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The content library.

Case studies, interview prep, and articles, browsable by collection, plus community questions answered in the open. New content appears live.

Case Studies Community Questions Downloads

ToolsCareer Path Finder3 minutes Salary Explorer30 roles

0
The Field KitEvery episode ends with a tool. Take it into your next review.Enter→
4
Case StudiesHow real systems were reasoned about, the decision, not just the diagram.Enter→
3
Interview PrepCommon interview questions and how to think about answering them, drawn from the courses.Enter→
24
ArticlesLonger pieces on cloud, cybersecurity, career, and the judgment behind both.Enter→
3
DownloadsTextbooks, slide decks, and short video clips, free to download.Enter→

Community Questions

Answer
Keep reading, and don't miss the expert sessions where concepts are broken down. Use a variety of materials, follow good blog posts or YouTube videos for deeper explanations, and take notes during every study session, on paper, a jotter, or a digital notepad. Revisit those notes at intervals through the day.

Retention isn't talent; it's spaced repetition and notes you actually go back to.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Build a good knowledge of operating systems, especially Linux, and server configuration. Learn computer networking and load balancing, and know how to use web servers like Apache or Nginx. Get familiar with core AWS services such as EC2, databases, VPC, network interfaces, security groups, S3, and Elastic Block Store. You should also learn at least one programming language such as Python, Go, or Java so you can use the SDKs effectively.

Tools change; the fundamentals, operating systems, networking, and one solid language, are what compound over a career.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
All of the AWS tracks and specializations matter for future trends, whether AI/ML, IoT, serverless, or others. Rather than chasing the single hottest area, explore the tracks that align with your strengths.

The right track to bet on isn't the trendiest, it's the one that fits how you already think and work.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
With major providers like AWS and Microsoft opening offices and building data centers in parts of Africa, cloud adoption on the continent is rising and will keep growing in the years to come.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a service that provides scalable computing capacity in the AWS cloud. It removes the need to invest in hardware upfront, so you can develop and deploy applications faster.

You can use EC2 to launch as many or as few virtual servers as you need, configure security and networking, and manage storage. It lets you scale up or down to handle changes in demand or spikes in popularity, reducing the need to forecast traffic.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
You'll be required to take a recertification exam to keep your certification valid.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
A good starting point is hosting a static web application with Amazon S3 static website hosting, or creating a simple network. From there you can take on progressively more involved projects.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the targeted duration between the moment of failure and the point where operations resume.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
An AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is a logically isolated virtual network in which you launch your AWS resources. Think of it like a traditional on-premises network, only more scalable and fully managed.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
A serverless application still runs on a server, the server is simply abstracted away and the cloud provider manages the infrastructure for you. Serverless technologies feature automatic scaling, built-in high availability, and pay-for-use billing, which increases agility and optimizes cost. They also remove infrastructure tasks like capacity provisioning and patching, so you can focus on writing code that serves your customers. On AWS, serverless typically starts with AWS Lambda, an event-driven compute service integrated with over 200 AWS and SaaS services.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
A Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the maximum acceptable age of the data you can restore from, in other words, how much recent data you can afford to lose.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
CDN stands for Content Delivery Network, a service that distributes content geographically via data centers close to your customers. Part of it is what's known as edge locations (cache proxies) that let users get content quickly thanks to caching and geographic distribution. AWS CloudFront is one of the foremost content delivery services engineers use to serve their applications.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
It largely depends on your experience, the location of the role, and the financial capacity of the company hiring. It's always a good idea to research a company's pay as you apply. Sites like Glassdoor, Jefferson Frank, and Indeed publish average AWS salary data you can filter to your location.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
A Docker image is a read-only template with instructions for creating a Docker container. You can find the details in Docker's official documentation.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
A snapshot is a point-in-time copy of your data or application. In AWS, it can capture the data, services, or applications in your account at a moment in time. You can use a snapshot for disaster recovery, to migrate an application, or to deploy a copy of your application in another Region.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
System design is the process of defining the elements of a system, its architecture, modules and components, the interfaces between them, and the data that flows through it. In cloud computing you can think of it as the architectural diagram or template. Just as a building's quality depends on its architectural layout, the quality of cloud infrastructure is determined by its architectural design.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
It comes down to individual preference. A Solutions Architect focuses more on planning, deploying, and managing customer cloud infrastructure using the AWS Well-Architected Framework, so you need to enjoy listening to customer pain points and proposing the most suitable, cost-effective solution. An AWS DevOps engineer builds on top of DevOps practices, working to ensure seamless developer and operations collaboration using tools for continuous integration, delivery, and deployment in the AWS cloud.

