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AWS Certified Solutions Architect Study Guide with Online Labs. Associate (SAA-C01) Exam. Edition No. 1

  • Book

  • 416 Pages
  • August 2020
  • John Wiley and Sons Ltd
  • ID: 5226954

Virtual, hands-on learning labs allow you to apply your technical skills in realistic environments. So Sybex has bundled AWS labs from XtremeLabs with our popular AWS Certified Solutions Architect Study Guide to give you the same experience working in these labs as you prepare for the Certified Solutions Architect Exam that you would face in a real-life application. These labs in addition to the book are a proven way to prepare for the certification and for work as an AWS Solutions Architect.

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect Study Guide: Associate (SAA-C01) Exam is your complete and fully updated resource to the AWS Solutions Architect - Associate certification. This invaluable Sybex study guide covers all relevant aspects of the AWS Solutions Architect job role, including mapping multi-tier architectures to AWS services, loose coupling and stateless systems, applying AWS security features, deploying and managing services, designing large scale distributed systems, and many more. Written by two AWS subject-matter experts, this self-study guide and reference provides all the tools and information necessary to master the exam, earn your certification, and gain insights into the job of an AWS Solutions Architect. Efficient and logical presentation of exam objectives allows for flexible study of topics, and powerful learning tools increase comprehension and retention of key exam elements. Practice questions, chapter reviews, and detailed examination of essential concepts fully prepare you for the AWS Solutions Architect – Associate certification.

The certification is highly valued in IT and cloud computing professionals. Now in a new edition - reflecting the latest changes, additions, and updates to the AWS Solutions Architect – Associate certification exam guide - this book is your complete, one-stop resource:

  • Learn all the components of the AWS exam and know what to expect on exam day
  • Review challenging exam topics and focus on the areas that need improvement
  • Expand your AWS skillset and keep pace with current cloud computing technologies
  • Readers will also have one year of free access to the Sybex interactive online learning environment and test bank, providing a suite of robust study tools including an assessment test, chapter tests, bonus practice exam, electronic flashcards, and a glossary of key terms.

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect Study Guide: Associate (SAA-C01) Exam enables you to validate your skills, increase your competitive advantage, and take the next step on your career path. Comprehensive and up-to-date content and superior study tools make this guide a must-have resource for those seeking AWS Solutions Architect – Associate certification.

And with this edition you also get XtremeLabs virtual labs that run from your browser. The registration code is included with the book and gives you 6 months unlimited access to XtremeLabs AWS Certified Solutions Architect Labs with 10 unique lab modules based on the book.

Table of Contents

Introduction xxv

Assessment Test xxxi

Part I The Core AWS Services 1

Chapter 1 Introduction to Cloud Computing and AWS 3

Cloud Computing and Virtualization 4

Cloud Computing Architecture 5

Cloud Computing Optimization 5

The AWS Cloud 6

AWS Platform Architecture 11

AWS Reliability and Compliance 13

The AWS Shared Responsibility Model 13

The AWS Service Level Agreement 14

Working with AWS 14

The AWS CLI 15

AWS SDKs 15

Technical Support and Online Resources 15

Support Plans 15

Other Support Resources 16

Summary 16

Exam Essentials 17

Exercise 17

Review Questions 18

Chapter 2 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud and Amazon Elastic Block Store 21

