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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
AWS Certified Developer - Associate Guide starts with a quick introduction to AWS and the prerequisites to get you started. Then, this book gives you a fair understanding of core AWS services and basic architecture. Next, this book will describe about getting familiar with Identity and Access Management (IAM) along with Virtual private cloud (VPC). Moving ahead you will learn about Elastic Compute cloud (EC2) and handling application traffic with Elastic Load Balancing (ELB). Going ahead you we will talk about Monitoring with CloudWatch, Simple storage service (S3) and Glacier and CloudFront along with other AWS storage options. Next we will take you through AWS DynamoDB – A NoSQL Database Service, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) and CloudFormation Overview. Finally, this book covers understanding Elastic Beanstalk and overview of AWS lambda.
At the end of this book, we will cover enough topics, tips and tricks along with mock tests for you to be able to pass the AWS Certified Developer - Associate exam and develop as well as manage your applications on the AWS platform.
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AWS Certified Developer - Associate Guide
Copyright © 2017 Packt Publishing
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First published: September 2017
Production reference: 2160118
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78712-562-9
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Credits
Authors
Vipul Tankariya
Bhavin Parmar
Copy Editors
Juliana Nair
Safis Editing
Reviewer
Gajanan Chandgadkar
Project Coordinator
Judie Jose
Commissioning Editor
Vijin Boricha
Proofreader
Safis Editing
Acquisition Editor
Heramb Bhavsar
Indexer
Aishwarya Gangawane
Content Development Editor
Abhishek Jadhav
Graphics
Kirk D'Penha
Technical Editor
Swathy Mohan
Production Coordinator
Aparna Bhagat
About the Author
Vipul Tankariya has very broad experience in cloud consulting, development, and training. He has worked with a number of customers across the globe, solving real-life business problems in terms of technology and strategy. He is also a public speaker at various AWS events and meetups. He has not only extensively worked on AWS, but is also certified in five AWS certifications:
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
AWS Certified Solution Architect – Professional
AWS Certified Developer – Associate
AWS Certified Solution Architect – Associate
AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate
This book combines his AWS experience of solving real-life business problems with his hands-on development experience with various programming languages. Vipul is an accomplished senior cloud consultant and technologist focused on strategic thought leadership concentrated around next-generation cloud-based solutions with more than 21 years of experience.
He has been involved in conceptualizing, designing, and implementing large-scale cloud solutions on a variety of public/private/hybrid clouds. He has also been instrumental in setting up cloud migration strategies for customers, building enterprise-class cloud solutions, Go-To market collateral, and AWS training, as well as cloud pre-sales activities.
Vipul has a wide range of experience working on DevOps, CI/CD, and automation at each level of the delivery life cycle of products, solutions, and services on the cloud, as well as on-premises.
Acknowledgments
There are many people in my personal and professional life who made me what I am today. Though many of the names that I am going to mention in this book may not even know what AWS is, without their support, I would not have even developed many of the basic life skills, let alone the ability to write an AWS book.
First and foremost I would like to thank my father, who taught me how important it is to be a good human being before being anything in life. I will always be indebted to my mother, who taught me how to work hard and what strong willpower is. I would also like to mention my wife, Priya; without her support this book would not have been possible. My son, Arav, also deserves a special mention here, as I have spent some of his share of my time on this book.
I would also like to thank my sisters, Asha and Bina, who taught me what compassion is. I must thank my brother, Vijay, who has always protected me in every aspect of life.
I would also like to thank Badrinarayan Ramanujan, my friend, who has always motivated me and helped me assess my real value. Very special thanks as well to Jaymin Jhala as I don't think my IT career would have started without him.
I must thank my friend, Jay Punjani, my brother from another mother, who has taught me to dream big and understand unspoken words. I would also like to thank Mr BSGK Shastry, my Guru, who cultivated the professional approach in me.
I would also like to thank Mr. Ira Sheinwald, my friend and mentor, who showed confidence in me and gave me a chance to work on my first AWS project. Heartfelt thanks also goes to my friend, Shashikant Kuwar, along with Ira, as we have worked together to solve many technical and strategic challenges on AWS.
I must show my gratitude to Mr. Vivek Raju, my friend and mentor in my AWS journey. My AWS journey would not have been enriched without the support of Varun Dube and Vikas Goel.
My heartfelt thanks also go to my friends Satyajit Das, Jhalak Modi, Appasaheb Bagali, Ajaykumar Kakumanu, Pushpraj Singh, Chandrasekhar Singh, and Rakesh Sing, who have been part of my AWS certification journey. Also, very special thanks to Gajanan Chandgadkar, who has been with me in multiple counts for not only technically reviewing this book, but also for being there in my AWS certification journey. We all worked together for almost a year to get our five AWS certifications.