The deciding factor isn't the certification, it's which problems you'd rather own: the customer's trade-offs, or the delivery pipeline.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Cloud deployment models (public, private, hybrid) define where the cloud service is hosted and managed. Cloud service models (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS) define what is offered.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Latency in cloud computing is the time it takes for a deployed application or website to reach a user's device when they visit. If a page takes a long time to load, the application has high latency; if it loads quickly, it has low latency. It is a major factor in user experience and an application's success, slow loads lead to frustration. One responsibility of a cloud engineer is to keep latency low so the application is delivered fast, which you can achieve with caching or by deploying to the Region, Availability Zone, or edge location closest to your users.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Several free tools work well for AWS architecture diagrams, including draw.io, Lucidchart, and Microsoft Visio.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
An AWS snapshot is a point-in-time copy of an Amazon EBS volume for an EC2 instance, with limited storage and recovery options. An EC2 backup is a more comprehensive and flexible copy of your workloads, offering more reliable protection and faster, more consistent recovery.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Direct Connect (gateway) is used for point-to-point connections between an on-premises data center and a single VPC, while Transit Gateway connects multiple VPCs and remote networks in a hub-and-spoke architecture.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
In AWS IAM, conflicting policies are resolved by clear rules, the most prominent being that an explicit Deny always takes priority over an Allow.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
In cloud computing, redundancy means having standby resources deployed so that if the main resource becomes unavailable, a backup can take over.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
An instance is another name for an EC2 server. EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is an easily resizable AWS service used to run applications such as websites and databases in the cloud. It has its own CPU, RAM, operating system, and networking capacity, think of it as a powerful computer, managed and secured by AWS. The terms instance, server, and virtual machine are used interchangeably for EC2. "Instance" originally referred to the operating system in the server, but over time it has come to describe the EC2 machine itself.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Yes, you can. The defining quality of a cloud engineer is to keep learning: the more you learn, the better you work with the technology. Keeping abreast of emerging AWS services, attending conferences and events, and reading good documentation are how you become sought-after. The AWS best practices are a solid place to start.

The edge was never the background, it's the discipline to keep learning faster than the tools change.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Work on real projects. You stand a far better chance when you can show a recruiter what you've actually done. Labs that mimic real-life situations are a good source, and you should document each project as you go.

List those projects on your LinkedIn profile or your résumé as real experience. A strong edge is to write about your learning: blog about it, post on LinkedIn or GitHub, or make short videos of what you build.

Recruiters don't hire credentials, they hire demonstrated judgment, and shipped projects are how you prove it.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
IAM groups are a way of grouping IAM users and roles; permissions given to the group pass to its members. Security groups act like a firewall for your EC2 instances, determining which machines can connect and on which ports. In short, IAM governs identity and permissions, while security groups govern network access.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Amazon Rekognition adds image and video analysis to your applications, identifying objects, people, text, scenes, and activities, detecting inappropriate content, and providing facial analysis and search, with no machine learning expertise required. Amazon Comprehend is a natural language processing service that finds insights and relationships in text: it identifies language, extracts key phrases, places, people, brands, and events, gauges sentiment, analyzes tokens and parts of speech, and can organize text by topic. In short, Rekognition is for images and video; Comprehend is for text.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
The key difference is scope. An IAM policy works at the level of an individual user or account, granting permissions on what a user or service can do. A Service Control Policy (SCP) works at the Organizational Unit (OU) level. When organizations group multiple AWS accounts together, SCPs govern that group, while IAM policies apply within a single account, multiple accounts versus a single account.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Recruiters may lean toward candidates with a Computer Science or Computer Engineering degree. But without one, you can build up your profile: ship as many projects as you can, create technical documentation and content, learn as many in-demand tools as possible, and deliberately develop your problem-solving skills.

