Overview
It is easy to assume that AWS is just someone else's servers, or that once you can name the big services you understand the platform. AWS is the largest cloud platform in the world, and for many organizations it is simply where the business runs. The hard part for newcomers is not any single service: it is the sheer size of the catalog, and knowing which handful of concepts actually matter before the rest can make sense.
This is a hands-on, foundation course. It is aligned to the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification, but it deliberately teaches less than the full exam blueprint and teaches it more thoroughly: first what the cloud changes and how AWS is organized, then the core compute, storage, networking, and database services, then security, pricing, and cost management. Broader service coverage and focused exam practice live in the Extended Version. Every module includes a lab in a live AWS account, and each module builds on the one before.
Who Should Attend
- Professionals in technical-adjacent roles (sales, project management, support, finance) who need to speak AWS fluently
- Developers and IT staff beginning to work with AWS
- Anyone preparing for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam
Learners who want a vendor-neutral grounding before committing to AWS should consider Cloud Computing Essentials first.
Prerequisites
- General comfort with computers and the web
- No AWS or cloud experience required
What You'll Be Able to Do
- Navigate a live AWS account and locate the core services a real workload depends on
- Launch an EC2 instance and serve files from an S3 bucket, and check that both work
- Provision a managed database and connect an application to it
- Create IAM users and roles that follow least privilege, then verify the access is correct
- Build a budget with alerts and trace where a sample bill comes from before it surprises anyone
- Prepare for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam by reasoning through exam-style questions
Course Outline
Day one: cloud thinking and the core services
- What the Cloud Changes
- From buying servers to renting capability: the cloud value proposition
- How AWS is organized: accounts, regions, and availability zones
- Reading the AWS console without being overwhelmed
- Lab: tour a live AWS account and locate the services you will use all week
- Compute and Storage
- EC2: virtual machines, instance types, and when to use them
- S3: object storage, buckets, and storage classes
- Serverless in one idea: what Lambda is for
- Lab: launch an EC2 instance and serve files from an S3 bucket
- Networking and Databases
- VPCs in plain language: your private network in the cloud
- Managed databases: RDS and DynamoDB, and choosing between them
- Lab: stand up a managed database and connect an application to it
Day two: security, cost, and confidence
- Security and Identity
- The shared responsibility model: what AWS secures and what you must
- IAM: users, groups, roles, and least privilege
- Where CloudTrail and the broader security services fit, briefly
- Lab: create IAM users and roles that follow least privilege, then verify them
- Pricing and Cost Management
- How AWS pricing actually works: on-demand, reserved capacity, and the free tier
- Budgets, Cost Explorer, and keeping the bill from surprising anyone
- Support plans and when each makes sense
- Lab: build a budget with alerts and trace where a sample bill comes from
- Well-Architected and the Exam
- The Well-Architected Framework as a thinking tool, not a checklist
- Mapping what you have learned to the Cloud Practitioner exam domains
- A study plan and practice-question strategy
- Lab: work through exam-style questions and reason out the answers together
Extended Version
The three-day version keeps the same gradient and adds breadth and deeper exam preparation:
- A wider tour of the AWS catalog: containers, analytics, and AI services in context
- Migration and hybrid concepts: how organizations actually move to AWS
- Deeper cost-optimization practice with realistic pricing scenarios
- A capstone: design a small, well-architected AWS solution and defend it, followed by a full practice exam