I would also like to thank Heramb Bhavsar, Abhishek Jadhav, Swathy Mohan, and the entire team at Packt for making this book a reality.
Last but not least, I would like to thank my friend and co-author of this book, Bhavin Parmar, who saw the dream of writing this book with me. If it was not for him, I would not have taken this book as a project.
About the Author
Bhavin Parmar has very broad experience in cloud consulting, development, and training. He actively participates in solving real-life business problems. Bhavin has not only extensively worked on AWS, but he is also certified in AWS and Red Hat:
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
AWS Certified Solution Architect – Professional
AWS Certified Developer – Associate
AWS Certified Solution Architect – Associate
AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate
Red Hat Certified Architect
This book combines his AWS experience in solving real-life business problems with his hands-on deployment and development experience. Bhavin is an accomplished technologist and senior cloud consultant focused on strategic thought leadership concentrated around next-generation cloud-based and DevOps solutions with more than 11 years of experience.
He has been involved in conceptualizing, designing, and implementing large-scale cloud solutions on a variety of public/private/hybrid clouds. Bhavin has also been instrumental in setting up cloud migration strategies for customers, building enterprise-class cloud solutions, Go-To market collateral, and AWS training, as well as cloud pre-sales activities.
He has a wide range of experience of working at each level of the delivery life cycle of products, solutions, and services on the cloud as well as on-premises.
About the Reviewer
Gajanan Chandgadkar has more than 12 years of IT experience. He has spent more than 6 years in the USA, helping large enterprises architect, migrate, and deploy applications in AWS. He's been running production workloads on AWS for over 6 years.He is an AWS certified solutions architect professional and a certified DevOps professional with more than seven certifications in trending technologies.Gajanan is also a technology enthusiast who has extensive interest and experience in different topics, such as application development, container technology, and continuous delivery.
Currently, he is working with Happiest Minds Technologies as an Associate DevOps Architect. He has worked with Wipro Technologies Corporation in the past.
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Table of Contents
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Downloading the color images of this book
Errata
Piracy
Questions
AWS Certified Developer – Associate Certification
Domain 1.0 – AWS fundamentals
Domain 2.0 – Designing and developing
Domain 3.0 – Deployment and security
Domain 4.0 – Debugging
Frequently asked questions about the exam
Introduction to Cloud Computing and AWS
History of the cloud
Evolution of cloud computing
Basic AWS concepts
Benefits of using AWS over a traditional data center
Accessing AWS services
AWS overview
AWS global infrastructure
Regions and AZs
What are SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS?
Understanding virtualization
Virtualization types based on virtualization software
Virtualization types based on virtualization methods
Elasticity versus scalability
Traditional data center resourcing
Cloud infrastructure resourcing
Comparing AWS cloud and on-premise data centers
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) versus Return on Investment (ROI)
Creating a new AWS account
Deleting an AWS account
AWS free tier
Root user versus non-root user
AWS dashboard
Components of the AWS dashboard
Core AWS services
Shared security responsibility model
AWS soft limits
Disaster recovery with AWS
Backup and restore
Pilot light
Warm standby
Multi-site
Identity and Access Management
Understanding the AWS root user
Elements of IAM
Users
Access key and secret key
Password policy
Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
Security token-based MFA
Steps for enabling a virtual MFA device for a user
SMS text message-based MFA
Creating an AWS IAM user using the AWS dashboard
Introduction to AWS CLI
Installing AWS CLI
Getting a AWS user access key and secret key
Configuring AWS CLI
AWS CLI syntax
Getting AWS CLI help
Creating an IAM user using AWS CLI
Groups
Creating a new IAM group
Creating an IAM group using CLI
Adding existing users to a group
IAM role
Creating roles for an AWS service
Creating IAM roles using AWS CLI
Policy
Managed policies
Inline policies
Resource-based policies
Example of a resource-based policy
IAM policy simulator
Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS)
Integration between ADFS and the AWS console
Web identity federation
STS
AWS STS and AWS regions
Using temporary credentials in Amazon EC2 instances
Using temporary security credentials with the AWS SDKs
IAM best practices
Exam tips
Virtual Private Clouds
AWS VPCs
Subnets
Private subnets
Public subnets
IP addressing
Private IPs
Public IPs
Elastic IP addresses
Creating a VPC
VPCs with a single public subnet