A degree signals ability; a portfolio proves it, and proof usually wins.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Even though security groups are stateful, the outbound rules section still lets you control egress. You can modify inbound rules to deny specific inbound traffic, while by default all outbound traffic is allowed, the section exists so you can tighten that when you need to.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
As a best practice, deploy your application to the Region closest to your customers. This improves the application's performance and reduces latency. You can check the closest Region and Availability Zone to your customers from the AWS Region list.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Horizontal scaling, often called scaling out, means adding more machines to your pool of resources, like adding lanes to a highway to handle more traffic. Vertical scaling, or scaling up, means increasing the capacity of an existing machine, more CPU, memory, or storage, like upgrading a car's engine for speed. Each strategy has its own advantages and trade-offs.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
S3 Block Public Access blocks all public access to a bucket, effectively making it private, and controls access to the bucket and its objects for all users (you can still allow specific users via an Access Control List). IAM policies grant a user or service permission on what they can do in an account, for example, create S3 buckets but not delete them. Bucket policies work similarly to IAM policies but apply only at the bucket level, controlling what happens to a bucket and its objects.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Both EFS and EBS are storage services in AWS. EFS (Elastic File System) is designed for use across multiple EC2 machines and Availability Zones, while EBS (Elastic Block Store) is designed as fast, reliable block storage for a single machine.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
An IAM group places certain IAM users together with a specific set of permissions to access certain resources such as EC2 or S3. AWS Organizations, through Organizational Units, is a way to manage multiple AWS accounts and apply policies across a group of accounts.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
As a beginner, you don't need previous programming knowledge to work with AWS services. A basic understanding of IT is a good starting point. That said, you should learn one programming language as you climb the ladder.

It makes things easier, and you can implement more complex solutions once you know a language. But to start, you can work with many AWS services without any programming knowledge. A good place to deepen your understanding is the AWS Well-Architected Framework and the AWS White Papers.

The starting requirement was never a language, it's the willingness to keep leveling up as the problems get harder.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
AWS Auto Scaling is used when you have many deployed services that need to scale automatically, for example scaling databases, EC2, and more based on each service's utilization metrics. EC2 Auto Scaling deals specifically with EC2 instances only.

The two work together: AWS Auto Scaling can coordinate EC2 Auto Scaling to monitor scaling policies and act accordingly. For ease of configuration and management, EC2 Auto Scaling is preferred when no other service is involved.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
The easiest way is to use an online subnet calculator: enter the IP address, choose the number of subnets you want to create, and it returns the range for each subnet. Most subnet calculators are free to use.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
A good understanding of any programming language improves your chances of getting an AWS job. However, you don't need to be an expert programmer, especially for an entry-level cloud engineer role. AWS provides both a web console and a command-line interface to interact with its services.

Programming is leverage, not a gate, enough to be dangerous beats waiting until you're an expert.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Yes. An IAM user with full access can be used to create other users, groups, roles, and resources with attached policies, that's exactly what AWS recommends.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Not quite. AWS Lambda falls under the serverless (Functions as a Service) model, where the underlying platform isn't managed or configured by the customer. Elastic Beanstalk falls under Platform as a Service, because customers have some control over the platform even though AWS manages the underlying infrastructure.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
The skills that land an entry-level cloud role are almost inexhaustible, but beyond AWS certification and knowledge, recruiters look for both hard and soft skills: the ability to build and document real projects, familiarity with in-demand tools, communication, and above all problem-solving.

