Solutions Architect Deep Dive Resources
The resources I share with my classroom students to dive deeper into Architecting on AWS
Ted Trentler
Amazon Employee
Published Apr 2, 2024
Last Modified Apr 3, 2024
As a Technical Instructor at AWS I get get to spend a considerable amount of time with learners helping them get hands on in the classroom. After class, I send an email to my students that goes into more depth for many of the topics we introduce during the three day Architecting on AWS class.
I'm sharing this list of resources here in the hope that it helps with your study toward the Solutions Architect Exam. I'll continue to revise it over time.
Official Exam Guide - What's in scope for the exam? How many questions? All of that is answered here.
If you are brand new to the cloud there is a free 10 hour digital training course called Cloud Practitioner Essentials. Take the course and you should be ready to take the CPE foundational certification exam. These are the basics of the AWS cloud. A great intro to the AWS cloud for both technical people and business leaders. You also can also earn a Credly badge at the end of the course.
- [PDF] AWS Ramp-Up Guide: Architect - The Official list of good study resources!
- AWS Documentation -S3 has been available since 2006. Are those results from 2012 the search engine gave you showing the most up to date info? - Want current info on a service? Check out the docs.
- Tagging Best Practices - Tag it all!!
- AWS Acceptable Use Policy - Can I SPAM people with email from AWS? Umm . . . NO!
- AWS Free Tier - There are both always free and free for the first 12 Months of your account resources. Pro Tip: Set an AWS budget alert if you pass free tier limits!
- AWS Architect responsibilities - What does a Solutions Architect do?
- Installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS CLI - The cool kids use the CLI. Are you a cool kid?
- AWS Global Infrastructure - What's a Region? What's an Availability zone? You know those? How about a Wavelength zone?
- AWS Data Center Security - How is my data secured?
- [YOUTUBE] AWS re:Invent 2016: Amazon Global Network Overview with James Hamilton - An oldie but a goodie!
- AWS Well-Architected - These are the published AWS best practices for building architecture on AWS.
- AWS account root user - Don't use this account for day to day work - Read if you don't know why.
- Types of AWS credentials - Or how do I get my python script to work with AWS?
- AWS Policy Generator - Don't yet speak JSON? Use this.
- IAM Policy Simulator (Inside the AWS Management console)
- IAM JSON policy elements reference - JSON is a markup language that is both human and machine readable.
- Policy evaluation logic - If there is a resource policy on a bucket and an identity based policy in conflict who wins? You do, if you know this.
- Using AWS IAM Access Analyzer - Am I sharing resources with an external account?
- Identity providers and federation - Can my Active Directory or Facebook users have access?
- Multi Account Access with IAM Identity Center - My company has 25 accounts and I need access to several of them. Can I do this with a single login? Yes.
- [WIKIPEDIA] "What IP ranges are safe to use for my VPC?" - IPv4 / IPv6 and private addressing.
- An interactive IP address and CIDR range visualizer - Great tool to figure out CIDR Ranges.
- Get started with Amazon VPC - How do I build a network in the cloud?
- Overview of security in Amazon VPC It's not just firewalls.
- Amazon Virtual Private Cloud Connectivity Options There is more than just VPNs? Oh yes.
- Adding MACsec security to AWS Direct Connect connections Deeper depth topic than associate level but good to know for Direct Connect connections.
- Centralize access using VPC interface endpoints to access AWS services across multiple VPCs - Interface endpoints and Gateway endpoint are a must when building VPC interaction with other AWS services.
- Amazon Route 53: Choosing a routing policy - The many ways of DNS routing! Don't forget health checks!
- Amazon EC2 Instance Types What the difference between an m5.xlarge and a c5.xlarge instance?
- Instance purchasing options You're not paying full price on everything? Are you?
- Amazon EBS volume types - Primarily SSD Storage but, If you want the most economical block store, Spinning Rust is still an option.
- Attach a volume to multiple instances with Amazon EBS Multi-Attach I'm occasionally asked if EBS can be attached to multiple instance at the same time. The answer is, it depends. What does it depend on? This link will fill you in.
- Tutorial: Create a Lambda function with the console - Here's a tutorial you can do with AWS Free Tier - Free tier gives you 3.2 million seconds of compute free, every month for the life of the account.
- Tutorial: Configuring a static website on Amazon S3 - Another tutorial - AWS free tier gives 5GB of S3 storage free per month for the first 12 months. Put that free tier to use, doing this tutorial.
- Amazon S3 Storage Classes - Several different ways to pay for storage on S3. Know this well to optimize cost!
- Amazon EFS features - Want to attach multiple instances/containers in multiple availability zones to a file store?
- AWS Snow Family FAQs - Sometimes the UPS delivery person transfers data faster than the internet. Great Snow usage example here.
- Purpose-Built Databases on AWS - You can run databases on EC2, but is there a better way?
- What is a Relational Database? - Hint - It's not a list of everyone in your family.
- What is NoSQL? The 'No' stands for NotOnly or No. SQL is a language created in the 1970s.
- Tutorial: Create a web server and an Amazon RDS DB instance - Both the EC2 instance and RDS instances may be free tier eligible during the first 12 months of your account.
- Working with read replicas Or how can I scale my relational database?
- What is Amazon Aurora? Bringing MySQL and PostgreSQL to scale for less cost than other commercial database engines. Oh, and it can go serverless!
- In-Memory Acceleration with DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) Dynamo DB has single digit millisecond response times. What if I need microsecond response times?
- Amazon EventBridge features Can my application respond to things like CloudTrail events? Sure, embrace the power of event driven architecture!
- Creating a billing alarm to monitor your estimated AWS charges - You should do this, especially for your free-tier account!
- CloudTrail supported services and integrations - CloudTrail? Sounds like audit trail. Pretty much describes the service.
- Working with AWS CloudFormation templates Infrastructure As Code!
Manual processes deploying to production risk human error. IAC is a better way!
- AWS X-Ray features - Or how do I observe my distributed micro-service based application?
- Basic Amazon SQS architecture - Pop quiz - What was the second service AWS introduced back in 2006? The answer is here!
- Getting started with Amazon SNS You ever get a text message or email from a web based application? Good chance it was sent by this service.
- What is AWS Shield - Shield is a transgovernmental intelligence service that protects the Earth from super human peril. Wait. That was in a Marvel movie. Correction . . .
AWS Shield is a managed service that protects against DDOS attack. - AWS Outposts Family It's the cloud, but on premise.
Other Links
AWS Pricing Calculator https://calculator.aws - How much does a t3.xlarge instance with a 20GIB gp3 EBS volume cost per month in Oregon with on-demand pricing?
AWS Architectural Icons for PowerPoint That cool thing you built in the cloud - You're going to diagram it. Right!?
Any opinions in this post are those of the individual author and may not reflect the opinions of AWS.