VPCs with private and public subnets
VPCs with public and private subnets and hardware VPN access
VPCs with private subnet only and hardware VPN access
Security
Security groups
NACLs
Security groups versus NACLs
Flow logs
Controlling access
VPC networking components
ENI
Route tables
IGWs
Egress-only IGWs
NATs
Comparison of NAT instances and NAT gateways
DHCP option sets
DNS
VPC peering
VPC endpoints
ClassicLink
VPC best practices
Getting Started with Elastic Compute Cloud
Introduction to EC2
Pricing for EC2
Per-second billing for EC2 instances and EBS volumes
EC2 instance life cycle
Instance launch
Instance stop and start
Instance reboot
Instance retirement
Instance termination
AMIs
Root device types
EC2 instance virtualization types
Creating an EC2 instance
Changing the EC2 instance type
Connecting to the EC2 instance
Connecting to a Linux EC2 instance from a Microsoft Windows system
Connecting to an EC2 instance using a PuTTY session
Troubleshooting SSH connection issues
EC2 instance metadata and user data
Placement group
Introducing EBS
Types of EBS
General Purpose SSD (gp2)
Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1)
Throughput Optimized HDD (st1)
Cold HDD (sc1)
Encrypted EBS
Monitoring EBS volumes with CloudWatch
Snapshots
EBS optimized EC2 instances
EC2 best practices
Handling Application Traffic with Elastic Load Balancing
Introduction to the Elastic Load Balancer
Benefits of using an ELB
Types of ELB
Classic Load Balancer
Application Load Balancer
Features of an ELB
Step by step – creating a Classic Load Balancer
How an ELB works
The working of a Classic Load Balancer
The working of an Application Load Balancer
ELB best practices
Monitoring with CloudWatch
How Amazon CloudWatch works
Elements of Amazon CloudWatch
Namespaces
Metrics
Dimensions
Statistics
Percentile
Alarms
Creating a CloudWatch alarm
Billing alerts
CloudWatch dashboards
Monitoring types – basic and detailed
CloudWatch best practices
Simple Storage Service, Glacier, and CloudFront
Amazon S3
Creating a bucket
Bucket restriction and limitations
Bucket access control
Bucket policy
User policies
Transfer Acceleration
Enabling Transfer Acceleration
Requester Pay model
Enabling Requestor Pays on a bucket
Understanding objects
Object keys
Object key naming guide
Object metadata
System-metadata
User-defined metadata
Versioning
Enabling versioning on a bucket
Object tagging
S3 storage classes
S3 Standard storage
S3-IA storage
S3 RRS
Glacier
Comparison of S3 storage classes and Glacier
Life cycle management
Life cycle configuration use cases
Defining life cycle policy for a bucket
Hosting a static website on S3
Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)
Using CORS in different scenarios
Configuring CORS on a bucket
CORS configuration example XML
Enabling CORS on a bucket
Cross-region replication
Enabling cross-region replication
Other AWS Storage Options
Amazon EFS
AWS Storage Gateway
File gateways
Volume gateways
Gateway–cached volumes
Gateway–stored volumes
Tape-based storage solutions
VTL
AWS Snowball
AWS Snowmobile
AWS Relational Database Services
Amazon RDS components
DB instances
Region and AZs
Security groups
DB parameter groups
DB option groups
RDS engine types
Amazon Aurora DB
Comparison of Amazon RDS Aurora with Amazon RDS MySQL
MariaDB
Microsoft SQL Server
MySQL
Oracle
PostgreSQL
Creating an Amazon RDS MySQL DB instance
Monitoring RDS instances
Creating a snapshot
Restoring a DB from a snapshot
Changing an RDS instance type
Amazon RDS and VPC
Amazon RDS and high availability
Connecting to an Amazon RDS DB instance
Connecting to an Amazon Aurora DB cluster
Connecting to a MariaDB instance
Connecting to a MySQL instance
Connecting to an Oracle instance
RDS best practices
AWS DynamoDB - A NoSQL Database Service
Let's first understand what an RDBMS is
What is SQL?
What is NoSQL?
Key-value pair databases
Document databases
Graph databases
Wide column databases
When to use NoSQL databases?
SQL versus NoSQL
Introducing DynamoDB
DynamoDB components
Primary key
Secondary indexes
DynamoDB Streams
Read consistency model
Eventually consistent reads
Strong consistent reads
Naming rules and data types
Naming rules
Data types
Scalar data types
Document types
Set types
Creating a DynamoDB table – basic steps
Adding a sort key while creating a DynamoDB table
Using advanced settings while creating a DynamoDB table
Creating secondary indexes – table settings
Provisioned capacity – table settings
Auto Scaling – table settings
Methods of accessing DynamoDB
DynamoDB console
DynamoDB CLI
Working with API
DynamoDB provisioned throughput
Read capacity units
Write capacity units
Calculating table throughput
DynamoDB partitions and data distribution
Data distribution – partition key
Data Distribution – partition key and sort key
DynamoDB global and LSI
The difference between GSI and LSI
DynamoDB query
Query with AWS CLI
DynamoDB Scan
Reading an item from a DynamoDB table
Writing an item to a DynamoDB table
PutItem
UpdateItem
DeleteItem
Conditional writes
User authentication and access control
Managing policies
DynamoDB API permissions
DynamoDB best practices
Amazon Simple Queue Service
Why use SQS?