Certifications open the door; problem-solving and communication are what keep you in the room.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Data stored in S3 are called objects, media, PDFs, and the like, and they're unstructured, with effectively unlimited capacity. Databases, by contrast, store structured data, often sharing relationships with one another in the form of table rows and columns.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
They're different. A community cloud is a shared cloud infrastructure used by a specific group with common interests, such as a shared mission, security policies, applications, or services. A public cloud offers resources from a third-party provider over the internet, shared by any organizations and individuals who want to use or purchase them.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Yes. Edge locations are data centers used to deliver content quickly to your users, the site nearest to them.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Keep reading, and don't miss the expert sessions where concepts are broken down. Use a variety of materials, follow good blog posts or YouTube videos for deeper explanations, and take notes during every study session, on paper, a jotter, or a digital notepad. Revisit those notes at intervals through the day.

Retention isn't talent; it's spaced repetition and notes you actually go back to.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Build a good knowledge of operating systems, especially Linux, and server configuration. Learn computer networking and load balancing, and know how to use web servers like Apache or Nginx. Get familiar with core AWS services such as EC2, databases, VPC, network interfaces, security groups, S3, and Elastic Block Store. You should also learn at least one programming language such as Python, Go, or Java so you can use the SDKs effectively.

Tools change; the fundamentals, operating systems, networking, and one solid language, are what compound over a career.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
All of the AWS tracks and specializations matter for future trends, whether AI/ML, IoT, serverless, or others. Rather than chasing the single hottest area, explore the tracks that align with your strengths.

The right track to bet on isn't the trendiest, it's the one that fits how you already think and work.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
With major providers like AWS and Microsoft opening offices and building data centers in parts of Africa, cloud adoption on the continent is rising and will keep growing in the years to come.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a service that provides scalable computing capacity in the AWS cloud. It removes the need to invest in hardware upfront, so you can develop and deploy applications faster.

You can use EC2 to launch as many or as few virtual servers as you need, configure security and networking, and manage storage. It lets you scale up or down to handle changes in demand or spikes in popularity, reducing the need to forecast traffic.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
You'll be required to take a recertification exam to keep your certification valid.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
A good starting point is hosting a static web application with Amazon S3 static website hosting, or creating a simple network. From there you can take on progressively more involved projects.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the targeted duration between the moment of failure and the point where operations resume.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
An AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is a logically isolated virtual network in which you launch your AWS resources. Think of it like a traditional on-premises network, only more scalable and fully managed.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
A serverless application still runs on a server, the server is simply abstracted away and the cloud provider manages the infrastructure for you. Serverless technologies feature automatic scaling, built-in high availability, and pay-for-use billing, which increases agility and optimizes cost. They also remove infrastructure tasks like capacity provisioning and patching, so you can focus on writing code that serves your customers. On AWS, serverless typically starts with AWS Lambda, an event-driven compute service integrated with over 200 AWS and SaaS services.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
A Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the maximum acceptable age of the data you can restore from, in other words, how much recent data you can afford to lose.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
CDN stands for Content Delivery Network, a service that distributes content geographically via data centers close to your customers. Part of it is what's known as edge locations (cache proxies) that let users get content quickly thanks to caching and geographic distribution. AWS CloudFront is one of the foremost content delivery services engineers use to serve their applications.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
It largely depends on your experience, the location of the role, and the financial capacity of the company hiring. It's always a good idea to research a company's pay as you apply. Sites like Glassdoor, Jefferson Frank, and Indeed publish average AWS salary data you can filter to your location.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
A Docker image is a read-only template with instructions for creating a Docker container. You can find the details in Docker's official documentation.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
A snapshot is a point-in-time copy of your data or application. In AWS, it can capture the data, services, or applications in your account at a moment in time. You can use a snapshot for disaster recovery, to migrate an application, or to deploy a copy of your application in another Region.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
System design is the process of defining the elements of a system, its architecture, modules and components, the interfaces between them, and the data that flows through it. In cloud computing you can think of it as the architectural diagram or template. Just as a building's quality depends on its architectural layout, the quality of cloud infrastructure is determined by its architectural design.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
It comes down to individual preference. A Solutions Architect focuses more on planning, deploying, and managing customer cloud infrastructure using the AWS Well-Architected Framework, so you need to enjoy listening to customer pain points and proposing the most suitable, cost-effective solution. An AWS DevOps engineer builds on top of DevOps practices, working to ensure seamless developer and operations collaboration using tools for continuous integration, delivery, and deployment in the AWS cloud.

