Systems Operations Deep Dive Resources

• [PDF] AWS Ramp-Up Guide: SysOps Administrator - The Official list of good study resources!
• AWS Documentation -EC2 has been available since 2006. Are those results from 20120 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
• 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 Well-Architected Framework - The Best Practices for utilizing AWS!
  • Operational Excellence Pillar: AWS Well-Architected Framework - The SysOps specific best practices for operating on AWS.

• “What is IAM” in the AWS Identity and Access Management User Guide
• Users, Groups and Roles - The Principles in IAM - Take some time and really learn about roles - You will use them quite a bit - Want to give an instance access to a database? Use a Role. Want to give an Facebook/Apple/Google user access to photos in an app? Use a Role. Want a promotion at work? Maybe implement roles properly. Can't hurt.
• “Policies and permissions in IAM” in the AWS Identity and Access Management User Guide Understanding Policies is a key skill that you will need. They are written in JSON. (JSON is just a text markup that stores data in a format that is easy for both people and machines to read.)
• “Granting a user permissions to pass a role to an AWS service” in the AWS Identity and Access Management User Guide - To get this concept - understanding IAM roles and policies are a prerequisite.
• “Policy evaluation logic” in the AWS Identity and Access Management User Guide - TLDR - Deny is Implicit. Deny always beats Allow. (Like rock beats scissor in Rock Paper Scissor )
• “Get started using permissions with AWS managed policies” in the AWS Identity and Access Management User Guide - Scared of Policies? Start here.
• “IAM Multi-factor authentication” You are doing this. Right‽
• “Rotate credentials regularly” in the AWS Identity and Access Management User Guide: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/best-practices.html#rotate-credentials
• “Understanding the credential report format” in the AWS Identity and Access Management User Guide
• “Testing IAM policies with the IAM policy simulator” Does that policy you just wrote work? Of course it does. Everything you write always works perfectly the first time.
  Me, I need to test before I deploy.
• “AWS global condition context keys “ Using Conditions in your IAM Policies. Know that the request context is information about the requesting principle (user/group/role) that can be used as a condition in a policy. You can have a condition to grant/deny access based on things like dates/times/ipaddress ranges.
• “Controlling access to and for IAM users and roles using tags”: Tag Everything!!
• “Installing, updating, and uninstalling the AWS CLI” in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide The cool kids use the CLI. Are you a cool kid? Want to be cool and learn the CLI easily? Use CodeWhisperer for CLI a Generative AI tool for the command line. It will also help you with bash scripting, git and other commandline tasks you do.
• “AWS Systems Manager Session Manager” in the AWS Systems Manager User Guide https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/session-manager.html
• “AWS Config Managed Rules” in the AWS Config Developer Guide http://docs.aws.amazon.com/config/latest/developerguide/evaluate-config_use-managed-rules.html
• “Setting Up AWS Config with the Console” https://docs.aws.amazon.com/config/latest/developerguide/gs-console.html
• “Setting Up AWS Config Rules with the Console” https://docs.aws.amazon.com/config/latest/developerguide/setting-up-aws-config-rules-with-console.html
• “JMESPath Tutorial” https://jmespath.org/tutorial.html

• “Tagging Best Practices” If you aren't tagging, you're Wrong! Tag it! All of it!
  • “Tagging naming limits and requirements”
  • Using Tags in Policies and then there are Tag Policies in AWS Organizations. Two different concepts that sound similar.
  • Tagging governance
• “What are AWS Resource Groups” in the AWS Resource Groups User Guide
• Tagging Governance
• “Tag policies” in the AWS Organizations User Guide
• “Amazon Machine Images (AMI)” in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances
• “Configuring a Windows instance using EC2Launch” in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Windows Instances
• “How can I utilize user data to automatically execute a script with every restart of my Amazon EC2 instance?” in the Knowledge Center
• “Creating an Amazon EBS-backed Linux AMI” in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances
• “Copying an AMI” in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances
• “EC2 Image Builder”
• “What is AWS Control Tower?” Muilti account control with pre-built best practices baked in.
• “Retrieving instance metadata” in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances - The definition of meta is "referring to itself" So instance meta data is data about the instance.
  • “Instance metadata and user data”
• “Run commands on your Linux instance at launch”

CloudFormation Resources

• “Using the AWS CloudFormation Template Editor for Visual Studio” in the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio User Guide
• “The AWS CloudFormation Template Editor” in the AWS Toolkit Editor for Eclipse User Guide
• “Resources” in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide
• “Ref” in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide
• “Intrinsic function reference” in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide
• “Parameters” in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide
• “Pseudo Parameters Reference” in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide
• “Mappings” in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide
• “cloudformation-stack-drift-detection-check” in the AWS Config Developer Guide https://docs.aws.amazon.com/config/latest/developerguide/cloudformation-stack-drift-detection-check.html
• “CloudFormation helper scripts reference” in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide
• “cfn-init” in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide
• “Troubleshooting AWS CloudFormation” in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide
• “create-stack” in the AWS CLI Command Reference
• “continue-update-rollback” in the AWS CLI Command Reference
• “Continue Rolling Back an Update” in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide
• “AWS CloudFormation Best Practices”
• “Working with AWS CloudFormation StackSets”
• “Walkthrough: Updating a stack” in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide
• “Prevent updates to stack resources” in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide
• “What Is AWS Service Catalog?” AWS Service Catalog Administrator Guide - Push cloud formation templates to other accounts in you AWS Organization.
• “Troubleshooting AWS CloudFormation” in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide
• “AWS CloudFormation Templates” Several examples here - Setup a WordPress blog in 5 minutes with Cloud Formation!
  • US West (N. California) region
• “AWS Serverless Application Model ”
• “AWS Cloud Development Kit”
• “AWS CloudFormation API Reference ”
• “Best Practices for Deploying Applications on AWS CloudFormation Stacks ”