AWS — Full Course Syllabus
An in-depth exploration of the services and features offered by AWS.
- 1. Amazon EC2Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud.
- 2. Amazon S3Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) offers scalable object storage for data backup, archiving, and analytics.
- 3. Amazon SNSAmazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) is a flexible, fully managed pub/sub messaging and mobile notifications service.
- 4. Amazon SQSAmazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) is a fully managed message queuing service that enables you to decouple and scale microservices.
- 5. Availability Zone (AZ)What an AWS Availability Zone is and how AZ isolation affects fault domains and HA design.
- 6. AWS Regions and multi-region deploymentsWhat an AWS Region is and when to use multi-region deployments for resilience and DR.
- 7. Failure domain definitionDefinition of failure domains and how to map system components to minimize blast radius.
- 8. RPO vs RTORecovery Point Objective and Recovery Time Objective definitions and their role in HA design.
- 9. Load Balancer purposeCore responsibilities of a load balancer: traffic distribution, health checks, and failover.
- 10. AWS Elastic Load Balancer (ALB vs NLB vs Gateway/Classic)Differences between ALB, NLB, and Gateway/Classic LB and when to choose each.
- 11. Target groups and listeners (ELB)What target groups and listeners are and how they route traffic to backends.
- 12. Load balancer health checks (ELB/Target Group)How load balancer health checks work and how to configure them to detect unhealthy instances.
- 13. AWS Auto Scaling Group (ASG)What an AWS Auto Scaling Group is and its role in maintaining desired capacity and HA.
- 14. Scheduled scalingUsing scheduled scaling to adjust capacity predictably based on known load patterns.
- 15. Stateless service designPrinciples of statelessness to enable horizontal scaling and simpler failure recovery.
- 16. Health endpoints and readiness/liveness probesDefining liveness/readiness probes and their use in load balancing and orchestration.
- 17. Metrics and SLOsDefining metrics and Service Level Objectives to guide scaling and resilience decisions.
- 18. Capacity planning basicsEstimating baseline capacity and headroom needs to provision autoscaling safely.
- 19. Service quotas and soft limitsAWS service quotas that affect scaling (EC2, load balancers, ALB targets) and how to request increases.
- 20. CIDR block allocation for VPCsChoosing and assigning an IPv4/IPv6 CIDR block to a VPC and constraints on overlaps.
- 21. Subnet (public vs private)Defining subnets in a VPC and the concept difference between public subnets (with IGW route) and private subnets.
- 22. Internet Gateway (IGW)The AWS-managed gateway that enables outbound/inbound IPv4/IPv6 traffic between a VPC and the internet.
- 23. VPC Route Table EntriesA VPC route table entry mapping destination CIDR blocks to targets like subnets, gateways, and attachments.
- 24. Elastic IP (EIP)A static public IPv4 address that can be attached to AWS resources for stable internet reachability.
- 25. Security GroupA stateful virtual firewall attached to EC2/network interfaces that controls inbound and outbound traffic by rules.
- 26. Network ACL (NACL)A stateless subnet-level access control list that allows or denies traffic to/from subnets.
- 27. Static routes vs Dynamic (BGP) routes in AWSDifferences between manually configured static routes and dynamically learned routes via BGP in AWS.
- 28. NAT GatewayA managed, highly available NAT service to enable instances in private subnets to access the internet.
- 29. Egress-only Internet GatewayAn IPv6-only gateway allowing outbound internet access from VPC IPv6 addresses.
- 30. Gateway Endpoint (S3/DynamoDB)A VPC endpoint type that adds routes to access supported AWS services without crossing the internet.
- 31. Tagging and resource organization for AWS networksUsing tags, resource groups, and naming conventions to organize VPCs, TGWs, and connectivity resources across accounts.
- 32. Amazon RDSAmazon Relational Database Service (RDS) makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud.
- 33. AWS IAMAWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) helps you securely control access to AWS services and resources.
- 34. Amazon CloudFrontAmazon CloudFront is a fast content delivery network (CDN) service for delivering data, videos, applications, and APIs.
- 35. Amazon DynamoDBAmazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database service that provides fast and predictable performance.
- 36. AWS Elastic BeanstalkAWS Elastic Beanstalk is an easy-to-use service for deploying and scaling web applications and services.
- 37. AWS CloudTrailAWS CloudTrail enables governance, compliance, and operational and risk auditing of your AWS account.