The deciding factor isn't the certification, it's which problems you'd rather own: the customer's trade-offs, or the delivery pipeline.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Cloud deployment models (public, private, hybrid) define where the cloud service is hosted and managed. Cloud service models (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS) define what is offered.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Latency in cloud computing is the time it takes for a deployed application or website to reach a user's device when they visit. If a page takes a long time to load, the application has high latency; if it loads quickly, it has low latency. It is a major factor in user experience and an application's success, slow loads lead to frustration. One responsibility of a cloud engineer is to keep latency low so the application is delivered fast, which you can achieve with caching or by deploying to the Region, Availability Zone, or edge location closest to your users.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Several free tools work well for AWS architecture diagrams, including draw.io, Lucidchart, and Microsoft Visio.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
An AWS snapshot is a point-in-time copy of an Amazon EBS volume for an EC2 instance, with limited storage and recovery options. An EC2 backup is a more comprehensive and flexible copy of your workloads, offering more reliable protection and faster, more consistent recovery.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Direct Connect (gateway) is used for point-to-point connections between an on-premises data center and a single VPC, while Transit Gateway connects multiple VPCs and remote networks in a hub-and-spoke architecture.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
In AWS IAM, conflicting policies are resolved by clear rules, the most prominent being that an explicit Deny always takes priority over an Allow.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
In cloud computing, redundancy means having standby resources deployed so that if the main resource becomes unavailable, a backup can take over.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
An instance is another name for an EC2 server. EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is an easily resizable AWS service used to run applications such as websites and databases in the cloud. It has its own CPU, RAM, operating system, and networking capacity, think of it as a powerful computer, managed and secured by AWS. The terms instance, server, and virtual machine are used interchangeably for EC2. "Instance" originally referred to the operating system in the server, but over time it has come to describe the EC2 machine itself.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Yes, you can. The defining quality of a cloud engineer is to keep learning: the more you learn, the better you work with the technology. Keeping abreast of emerging AWS services, attending conferences and events, and reading good documentation are how you become sought-after. The AWS best practices are a solid place to start.

The edge was never the background, it's the discipline to keep learning faster than the tools change.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Work on real projects. You stand a far better chance when you can show a recruiter what you've actually done. Labs that mimic real-life situations are a good source, and you should document each project as you go.

List those projects on your LinkedIn profile or your résumé as real experience. A strong edge is to write about your learning: blog about it, post on LinkedIn or GitHub, or make short videos of what you build.

Recruiters don't hire credentials, they hire demonstrated judgment, and shipped projects are how you prove it.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
IAM groups are a way of grouping IAM users and roles; permissions given to the group pass to its members. Security groups act like a firewall for your EC2 instances, determining which machines can connect and on which ports. In short, IAM governs identity and permissions, while security groups govern network access.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Amazon Rekognition adds image and video analysis to your applications, identifying objects, people, text, scenes, and activities, detecting inappropriate content, and providing facial analysis and search, with no machine learning expertise required. Amazon Comprehend is a natural language processing service that finds insights and relationships in text: it identifies language, extracts key phrases, places, people, brands, and events, gauges sentiment, analyzes tokens and parts of speech, and can organize text by topic. In short, Rekognition is for images and video; Comprehend is for text.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
The key difference is scope. An IAM policy works at the level of an individual user or account, granting permissions on what a user or service can do. A Service Control Policy (SCP) works at the Organizational Unit (OU) level. When organizations group multiple AWS accounts together, SCPs govern that group, while IAM policies apply within a single account, multiple accounts versus a single account.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Recruiters may lean toward candidates with a Computer Science or Computer Engineering degree. But without one, you can build up your profile: ship as many projects as you can, create technical documentation and content, learn as many in-demand tools as possible, and deliberately develop your problem-solving skills.