How do queues work?
Main features of SQS
Types of queues
Dead Letter Queue (DLQ)
Queue attributes
Creating a queue
Sending a message in a queue
Viewing/deleting a message from a queue
Purging a queue
Deleting a queue
Subscribing a queue to a topic
Adding user permissions to a queue
SQS limits
Queue monitoring and logging
CloudWatch metrics available for SQS
Logging SQS API actions
SQS security
Authentication
SSE
Simple Notification Service
Introduction to Amazon SNS
Amazon SNS fanout
Application and system alerts
Mobile device push notifications
Push email and text messaging
Creating an Amazon SNS topic
Subscribing to an SNS topic
Publishing a message to an SNS topic
Deleting an SNS topic
Managing access to Amazon SNS topics
When to use access control
Key concepts
Architectural overview
Access request evaluation logic
Invoking the Lambda function using SNS notification
Sending Amazon SNS messages to Amazon SQS queues
Monitoring SNS with CloudWatch
SNS best practices
Simple Workflow Service
When to use Amazon SWF
Workflow
Example workflow
Workflow history
How workflow history helps
Actors
Workflow starter
Decider
Activity worker
Tasks
SWF domains
Object identifiers
Task lists
Workflow execution closure
Lifecycle of workflow execution
Polling for tasks
SWF endpoints
Managing access with IAM
SWF – IAM policy examples
AWS CloudFormation
What is a template?
What is a stack?
Template structure
AWSTemplateFormatVersion
Description
Metadata
Parameters
AWS-specific parameters
Mappings
Conditions
Transform
Resources
Outputs
Sample CloudFormation template
CloudFormer
Rolling updates for Auto Scaling groups
CloudFormation best practices
Elastic Beanstalk
Elastic Beanstalk components
Architectural concepts
Web server environment tier
Worker environment tiers
Elastic Beanstalk-supported platforms
Creating a web application source bundle
Getting started using Elastic Beanstalk
Step 1 – signing in to the AWS account
Step 2 – creating an application
Step 3 – viewing information about the recently created environment
Step 4 – deploying a new application version
Step 5 – changing the configuration
Step 6 – cleaning up
Version life cycle
Deploying web applications to Elastic Beanstalk environments
Monitoring the web application environment
Elastic Beanstalk best practices
Overview of AWS Lambda
Introduction to AWS Lambda
What is a Lambda function?
Lambda function invocation types
Writing a Lambda function
Lambda function handler (Node.js)
Lambda function handler (Java)
Lambda function handler (Python)
Lambda function handler (C#)
Deploying a Lambda function
AWS Lambda function versioning and aliases
Environment variables
Tagging Lambda functions
Lambda function over VPC
Building applications with AWS Lambda
Event source mapping for AWS services
Event source mapping for AWS stream-based services
Event source mapping for custom applications
AWS Lambda best practices
Mock Tests
Mock test 1
Mock test 2
Answers to Mock test 1
Answers to Mock test 2
Preface
This book starts with a quick introduction to AWS and the prerequisites to get you started. It gives you a fair understanding of core AWS services and the basic architecture. Next, you get familiar with Identity and Access Management (IAM) along with Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Moving ahead, you will learn about Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and handling application traffic with Elastic Load Balancing (ELB). We will also talk about Monitoring with CloudWatch, Simple Storage Service (S3), Glacier, and CloudFront, along with other AWS storage options. Next, we will take you through AWS DynamoDB – A NoSQL Database Service, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), and get an overview of CloudFormation. Finally, you will learn about Elastic Beanstalk and go through an overview of AWS lambda.
At the end of this book, we will cover enough topics, tips, and tricks, along with mock tests, for you to be able to pass the AWS Certified Developer – Associate exam and deploy as well as manage your applications on the AWS platform.
With the rapid adaptation of the cloud platform, the need for cloud certifications has also increased. This is your one-stop solutions and will help you transform from zero to certified. This guide will help you gain technical expertise in the AWS platform and help you start working with various AWS services.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, AWS Certified Developer – Associate Certification, outlines the AWS Certified Developer – Associate exam and highlights the critical aspects, knowledge area, and services covered in the blueprint.