Introduction 22

EC2 Instances 22

Provisioning Your Instance 23

Configuring Instance Behavior 28

Instance Pricing 28

Instance Lifecycle 29

Resource Tags 30

Service Limits 30

EC2 Storage Volumes 31

Elastic Block Store Volumes 31

Instance Store Volumes 33

Accessing Your EC2 Instance 33

Securing Your EC2 Instance 35

Security Groups 35

IAM Roles 36

NAT Devices 36

Key Pairs 37

Other EC2-Related Services 37

AWS Systems Manager 37

Placement Groups 37

AWS Elastic Beanstalk 37

Amazon Elastic Container Service and AWS Fargate 38

AWS Lambda 38

VM Import/Export 38

Elastic Load Balancing and Auto Scaling 38

AWS CLI Example 39

Summary 40

Exam Essentials 40

Review Questions 42

Chapter 3 Amazon Simple Storage Service and Amazon Glacier Storage 47

Introduction 48

S3 Service Architecture 49

Prefixes and Delimiters 49

Working with Large Objects 49

Encryption 50

Logging 51

S3 Durability and Availability 51

Durability 52

Availability 52

Eventually Consistent Data 53

S3 Object Lifecycle 53

Versioning 53

Lifecycle Management 54

Accessing S3 Objects 54

Access Control 55

Presigned URLs 56

Static Website Hosting 56

S3 and Glacier Select 57

Amazon Glacier 57

Storage Pricing 58

Other Storage-Related Services 59

Amazon Elastic File System 59

AWS Storage Gateway 59

AWS Snowball 59

AWS CLI Example 60

Summary 61

Exam Essentials 61

Review Questions 63

Chapter 4 Amazon Virtual Private Cloud 67

Introduction 68

VPC CIDR Blocks 68

Secondary CIDR Blocks 69

IPv6 CIDR Blocks 69

Subnets 70

Subnet CIDR Blocks 70

Availability Zones 71

IPv6 CIDR Blocks 72

Elastic Network Interfaces 72

Primary and Secondary Private IP Addresses 72

Attaching Elastic Network Interfaces 73

Internet Gateways 73

Route Tables 74

Routes 74

The Default Route 75

Security Groups 76

Inbound Rules 76

Outbound Rules 77

Sources and Destinations 78

Stateful Firewall 78

Default Security Group 78

Network Access Control Lists 79

Inbound Rules 79

Outbound Rules 80

Using Network Access Control Lists and Security Groups Together 81

Public IP Addresses 82

Elastic IP Addresses 82

Network Address Translation 83

Network Address Translation Devices 84

Configuring Route Tables to Use NAT Devices 85

NAT Gateway 86

NAT Instance 87

VPC Peering 87

Summary 88

Exam Essentials 89

Review Questions 91

Chapter 5 Databases 95

Introduction 96

Relational Databases 96

Columns and Attributes 96

Using Multiple Tables 97

Structured Query Language 98

Online Transaction Processing vs. Online Analytic Processing 99

Amazon Relational Database Service 99

Database Engines 100

Licensing Considerations 101

Database Option Groups 101

Database Instance Classes 102

Storage 103

Read Replicas 106

High Availability (Multi-AZ) 108

Backup and Recovery 109

Automated Snapshots 109

Maintenance Items 110

Amazon Redshift 110

Compute Nodes 110

Data Distribution Styles 111

Nonrelational (No-SQL) Databases 111

Storing Data 111

Querying Data 112

Types of Nonrelational Databases 112

DynamoDB 112

Partition and Hash Keys 113

Attributes and Items 113

Throughput Capacity 114

Reading Data 116

Summary 117

Exam Essentials 117

Review Questions 119

Chapter 6 Authentication and Authorization - AWS Identity and Access Management 123

Introduction 124

IAM Identities 125

IAM Policies 125

User and Root Accounts 126

Access Keys 129

Groups 130

Roles 131

Authentication Tools 131

Amazon Cognito 132

AWS Managed Microsoft AD 132

AWS Single Sign-On 132

AWS Key Management Service 133

AWS Secrets Manager 133

AWS CloudHSM 133

AWS CLI Example 134

Summary 135

Exam Essentials 136

Review Questions 137

Chapter 7 CloudTrail, CloudWatch, and AWS Config 141

Introduction 142

CloudTrail 143

Management Events 143

Data Events 144

Event History 144

Trails 144

Log File Integrity Validation 146

CloudWatch 147

CloudWatch Metrics 147

Graphing Metrics 149

Metric Math 150

CloudWatch Logs 152

Log Streams and Log Groups 153

Metric Filters 153

CloudWatch Agent 153

Sending CloudTrail Logs to CloudWatch Logs 154

CloudWatch Alarms 155

Data Point to Monitor 155

Threshold 155

Alarm States 156

Data Points to Alarm and Evaluation Period 156

Missing Data 157

Actions 157

AWS Config 158

The Configuration Recorder 159

Configuration Items 159

Configuration History 159

Configuration Snapshots 160

Monitoring Changes 161

Summary 162

Exam Essentials 162

Review Questions 164

Chapter 8 The Domain Name System and Network Routing: Amazon Route 53 and Amazon CloudFront 169

