Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the leading cloud computing platform, beating top competitors like Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. AWS continues to grow in popularity, as cloud services become increasingly important in the tech landscape. Learning AWS is a smart career choice if you’re looking to grow your skills in cloud computing. The job market for cloud developers is hot, and more and more companies are looking to hire experienced cloud professionals. The best way to prepare for a cloud computing career is to get hands-on experience. Today, we’ll introduce you to five AWS courses that will help you take your skills to the next level.
Let’s get started!
We’ll cover:
- AWS services
- 1. AWS security fundamentals
- 2. DynamoDB deep dive
- 3. Quick start Kubernetes
- 4. Web application security
- 5. Building enterprise applications with Spring Boot
- Wrapping up and next steps
AWS services
Before we explore the courses, let’s take a look at some of the services that you can use as an AWS customer. AWS has a variety of different services that help us streamline our cloud services and infrastructure. AWS offers services in the following areas:
- Artificial intelligence and machine learning: Amazon AI, Alexa Voice, Amazon Polly, etc.
- Big data analytics and management: Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Elastic MapReduce, etc.
- Compute: AWS Elastic Beanstalk, AWS Lambda, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), etc.
- Database: Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), Amazon Redshift, etc.
- Dev tools and application services: AWS CodeBuild, AWS CLI, AWS API Gateway, etc.
- Management: AWS CloudWatch, AWS CloudFormation, AWS CloudTrail, etc.
- Messaging: Amazon Simple Queue Service (SDS), Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), etc.
- Migration: AWS Migration Hub
- Mobile development: AWS Mobile Hub, AWS Amplify, AWS AppSync, etc.
- Networking: Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Amazon CloudFront, Amazon API Gateway, etc.
- Security: AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS Directory Service, Amazon Inspector, etc.
- Cloud storage: Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Amazon S3 Glacier, Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), etc.
- Additional services: Amazon Internet of Things (IoT), Amazon WorkDocs, Amazon Chime, etc.
The courses we discuss will help you become more familiar with some of the services listed above. Now, let's take a look at the courses!
1. AWS security fundamentals
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) provides a way for us to securely manage access to AWS services and resources. IAM is a free feature that comes with an AWS account. AWS IAM allows us to create roles and manage permissions across users. Internet access management is very important because it helps us avoid any data or security breaches, and it gives us a way to organize system interactions.
If you want to learn more about AWS IAM, check out the course AWS Security Fundamentals: A Practical Guide to AWS IAM.
In this course, you’ll learn:
- How IAM works and how to write policies to control access in an AWS account
- How AWS APIs work within the IAM infrastructure
- How to configure access inside AWS using the AWS policy structure
- How to secure an account as an administrator and a developer
- AWS security best practices
- And more
2. DynamoDB deep dive
Amazon DynamoDB is a NoSQL database service that helps users create database tables that can store and retrieve large amounts of data. DynamoDB executes replication across three availability zones to ensure durability, high availability, and read consistency. It offers Fine-Grained Access Control (FGAC), which allows administrators to protect their data. FGAC is based on AWS IAM. We can monitor DynamoDB using AWS CloudWatch, which gathers and processes DynamoDB data into readable metrics.
Note: A popular use case for DynamoDB is in Big Data Analytics because it provides a flexible NoSQL database with the ability to easily and quickly scale storage and throughput.
Do you want to learn how Amazon DynamoDB works? Check out the course DynamoDB Deep Dive: NoSQL for Software Engineers.
In this course, you’ll learn:
- How to use DynamoDB
- Table creation, security, and monitoring
- How to query and scan data from DynamoDB tables
- How to manage access control and monitor usage
- And more
3. Quick start Kubernetes
Kubernetes is an open-source orchestration software for containerization platforms. It has an API that controls container operations. Kubernetes allows us to organize clusters of virtual machines and schedule containers to run on those virtual machines. It abstracts the underlying infrastructure, so it doesn’t matter if we want to deploy our apps to AWS, Google Cloud, or our own on-premises data center. With Kubernetes, it’s easy to efficiently scale our applications and speed up the delivery process.
Docker vs Kubernetes: It’s very common to confuse Docker with Kubernetes. They complement each other and are frequently used together, but they are two different technologies. Docker is a containerization platform that allows us to build and run containers. Kubernetes is an orchestration software that gives us a streamlined way to run Docker containers and manage containerized applications.
Ready to get started with Kubernetes? Check out the course Quick Start Kubernetes.
In this course, you’ll learn:
- How to break deployment and how Kubernetes can fix it
- How to build a cluster, containerize an application, and deploy it
- How to scale an application up and down
- How to perform rolling updates to an application
- And more
4. Web application security
When we visit a website in our browser, our browser sends request headers to the server. The server responds to the browser with HTTP response headers. These headers share HTTP protocol information. There are different kinds of HTTP headers, but security headers are becoming increasingly important due to an increase in data breaches and hacking.
HTTP security headers improve the security of our web applications. They help protect against common attacks, such as clickjacking and cross-site scripting. We can use AWS CloudFront along with the Lambda@edge function to implement security headers with AWS.
To learn more about HTTP security headers, check out the course Web Application Security: Understanding HTTP Security Headers.
In this course, you’ll learn:
- Content security policy
- How to secure web applications using HTTP security headers
- How to test and monitor for security headers
- How to adopt new browser and HTTP security standards to migrate from existing headers
- And more
5. Building enterprise applications with Spring Boot
Spring Boot is a microservice framework that allows us to develop standalone Spring applications with minimum configurations. It’s the leading framework for application development with Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Spring Boot is built on top of the Spring framework. The Spring framework focuses on flexibility and dependency injection, and Spring Boot focuses on minimizing code length to help us easily run our applications. Spring Cloud for AWS supports cloud-native application development. With AWS, we can use a Java SDK to connect to core services.
To get started with Spring Boot, check out the course Building Enterprise Applications with Spring Boot.
In this course, you’ll learn:
- How to build a fully functional application
- How to improve applications by adding new features
- Spring Boot auto-configuration, database integration, and web services
- How to monitor with Spring Boot Actuator
- And more
Wrapping up and next steps
AWS is the leading cloud provider and its popularity continues to grow. With more and more businesses and industries moving to the cloud, the demand for skilled cloud developers will also continue to grow. Getting comfortable with AWS fundamentals will help prepare you for new roles and responsibilities, and it will make you a desirable candidate to potential employers. Today, we introduced you to five AWS-related courses to help you take your skills to the next level. Other popular courses include:
- Running Serverless Applications with AWS Lambda
- Learn the A to Z of Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam Prep
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Happy learning!
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