Chapter 2, Introduction to Cloud Computing and AWS, elaborates the fundamentals of AWS. The chapter starts by giving you a basic understanding of what cloud is and takes you through a brief journey of familiarizing yourself with the basic building blocks of AWS. It highlights some of the critical aspects of how AWS works and provides an overview of the AWS core infrastructure.
Chapter 3,Identity and Access Management, covers all critical aspects of IAM and provides sufficient details to allow you to work with IAM.
Chapter 4, Virtual Private Cloud, explains how you can create a VPC and start building a secure network with a number of the components of AWS networking services.
Chapter 5, Getting Started with Elastic Compute Cloud, describes what EC2 is and how you can start provisioning servers with various Windows and Linux operating system flavors. It also describes how to connect and work with these servers.
Chapter 6, Handling Application Traffic with Elastic Load Balancing, describes how to create an ELB, how it works, and what the critical aspects of an ELB service are.
Chapter 7, Monitoring with CloudWatch, describes how you can use Amazon CloudWatch to collect and track metrics, collect and monitor log files, set alarms, and automatically react to changes in your AWS resources.
Chapter 8, Simple Storage Service, Glacier, and CloudFront, provides an understanding of Amazon S3, Glacier, and CloudFront services, and takes you through CloudFront, a Content Distribution Network (CDN) service.
Chapter 9, Other AWS Storage Options, touches upon AWS Storage Gateway, which is a network appliance or a server residing on a customer's premises. It provides an overview of AWS Snowball, which is a service that accelerates transferring large amounts of data into and out of AWS using physical storage appliances. It also provides a basic understanding of AWS Snowmobile, which is an Exabyte-scale data transfer service used to move extremely large amounts of data to and from AWS.
Chapter 10, AWS Relation Database Services,provides an understanding of AWS Relation Database Services (RDS). It explains different types of engine supported by AWS RDS and how to efficiently and effectively create and manage RDS instances on AWS cloud.
Chapter 11, AWS DynamoDB – A NoSQL Database Service,describes various components of DynamoDB with the best practices to manage it.
Chapter 12, Amazon Simple Queue Service,provides an understanding of what SQS is and how to create and manage it with relevant examples.
Chapter 13, Simple Notification Service, talks about fully managed messaging service that can be used to send messages, alarms, and notifications from various AWS services such as Amazon RDS, CloudWatch, and S3, to other AWS services, such as SQS and Lambda.
Chapter 14, Simple Workflow Service,provides a basic understanding of SWF, its various components, and how to use them.
Chapter 15, AWS CloudFormation, provides an overview of the AWS CloudFormation service. CloudFormation templates provide a simpler and efficient way to manage your resources on AWS cloud.
Chapter 16, Elastic Beanstalk,introduces Elastic Beanstalk and describes how to create and manage applications using the service.
Chapter 17, Overview of AWS Lambda,provides an overview of Lambda and describes how it runs code in response to events and how it automatically manages the compute resources required by that code.
Chapter 18, Mock Tests,consists of two mock tests for you to test your knowledge. It tries to cover all the topics from the scope of the exam and challenges your understanding of the topics. Each mock test contains 50 questions. You should try to complete a mock test in 90 minutes.
What you need for this book
As the practical examples involve the use of AWS, an AWS account is required.
Who this book is for
This book is for IT professionals and developers looking to clear the AWS Certified Developer – Associate 2017 exam. Developers looking to deploy and manage their applications on the AWS platform will find this book useful too. No prior AWS experience is needed.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning. Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "For Amazon RDS MySQL DB instances, the default port is3306."
A block of code is set as follows:
mysql -h <endpoit> -p 3306 -u <masteruser> -p
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
$ pip install --upgrade --user awscli
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "SelectIAMunderSecurity, Identity & Compliancegroup from the AWS dashboard."
Reader feedback
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book-what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.
To send us general feedback, simply email [email protected], and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.
If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.
Customer support
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Downloading the color images of this book
We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/AWSCertifiedDeveloperAssociateGuide_ColorImages.pdf.
Errata
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books-maybe a mistake in the text or the code-we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title. To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.
Piracy
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Questions
If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at [email protected], and we will do our best to address the problem.
AWS Certified Developer – Associate Certification
First of all, congratulations on choosing this book and beginning your journey toward earning AWS Certified Developer - Associate certification. As the saying goes, a good beginning is half done. You have set a target and taken the first step toward the target. If you follow the instructions in this book, it will certainly help you in completing the certification exam.
