to endpoint addresses to specify particular AWS services.

 

Eg: for the AWS CloudFormation service in us-east2, the endpoint will be:

 

cloudformation.us-east-2.amazonaws.com

 

 

You then organize your resources in a region using one or more virtual private clouds or VPCs.

 

A VPC is effectively a network address space within which you can create your own network subnets according to your own requirements and then associate them with AWS availability zones.

 

Since low-latency response times are extremely important in most cases, some AWS services are provided from speficic edge network locations. Such 0services include Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route 53, AWS Firewall Manager, AWS Shield, and AWS WAF.

 

 

AWS Support Plans

 

The Basic AWS Support Plan is free with every account and provides access to AWS customer service, plus documentation, white papers, and the AWS support forum. Customer service covers billing and account support issues.

 

The Developer Support Plan starts at $29/month and adds access for one account holder to a Cloud Support associate, plus limited general guidance and “system impaired” response.

 

The Business Support Plan from $100/month provides faster-guaranteed response times to unlimited users for assistance with “impaired” systems, personal guidance and troubleshooting, plus a support API.

 

The Enterprise Support Plan costs from $15,000/month and is for larger organizations with mission-critical operations and covers all the above features, plus direct access to AWS solutions architects for operational and design reviews, your own technical account manager or TAM, and a “support concierge”.

 

 

 

Other sources of practical support

 

The AWS Community Forums are open to anyone with a valid AWS account at
https://forums.aws.amazon.com

 

Official AWS documentation is available at https://aws.amazon.com/documentation

 

 

 

 

For the exam

 

Understand the AWS platform architecture: the regions and availability zones

 

This structure allows for replication to enhance availability and also allows for process and resource isolation for security and compliance purposes. Design your deployment to take advantage of those features.

 

 

Understand how to use the AWS administration tools

 

Mostly you will probably use the AWS Administration Console Dashboard but you may prefer to use the AWS CLI for some procedures, and possibly also via an AWS SDK from within your application code.

 

 

Understand how to choose an AWS Support Plan

 

According to individual enterprise needs, make sure you are familiar with the various options and their differences.