Master AWS Cloud Computing From Scratch

Clear, interactive, and structured AWS lessons designed for absolute beginners.

COURSE SYLLABUS
1. AWS Introduction
Introduction to AWS What is AWS? AWS Global Infrastructure AWS Management Console AWS Account Setup Root User vs IAM User Free Tier & Billing Safety
2. Identity & Access Management
Introduction to IAM IAM Users IAM Groups IAM Policies IAM Roles Multi-Factor Authentication
3. Amazon EC2
Introduction to EC2 EC2 Basics EC2 Instance Types Launch an EC2 Instance Security Groups Key Pairs Elastic Block Store (EBS)
4. Amazon S3
Introduction to S3 S3 Concepts S3 Buckets S3 Objects & Keys Versioning Bucket Policies
5. Amazon VPC
Introduction to VPC VPC Concepts Subnets Route Tables Internet Gateway NAT Gateway VPC Security Groups
6. Amazon RDS
Introduction to RDS RDS Concepts Database Engines Create RDS Database Backups
7. AWS Lambda
Introduction to Lambda Lambda Concepts Lambda Functions Triggers Environment Variables
8. Amazon CloudWatch
Introduction to CloudWatch CloudWatch Concepts Metrics CloudWatch Logs Alarms
9. Elastic Load Balancing
Introduction to Elastic Load Balancing ELB Concepts Application Load Balancer (ALB) Network Load Balancer (NLB) Gateway Load Balancer Target Groups Health Checks Listeners & Rules

Start With the Cloud Mental Model

Cloud computing means using computing resources such as servers, storage, networking and databases on demand instead of owning and maintaining all physical infrastructure yourself. AWS provides these capabilities as managed services that you configure through a console, APIs or command-line tools.

Why it matters

Before learning individual service names, understand the infrastructure layers: identity controls who can act, networking controls where traffic can travel, compute runs workloads, storage holds files, databases hold structured records, and monitoring tells you what is happening.

How it works

A simple mental model is User → DNS/entry point → network → compute → database/storage → response, while IAM and security controls protect access and CloudWatch provides operational visibility.

Real-world example: For a web application, a browser may reach an application through DNS and a load balancer, the application can run on EC2, structured records can live in RDS, files can live in S3, and CloudWatch can collect operational signals.
A short AWS history

AWS grew from Amazon's experience operating large-scale technology infrastructure. Amazon Web Services launched its first major infrastructure services in 2006, including Amazon S3 for object storage and Amazon EC2 for on-demand compute.

The important lesson is not to memorize dates: cloud infrastructure separates responsibilities into services that can be provisioned on demand and combined into larger architectures.

Infrastructure Mental Model
Identity
IAM
Network
VPC
Compute
EC2 / Lambda
Data
S3 / RDS

Core Concept

AWS is a cloud platform that provides on-demand compute, storage, networking, databases, security and monitoring services.

Learn the service categories first; then practice by building small architectures.

AWS Service Production Architecture Secure • Scalable • Observable

What you should remember

Key idea

AWS is a cloud platform that provides on-demand compute, storage, networking, databases, security and monitoring services.

Key idea

Learn the service categories first; then practice by building small architectures.

Real-world example

Use a realistic cloud workload and focus on the responsibility of this AWS service.

User → AWS service → application → data / response

Choose the service that matches the responsibility instead of forcing every workload into one resource.

# Conceptual workflow aws-service --resource example # Verify configuration → test → monitor → clean up
Practice tip: Build the smallest possible lab, verify the result, then remove resources you no longer need.

Quick Test

1 Question

What is the main idea of this AWS lesson?

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