As you begin, you may have a number of questions running through your mind. This chapter covers a number of such questions that are frequently asked by beginners. To begin with, let us understand how you should start preparing for the exam.
Amazon publishes an official blueprint for each certification exam. The blueprint elaborates the scope of the exam, prerequisites for attending the exam, and the knowledge required to successfully complete the exam. This blueprint may change from time to time and you should look out for the latest copy of the blueprint for the exam from Amazon.
At the time of writing, the official blueprint for the AWS Certified Developer - Associate exam is available at the URL: https://d0.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-dev-associate/AWS_certified_developer_associate_blueprint.pdf.
This chapter outlines the AWS Certified Developer - Associate exam and highlights critical aspects, knowledge areas, and services covered in the blueprint.
Let's begin with understanding the scope of the exam. The exam scope is divided into four domains as given in the following table with their respective weight in the exam:
Sr. No.
Domain
% Weightage in exam
1.0
AWS fundamentals
10%
2.0
Designing and developing
40%
3.0
Deployment and security
30%
4.0
Debugging
20%
Total
100%
The topics and the content covered in these domains as per the blueprint are given in the following section.
Domain 1.0 – AWS fundamentals
Identify and recognize cloud architecture considerations, such as fundamental components and effective designs. Content may include the following:
How to design cloud services
Database concepts
Planning and design
Familiarity with architectural trade-off decisions, high availability versus cost, Amazon
Relational Database Service
(
RDS
) versus installing your own database on Amazon
Elastic Compute Cloud
(
EC2
)
Amazon
Simple Storage Service
(
S3
), Amazon
Simple Workflow Service
(
SWF
), and Messaging
DynamoDB, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, and AWS CloudFormation
Elasticity and scalability
Domain 2.0 – Designing and developing
Identify the appropriate techniques to code a cloud solution. Content may include the following:
Configuring an
Amazon Machine Image
(
AMI
)
Programming with AWS APIs
Domain 3.0 – Deployment and security
Recognize and implement secure procedures for optimum cloud deployment and maintenance. Content may include the following:
Cloud security best practices
Demonstrate the ability to implement the right architecture for development, testing, and staging environments. Content may include the following:
Shared security responsibility model
AWS platform compliance
AWS security attributes (customer workloads down to physical layer)
Security services
AWS
Identity and Access Management
(
IAM
)
Amazon
Virtual Private Cloud
(
VPC
)
CIA and AAA models, ingress versus egress filtering, and which AWS services and features fit
Domain 4.0 – Debugging
Content may include the following:
General troubleshooting information and questions
Best practices in debugging
If you haven't worked with Amazon Web Services (AWS) before and cannot understand the topics given in the blueprint, do not worry. This book covers all these domains and each of the blueprint topics in detail. These topics are very carefully elaborated in subsequent chapters. Some of the frequently asked questions are covered in the following pages and will answer most of the queries you may have about the exam and how to get started with preparing for it.
Frequently asked questions about the exam
The following are the questions that are frequently asked:
Are there any prerequisites for AWS Certified Developer - Associate exam?
There are no prerequisites for getting started with AWS Certified Developer - Associate exam preparation; however, it is recommended that the person preparing for this exam have knowledge or training in at least one high-level programming language.
What is the total duration of the exam?
A total of 80 minutes are given to you to complete the exam.
How many questions are asked in the exam?
The exam has around 55 questions that you need to complete in the given time. As per our experience, this number may vary at times.
What types of questions are asked in the exam?
The exam asks multiple-choice questions. It gives a question with multiple answers and you have to choose one or more right answers from the given list of answers.
You can refer to the following link for officially published sample questions:
https://d0.awsstatic.com/training-and-certification/docs-dev-associate/AWS_certified_developer_associate_examsample.pdf.
We have also given mock tests for you to practice and test your knowledge after you have finished reading the book.
Where can I register for the exam?
Amazon has joined with Kryterion for the certification exams. Kryterion centers are spread across the globe. You can go to https://www.webassessor.com and create an account if you do not already have one, or log in with your existing account. After logging in to the site, you can follow the exam registration process given on the site to register for the exam in a Kryterion center near you.
How much does it cost to register for the exam?
There are two types of exam: practice and final. The associate level practice exam costs $20 and the final exam costs $150.
How should I prepare for the exam?
You can refer to all the chapters in this book and follow all the tips and tricks in the book to prepare for the exam. Also, go through the mock tests given at the end of the book. You can also refer to some of the reference materials pointed out in the reference section of the book to explore some topics in greater depth.
What is the passing score for the exam?