- 38. Amazon Route 53Amazon Route 53 is a scalable and highly available Domain Name System (DNS) web service.
- 39. AWS LambdaAWS Lambda allows you to run code without provisioning or managing servers.
- 40. Amazon VPCAmazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) enables you to provision a logically isolated section of the AWS cloud.
- 41. Sticky sessions / session affinityWhat session affinity is, how sticky sessions work, and trade-offs for scaling.
- 42. DNS-based load distribution (Route 53)Using AWS Route 53 routing policies (simple, weighted, latency, failover) for distributing traffic.
- 43. AWS Global Accelerator basicsHow AWS Global Accelerator improves availability and performance via static anycast IPs and regional failover.
- 44. Launch configuration vs. Launch templateDifferences between launch configurations and launch templates for EC2 ASGs and when to use each.
- 45. Target tracking scaling policiesTarget tracking scaling policies: how they work and when to use them.
- 46. Step scaling policiesStep scaling policies and configuring thresholds and cooldown to respond to load changes.
- 47. Instance health vs ELB healthDistinction between ASG-managed instance health checks and load-balancer health checks.
- 48. Session externalization (sticky-free patterns)Using external stores (DynamoDB, ElastiCache) for session data to avoid sticky sessions.
- 49. Circuit breaker patternThe circuit breaker concept to detect failing downstreams and prevent cascading failures.
- 50. Bulkhead isolationPartitioning resources so failures are isolated and do not affect unrelated workloads.
- 51. Retry with exponential backoff and jitterBest-practice retries with exponential backoff and jitter to avoid thundering herds.
- 52. Canary and Blue/Green DeploymentsCanary and blue/green techniques for safe deployments and reducing blast radius.
- 53. Caching strategies: cache-aside, write-through, TTLCache-aside, write-through, and TTL patterns and their effect on scalability and availability.
- 54. Event-driven scaling triggersUsing events and metrics (CloudWatch, SQS depth) to trigger autoscaling actions.
- 55. Rate limiting and throttlingImplementing rate limits to protect backends and maintain system stability under load.
- 56. Distributed tracing for availability (AWS X-Ray)How tracing (X-Ray) helps diagnose latency and failure paths affecting availability.
- 57. Synthetic and Real-User Monitoring (Synthetics & RUM)Using synthetic checks and RUM to detect availability and performance regressions.
- 58. Route 53 DNS failoverConfiguring DNS failover and health checks for automating regional failover.
- 59. Infrastructure as Code for High Availability (HA)Using IaC to define repeatable, versioned HA resources and autoscaling configs.
- 60. Bootstrapping and immutable infrastructure (immutable-image deployments)Immutable-image deployments to ensure consistent scaling and reduce configuration drift.
- 61. Cost vs availability trade-offsHow higher availability choices (multi-AZ/region, warm pools) impact cost and capacity planning.
- 62. IAM scopes for high-availability automationApplying least privilege and IAM role patterns that ensure HA automation can operate safely.
- 63. VPC PeeringA one-to-one networking connection between two VPCs that enables private IPv4/IPv6 routing between them.
- 64. VPC Peering route propagation and limitationsHow routes are manually added for peering, and the transitive routing limitation for VPC peering.
- 65. AWS Transit GatewayA regional hub that connects multiple VPCs, on-prem networks, and VPNs to enable centralized routing.
- 66. Transit Gateway attachmentsAttaching VPCs, VPNs, Direct Connect gateways, or peering connections to a Transit Gateway as separate attachments.
- 67. Transit Gateway route tablesRouting domains on a TGW that determine how attachments communicate and enable segmentation.
- 68. Transit Gateway route propagationAutomatic or manual propagation of attachment routes into TGW route tables and how propagation affects reachability.
- 69. Direct Connect (DX)A dedicated network connection from on-premises to AWS providing low-latency, high-throughput links.
- 70. Direct Connect GatewayA global AWS resource that lets you connect Direct Connect connections to one or more VPCs via TGW or VGW.
- 71. Hosted vs Dedicated AWS Direct ConnectDifferences between provider-hosted (partner) DX links and customer-owned dedicated DX connections.
- 72. Virtual Interfaces (VIF) for AWS Direct ConnectTypes of VIFs (private, public, transit) and how they map traffic to AWS services and VPCs.
- 73. Site-to-Site VPN (AWS VPN)An IPsec-based VPN tunnel between an on-premises gateway and an AWS virtual private gateway or TGW.