A degree signals ability; a portfolio proves it, and proof usually wins.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Even though security groups are stateful, the outbound rules section still lets you control egress. You can modify inbound rules to deny specific inbound traffic, while by default all outbound traffic is allowed, the section exists so you can tighten that when you need to.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
As a best practice, deploy your application to the Region closest to your customers. This improves the application's performance and reduces latency. You can check the closest Region and Availability Zone to your customers from the AWS Region list.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Horizontal scaling, often called scaling out, means adding more machines to your pool of resources, like adding lanes to a highway to handle more traffic. Vertical scaling, or scaling up, means increasing the capacity of an existing machine, more CPU, memory, or storage, like upgrading a car's engine for speed. Each strategy has its own advantages and trade-offs.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
S3 Block Public Access blocks all public access to a bucket, effectively making it private, and controls access to the bucket and its objects for all users (you can still allow specific users via an Access Control List). IAM policies grant a user or service permission on what they can do in an account, for example, create S3 buckets but not delete them. Bucket policies work similarly to IAM policies but apply only at the bucket level, controlling what happens to a bucket and its objects.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Both EFS and EBS are storage services in AWS. EFS (Elastic File System) is designed for use across multiple EC2 machines and Availability Zones, while EBS (Elastic Block Store) is designed as fast, reliable block storage for a single machine.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
An IAM group places certain IAM users together with a specific set of permissions to access certain resources such as EC2 or S3. AWS Organizations, through Organizational Units, is a way to manage multiple AWS accounts and apply policies across a group of accounts.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
As a beginner, you don't need previous programming knowledge to work with AWS services. A basic understanding of IT is a good starting point. That said, you should learn one programming language as you climb the ladder.

It makes things easier, and you can implement more complex solutions once you know a language. But to start, you can work with many AWS services without any programming knowledge. A good place to deepen your understanding is the AWS Well-Architected Framework and the AWS White Papers.

The starting requirement was never a language, it's the willingness to keep leveling up as the problems get harder.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
AWS Auto Scaling is used when you have many deployed services that need to scale automatically, for example scaling databases, EC2, and more based on each service's utilization metrics. EC2 Auto Scaling deals specifically with EC2 instances only.

The two work together: AWS Auto Scaling can coordinate EC2 Auto Scaling to monitor scaling policies and act accordingly. For ease of configuration and management, EC2 Auto Scaling is preferred when no other service is involved.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
The easiest way is to use an online subnet calculator: enter the IP address, choose the number of subnets you want to create, and it returns the range for each subnet. Most subnet calculators are free to use.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
A good understanding of any programming language improves your chances of getting an AWS job. However, you don't need to be an expert programmer, especially for an entry-level cloud engineer role. AWS provides both a web console and a command-line interface to interact with its services.

Programming is leverage, not a gate, enough to be dangerous beats waiting until you're an expert.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Yes. An IAM user with full access can be used to create other users, groups, roles, and resources with attached policies, that's exactly what AWS recommends.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Not quite. AWS Lambda falls under the serverless (Functions as a Service) model, where the underlying platform isn't managed or configured by the customer. Elastic Beanstalk falls under Platform as a Service, because customers have some control over the platform even though AWS manages the underlying infrastructure.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
The skills that land an entry-level cloud role are almost inexhaustible, but beyond AWS certification and knowledge, recruiters look for both hard and soft skills: the ability to build and document real projects, familiarity with in-demand tools, communication, and above all problem-solving.

Certifications open the door; problem-solving and communication are what keep you in the room.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Data stored in S3 are called objects, media, PDFs, and the like, and they're unstructured, with effectively unlimited capacity. Databases, by contrast, store structured data, often sharing relationships with one another in the form of table rows and columns.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
They're different. A community cloud is a shared cloud infrastructure used by a specific group with common interests, such as a shared mission, security policies, applications, or services. A public cloud offers resources from a third-party provider over the internet, shared by any organizations and individuals who want to use or purchase them.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺
Answer
Yes. Edge locations are data centers used to deliver content quickly to your users, the site nearest to them.
Tap the edges to flip back ↺

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Ask it here. Good questions become answers in the library, once reviewed, yours appears for everyone, live.