AWS
AWS Intermediate #5: Route 53 — domains and DNS
AWS's managed DNS, Route 53. Domain registration and Hosted Zones, the difference between A / AAAA / CNAME / Alias records, and Simple / Failover / Latency / Geolocation routing policies.
AWS Intermediate #4: RDS — managed DB, backups, parameter groups
AWS's managed relational database, RDS. Comparison vs DB-on-EC2, automated backups and snapshots and PITR, Multi-AZ, parameter / option groups, and how to handle minor vs major upgrades operationally.
AWS Intermediate #3: S3 — static hosting and presigned URLs
AWS's oldest object storage, S3. The shape of a bucket and the global uniqueness of names, policies and Public Access Block, static site hosting, presigned URLs, and how to lower cost with storage classes.
AWS Intermediate #2: EC2 Operations — security group, key pair, SSM
The daily tools of EC2 operations — designing Security Group rules, how NACLs sit differently, the limits of key pairs and SSM Session Manager, plus baking your AMI to harden the instance skeleton.
AWS Intermediate #1: EC2 and VPC Basics
The oldest building blocks in the cloud — EC2 and VPC. Instance types and AMIs and EBS, plus how VPC, subnets, route tables, IGW, and NAT all weave into one picture. We lay out the first skeleton of operational infrastructure.
AWS Basics #7: CloudWatch Intro — Logs and Metrics
CloudWatch Logs / Metrics / Alarms / Dashboards, log groups and retention, Metric Filters, and the basics of Logs Insights queries — the eyes of every production system.
AWS Basics #6: Security Basics — MFA, Key Rotation, Least Privilege
Enforcing MFA on root and IAM users, automating access-key rotation, auditing permissions with IAM Access Analyzer, least-privilege patterns, and the incidents you actually see in production.
AWS Basics #5: CloudShell and IAM Identity Center (SSO)
CloudShell — the in-browser terminal — and IAM Identity Center (SSO), the standard login for multi-account, all the way through to the aws cli sso login flow.
AWS Basics #4: AWS CLI and SDK Setup
Installing aws cli v2, aws configure, profiles and the credentials file, how SDKs like boto3 / aws-sdk-js fit in, and the order in which the credential chain flows.
AWS Basics #3: Cost Management — Billing Alerts, Cost Explorer, Free Tier
The limits of the Free Tier, setting up AWS Budgets / billing alerts, analyzing the bill with Cost Explorer, and a tag strategy that holds up in production — the guardrail that prevents first-bill shock.
AWS Basics #2: IAM — Users, Groups, Roles, Policies
The four elements of IAM — Users, Groups, Roles, Policies. JSON policy syntax, the essence of AssumeRole, and permission design patterns that hold up in production.
AWS Basics #1: Account, Region, and Availability Zone
Where the cloud and AWS sit, the account and root user, regions and Availability Zones (AZ) around the world, and the difference between global and regional services — the map you need before putting anything on AWS.