AWS does not publish the passing score for the exam as it is set by statistical analysis of the exam. This score is subject to change. Based on our experience, this score currently hovers around 65% to 70%. If more candidates start scoring higher marks, the statistical model may set the minimum marks to a higher limit. Similarly, if more candidates start failing in the exam or scoring lower marks, then minimum passing marks may change based on this statistical data.
How should I answer the questions in the exam?
The exam poses scenario-based questions. There may be more than one right answer, but you have to choose the most suitable answer out of the given answers. We suggest use the elimination theory whenever you face difficulties in answering a question. Start discarding wrong answers first. When you start eliminating the wrong answers, you may automatically be able to find the right answer as eliminated answers will reduce your confusion. Also, do not spend more time on a question if you do not know the answer to it. Instead, mark the question for review. The exam interface keeps track of all the questions marked for review, and you can revisit them before submitting the final exam.
Introduction to Cloud Computing and AWS
Clouds, as we know from our childhood, are tiny droplets of frozen crystals of water that are high in the sky hovering around our planet, Earth. What do these clouds do? They provide a service to the residents of planet Earth. They bring us rain. Something (clouds) that is somewhere (up in the sky) provides us with a service by bringing rain. This same concept of something somewhere can be applied to understanding cloud computing.
Let's understand how we can imagine the concept of something somewhere with respect to cloud computing. In cloud computing, the something is IT services such as compute, database, storage, network, security, and so on. These services are hosted somewhere at a secured place (that is, a data center) and are accessible without us needing to worry and even think about how they are configured and licensed. Thus, cloud computing is a host of services that are hosted at a remote location instead of a local server or personal computer, and they are remotely accessible to us.
Let's look at some simple examples of accessing cloud services:
Fill in a registration form and start using public email services (such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and so on). In this case, we start using a service; we don't worry about how the mail services are configured, how the infrastructure is secured, how the software is licensed, whether highly qualified staff are available to maintain the infrastructure, and so on. We just start using email services by providing a secure password.
Another example could be a mobile phone or electricity at home or the office. We just buy a SIM card from a telecom provider or an electrical connection from a local power company, and we don't worry about how the telecom network works or how power is generated and reaches our place. We just use them and pay the bills per month, but only for the services that we have actually consumed.
The AWS cloud can be imagined the same way as a public email, mobile network, or electricity-providing company. AWS is a public cloud, where we can fill in a form and start using the cloud services (that is, IT services). It can be used to host personal, commercial, or enterprise-grade IT infrastructures. Various IT services (such as compute, database, network, storage, NoSQL, and so on) can be used as building blocks to create the desired IT infrastructure to match the business requirement and compliance needs of an enterprise.
At a higher level, clouds are of three types:
Private cloud
: A host of infrastructure, platform, and application services (located in secured remote facilities and providing compute, platform, or other IT services on-demand, accessible and controlled only by a single specific organization) is called a private cloud. It is preferred by companies needing a secure and dedicated data center or hosting space. Constant upgrades of staff skills and the data center infrastructure are required. It is generally very costly and time-consuming to maintain a private cloud.
Public cloud
: A host of infrastructure, platform, and application services (located in secure remote facilities and providing compute, platform, or other IT services on-demand on a shared but isolated platform that is open and accessible to the public for subscription) is called a public cloud. It is preferred by start-ups, MNCs, government organizations, military, scientific, and pharmaceutical companies intending to utilize on-demand cloud computing. Cloud computing enables organizations to focus on their actual business rather than periodically getting engaged in upgrading existing IT infrastructure to design cutting-edge solutions to compete with their competitors in the market. In a public cloud, all services are provided on a
pay as you go
model. Hence, it is easy and economical to try various different architectures to test and finalize the optimum solution to accelerate organizational growth. Another important characteristic of a public cloud is having a virtually unlimited pool of resources as and when it is required to expand IT infrastructure for short or long-term needs.
Hybrid cloud
: Hybrid cloud is a cloud environment that uses a combination of on-premise, private cloud, and public cloud services to fulfill organizational needs. In this model, a private cloud can use a public cloud's resources to meet a sudden spike in resource requirements. Since private data centers have limited resources, these data centers are extended to a third-party service provider's public cloud. Such hybrid models can be used for any reason, such as budgets, unusual requirements, infrastructure constraints, or any organizational need.
