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.