- 74. AWS Client VPNA managed client-based VPN service that provides secure client-to-VPC connectivity over TLS.
- 75. Virtual Private Gateway (VGW)A gateway attached to a VPC used as a VPN endpoint for Site-to-Site VPN or Direct Connect private VIFs.
- 76. Route propagation to VGWHow VGW propagates on-prem routes into VPC route tables and the interplay with static routes.
- 77. BGP basics for AWS connectivityUsing BGP for route exchange on Direct Connect and Site-to-Site VPN including ASNs and route advertisement.
- 78. VPC Flow LogsCapturing network flow metadata for VPCs, subnets, or interfaces to CloudWatch or S3 for analysis.
- 79. Reachability AnalyzerAn AWS tool that verifies and visualizes network path reachability between endpoints in a VPC/TGW topology.
- 80. VPC Network Access Analyzer (IAM-based)Analyzing and auditing network configurations and resource policies that affect connectivity.
- 81. AWS PrivateLinkA mechanism to privately access AWS services or customer/partner services via interface endpoints in VPCs.
- 82. Interface Endpoint (ENI) for AWS PrivateLinkAn elastic network interface within a subnet that provides PrivateLink service connectivity to consumers.
- 83. Hub-and-spoke with AWS Transit Gateway (TGW)Designing centralized connectivity where a Transit Gateway acts as a hub connecting multiple spoke VPCs and networks.
- 84. Multi-account VPC connectivity patternsPatterns and AWS constructs for connecting VPCs across AWS accounts (TGW, peering, PrivateLink, resource sharing).
- 85. Cost components of connectivityUnderstanding billing factors like data transfer charges, TGW-hour, DX port-hour, and VPN-hour costs.
- 86. Automation with AWS CLI for connectivity tasksUsing the AWS CLI to create and manage VPCs, TGWs, Direct Connect resources, and VPN connections programmatically.
- 87. Testing and validating hybrid connectivity (ping, traceroute, BGP checks)Practical tests and commands to verify reachability, path, and BGP session states across AWS hybrid links.
- 88. AWS CloudFormationAWS CloudFormation provides a common language for describing and provisioning all infrastructure resources in your cloud environment.
- 89. AWS CodePipelineAWS CodePipeline is a continuous integration and continuous delivery service for fast and reliable application updates.
- 90. Auto Scaling lifecycle hooksUsing Auto Scaling lifecycle hooks to run automation during instance launch and termination.
- 91. Warm pools (Auto Scaling Groups)What warm pools are and how they reduce scale-up latency for ASGs.
- 92. Stateful scaling patterns (leader election & sharding)Approaches for scaling stateful services, including leader-election and sharding basics.
- 93. Scaling-backed datastore patternsDesign patterns for horizontally scaling datastores including read replicas and partitioning.
- 94. Backpressure mechanismsApplying backpressure to slow producers when consumers are saturated.
- 95. Chaos engineering basicsPrinciples and small experiments to validate system resilience under failure.
- 96. Disaster recovery strategies: Backup, Pilot Light, Warm Standby, Multi-region FailoverBackup, pilot light, warm standby, and multi-region failover strategies and trade-offs.
- 97. Blue/Green Deployments with Coordinated DB MigrationsTechniques to coordinate schema changes safely during blue/green deployments.
- 98. Transit Gateway peeringPeering between Transit Gateways across AWS regions to enable cross-region VPC connectivity.
- 99. BGP route priority and AS path manipulationTechniques like local preference and AS path prepend to influence BGP routing decisions with AWS links.
- 100. IP address overlap resolution strategiesPatterns to avoid or mitigate overlapping IP spaces between VPCs and on-prem (renumbering, NAT, proxy).
- 101. NAT instance (legacy)Using an EC2 instance as a NAT with manual HA and scaling responsibilities.
- 102. Security for hybrid linksBest practices like encrypting traffic, route filtering, least-privilege network ACLs, and monitoring for hybrid links.
- 103. Transit VPC patternA legacy architectural pattern using a centralized transit VPC for hub-and-spoke connectivity before TGW.
- 104. Cross-region VPC connectivity optionsAlternatives for connecting VPCs across AWS regions such as TGW peering, inter-region VPC peering, and inter-region Direct Connect.
- 105. High-availability design for Direct Connect and VPNUsing redundant connections, multiple DX locations, and VPN failover for resilient hybrid links.