I recently went through the Pluralsight course “Amazon Web Services (AWS) Fundamentals for System Administrators,” a 7-hour course designed to provide an in-depth understanding of AWS. Below, I’ll share my key takeaways, observations, and comparisons with Microsoft Azure, which might be useful for those who already have cloud experience, especially on the Azure platform.

Initial Thoughts

For those who are already experienced in Azure, particularly with system administration, I found that the first few sections of the course are more of a refresher. They cover basic cloud concepts like “What is cloud computing?” and “Why cloud?”—topics most cloud professionals are already familiar with. If you’re confident in your cloud knowledge, I recommend jumping straight to the storage section, where things get more AWS-specific.

AWS: A Brief History

The course begins with a brief history of AWS and cloud computing:

  • AWS was launched in July 2002.
  • S3 (Simple Storage Service) debuted in March 2006, offering pay-as-you-go storage.
  • EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) followed in August 2006, revolutionizing virtual machine hosting.
  • Microsoft Azure’s Beta release came later, in November 2009, followed by a full push into IaaS by August 2013.

While AWS led the cloud revolution, the course offers some insights into how other major players entered the market, including Google and Microsoft.

Key AWS Concepts and Services

Elastic Computing and Global Infrastructure

A core concept of AWS is elastic computing, which refers to the cloud’s ability to scale resources as needed. AWS achieves this through its global infrastructure, made up of regions and availability zones, which allow for geographical redundancy and high availability.

AWS Security

Security on AWS operates under a Shared Responsibility Model:

  • AWS responsibilities: AWS takes care of security for the infrastructure layer—things like data centers, storage, and networks.
  • Customer responsibilities: Users are responsible for securing their own data, applications, operating systems, and network configurations (e.g., using multi-factor authentication and proper encryption).

AWS Free Tier

This section was pretty basic, covering AWS’ Free Tier, which allows users to experiment with AWS services at no cost for a limited time. If you’ve been using Azure’s free offerings, this is nothing new.

Diving Deeper: AWS Storage

Ephemeral Storage & S3

S3 and ephemeral storage were covered in detail. Key differences from Azure’s Blob Storage include:

  • Granularity: AWS allows for reduced redundancy and encryption settings at the file level, while Azure applies these settings at the storage account level.
  • Control: AWS provides more granular access control at the file level, compared to Azure’s container-level access control.

EBS & Glacier

EBS (Elastic Block Storage) and Glacier offer flexible storage options for EC2. Compared to Azure:

  • Azure Blob Storage doubles as the storage for Azure Virtual Machines, while AWS uses the dedicated EBS service for this purpose.
  • Performance: EBS offers performance levels up to 4000 IOPS, while Azure provides SSD-based Premium storage and magnetic-based Standard storage.

Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2)

EC2 is AWS’ virtual machine service, analogous to Azure’s Virtual Machines. Here’s a quick cheat sheet for EC2 terminology:

  • EC2 instances: Virtual Machines
  • AMI (Amazon Machine Image): Virtual Machine templates
  • EBS: Virtual Disk
  • IAM: Delegated Administration
  • Route 53: AWS DNS

EC2 Pricing Models

AWS offers several pricing options for EC2, each suited for different use cases:

  • On-Demand: No commitment, pay as you go. Most expensive.
  • Reserved Instances (RI): Commit to a 1 or 3-year term for up to 60% savings.
  • Spot Instances: The cheapest option, but it’s based on bidding for unused AWS capacity and lacks guarantees.

AWS Networking, CloudWatch, and Auto Scaling

The course also covers AWS’ networking options, including VPC (Virtual Private Cloud), which offers several ways to connect resources securely:

  • Internet Gateway: Connects the VPC to the internet.
  • Direct Connect: Provides dedicated, isolated connections to a VPC with high availability.
  • VPC Peering: Allows secure networking between different VPCs, but only within a region.

Other essential services like Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) and Route 53 (DNS) were also explained, with comparisons drawn to Azure’s equivalent offerings.

Database Services, APIs, and AWS Lambda

When it comes to databases, AWS offers a rich array of services, including:

  • RDS (Relational Database Service): Supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and AWS Aurora.
  • DynamoDB: A managed NoSQL database.
  • Lambda: AWS’ serverless compute service, equivalent to Azure Functions, allows you to run code in response to events without provisioning servers.

AWS Simple Services: SES, SQS, and SNS

AWS provides several messaging and communication services, each with its unique functionality:

  • SES (Simple Email Service): A bulk email-sending service.
  • SQS (Simple Queue Service): AWS’ queuing service for messaging between distributed systems.
  • SNS (Simple Notification Service): Push messaging, which can trigger various actions across AWS resources.

CloudFront, CloudFormation, and Elastic Beanstalk

Finally, the course touches on AWS services for content delivery and infrastructure automation:

  • CloudFront: AWS’ CDN (Content Delivery Network) that caches content across edge locations worldwide.
  • CloudFormation: Automates resource provisioning, similar to Azure’s Resource Manager (ARM).
  • Elastic Beanstalk: A platform-as-a-service offering that simplifies application deployment on AWS.

Final Thoughts

If you’re coming from a strong Azure background, the AWS fundamentals covered in this course will feel familiar, but it’s still worth going through the sections on storage, networking, and databases for the AWS-specific nuances. AWS and Azure offer many similar services, but their implementations and the level of control you get over those services can differ in subtle but important ways.

Overall, this course is a solid introduction to AWS system administration, even if you’re experienced with another cloud provider.