Introduction 170

The Domain Name System 170

Namespaces 170

Name Servers 171

Domains and Domain Names 171

Domain Registration 172

Domain Layers 172

Fully Qualified Domain Names 172

Zones and Zone Files 173

Record Types 173

Alias Records 174

Amazon Route 53 174

Domain Registration 174

DNS Management 175

Availability Monitoring 176

Routing Policies 177

Traffic Flow 180

Amazon CloudFront 181

AWS CLI Example 182

Summary 183

Exam Essentials 183

Review Questions 185

Part II The Well-Architected Framework 189

Chapter 9 The Reliability Pillar 191

Introduction 192

Calculating Availability 192

Availability Differences in Traditional vs. Cloud-Native Applications 193

Know Your Limits 196

Increasing Availability 196

EC2 Auto Scaling 197

Launch Configurations 197

Launch Templates 197

Auto Scaling Groups 199

Auto Scaling Options 200

Data Backup and Recovery 204

S3 204

Elastic File System 205

Elastic Block Storage 205

Database Resiliency 205

Creating a Resilient Network 206

VPC Design Considerations 206

External Connectivity 207

Designing for Availability 207

Designing for 99 Percent Availability 208

Designing for 99.9 Percent Availability 209

Designing for 99.99 Percent Availability 210

Summary 211

Exam Essentials 211

Review Questions 213

Chapter 10 The Performance Efficiency Pillar 217

Introduction 218

Optimizing Performance for the Core AWS Services 218

Compute 219

Storage 223

Database 226

Network Optimization and Load Balancing 227

Infrastructure Automation 230

CloudFormation 230

Third-Party Automation Solutions 232

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment 232

Reviewing and Optimizing Infrastructure Configurations 234

Load Testing 235

Visualization 235

Optimizing Data Operations 236

Caching 237

Partitioning/Sharding 238

Compression 239

Summary 239

Exam Essentials 240

Review Questions 242

Chapter 11 The Security Pillar 247

Introduction 248

Identity and Access Management 248

Protecting AWS Credentials 248

Fine-Grained Authorization 249

Permissions Boundaries 251

Roles 252

Enforcing Service-Level Protection 258

Detective Controls 258

CloudTrail 258

CloudWatch Logs 259

Searching Logs with Athena 260

Auditing Resource Configurations with AWS Config 262

Amazon GuardDuty 264

Amazon Inspector 265

Protecting Network Boundaries 267

Network Access Control Lists and Security Groups 267

AWS Web Application Firewall 267

AWS Shield 268

Data Encryption 268

Data at Rest 268

Data in Transit 270

Summary 270

Exam Essentials 271

Review Questions 272

Chapter 12 The Cost Optimization Pillar 277

Introduction 278

Planning, Tracking, and Controlling Costs 278

AWS Budgets 279

Monitoring Tools 280

AWS Organizations 281

AWS Trusted Advisor 282

Online Calculator Tools 282

Cost-Optimizing Compute 284

Maximizing Server Density 284

EC2 Reserved Instances 285

EC2 Spot Instances 285

Auto Scaling 288

Elastic Block Store Lifecycle Manager 288

Summary 288

Exam Essentials 289

Review Questions 290

Chapter 13 The Operational Excellence Pillar 295

Introduction 296

CloudFormation 296

Creating Stacks 297

Deleting Stacks 298

Using Multiple Stacks 298

Stack Updates 301

Preventing Updates to Specific Resources 302

Overriding Stack Policies 303

CodeCommit 303

Creating a Repository 304

Repository Security 304

Interacting with a Repository Using Git 305

CodeDeploy 307

The CodeDeploy Agent 308

Deployments 308

Deployment Groups 308

Deployment Types 308

Deployment Configurations 309

Lifecycle Events 310

The Application Specification File 311

Triggers and Alarms 312

Rollbacks 312

CodePipeline 313

Continuous Integration 313

Continuous Delivery 313

Creating the Pipeline 314

Artifacts 315

AWS Systems Manager 316

Actions 316

Insights 318

Summary 320

Exam Essentials 320

Review Questions 322

Appendix Answers to Review Questions 327

Chapter 1: Introduction to Cloud Computing and AWS 328

Chapter 2: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud and Amazon Elastic Block Store 329

Chapter 3: Amazon Simple Storage Service and Amazon Glacier Storage 331

Chapter 4: Amazon Virtual Private Cloud 332

Chapter 5: Databases 334

Chapter 6: Authentication and Authorization - AWS Identity and Access Management 336

Chapter 7: CloudTrail, CloudWatch, and AWS Config 338

Chapter 8: The Domain Name System and Network Routing: Amazon Route 53 and Amazon CloudFront 340

Chapter 9: The Reliability Pillar 342

Chapter 10: The Performance Efficiency Pillar 344

Chapter 11: The Security Pillar 346

Chapter 12: The Cost Optimization Pillar 348

Chapter 13: The Operational Excellence Pillar 349

Index 353

Authors

David Clinton Ben Piper