History of the cloud
The history of the evolution of the cloud is shown in the following figure:
Evolution of cloud computing
The following table describes how cloud computing has evolved over a period of time:
Event
1950
Mainframe, dumb terminals
1970
Virtual machines (VMs)
1990
Virtual Private Network (VPN)
1997
Cloud defined by Ramnath Chellappa
1999
www.salesforce.com
2000
Amazon's modernized data centers
2000
Google Docs service
2006
Launch of AWS Services
2008
Launch of Google app engine
2010
Launch of Microsoft Azure
The evolution of the cloud started in the 1950s and concepts such as service-oriented architecture, virtualization, and autonomic and utility computing are the stepping stones of today's cloud computing:
In the 1950s, mainframe computers were shared among various users through dumb terminals to save costs and enable the efficient use of resources.
In the 1970s, VMs were developed to overcome the disadvantages of earlier technologies. VMs enabled us to run more than one different operating system simultaneously in isolated environments, providing all essential resources such as CPU, disk, RAM, and NICs individually to all VMs.
In the 1990s, telecom companies started dedicated
point-to-point
data circuits called VPN. These were offered at a fraction of the cost of the then available technologies. This invention made it possible to utilize bandwidth optimally. A VPN made it possible to provide shared access to the same physical infrastructure to multiple users in shared but isolated environments.
In 1997, Professor Ramnath Chellappa defined cloud computing as follows:
In 1999,
https://www.salesforce.com
started delivering enterprise-level application services over the internet. This was one of the major moves in cloud history.
In the early 2000s, Amazon introduced web-based retail services on its modernized data centers. While Amazon was hardly using 10% of its data center capacity, they realized that new cloud computing infrastructure models could make them more efficient and cost-effective.
In the late 2000s, Google introduced its docs services directly to end users. This gave a taste of cloud computing and document sharing to end users.
In 2006, Amazon formally launched EC2 and S3. Subsequently, over the years, Amazon released various cloud services under the name AWS.
In 2008, Google announced the launch of its app engine services as a beta service. This was the beginning of
Google Cloud services
.
In 2010, Microsoft Azure was formally released, followed by a number of cloud services in subsequent years.
Basic AWS concepts
AWS is a public cloud. It provides a range of IT services that can be used as building blocks for creating cutting-edge, robust, and scalable enterprise-grade solutions. It can be used to host everything from simple static websites to complex three-tier architectures, scientific applications to modern ERPs, online training to live broadcasting events (that is, sports events, political elections, and so on).
According to Gartner's Magic Quadrant, AWS is a leader in cloud IaaS (this term is explained further on in this chapter). AWS is way ahead of its competitors after it pioneered the cloud IaaS market in 2006:
The Magic Quadrant (MQ) is a series of market research reports published by Gartner, the United States-based research and advisory firm. It aims to provide a qualitative analysis into a market, its direction, maturity, and participants. Gartner's reports and MQs are respected in industries worldwide.
Benefits of using AWS over a traditional data center
The benefits of AWS are significant and are listed as follows:
Switch Capital Expenditure
(
CapEx
)
to Operational Expenditure
(
OpEx
): No need to bear the huge upfront cost of purchasing hardware or software and making provision CapEx for these in the budget. With AWS, you pay only for what services you use on a monthly basis as OpEx.
Cost benefit from massive economies of scale
: Since AWS purchases everything in bulk, it gives them a cost advantage. AWS passes on the benefit from this cost advantage to their customers by offering the services at low cost. As the AWS cloud becomes larger and larger, these massive economies of scale benefit AWS as well as end customers.
No need to guess required infrastructure capacity
: Most of the time, before actual IT implementation, guessing the IT infrastructure requirement leads to either scarcity of resources or a waste of resources when actual production begins. AWS makes it possible to scale the environment up or down as needed without guessing infrastructure needs.
Increased speed and agility
: While building an on-premise data center, businesses have to wait to get the desired hardware or software from vendors for an extended period of time. With AWS, it becomes easier for the business to quickly get started and provision the required infrastructure on AWS immediately, without depending on third-party vendors. They need neither to raise a purchase order nor wait for delivery; they just log in to their AWS account and have everything at their disposal.
Global access
: AWS has data centers and edge locations across the globe. Take advantage and host your infrastructure near to your target market or at multiple locations across the globe at a very nominal cost.
Accessing AWS services
Users can access AWS services in multiple ways. Individual services or the whole infrastructure can be accessed using any of the following means:
AWS Management Console
: This is a simple to use, browser-based graphical user interface that customers can use to manage their AWS resources.
AWS Command Line Interface
(
CLI
): Mostly used by system administrators to perform day-to-day administration activities. There are individual sets of commands available for each AWS service.
AWS Software Development Kits
(
SDKs
): AWS helps the user take the complexity out of coding by providing SDKs for a number of programming languages including Android, iOS, Java, Python, PHP, .NET, Node.js, Go, Ruby, and so on. These SDKs can be used to create custom applications to meet specific organizational needs.
Query APIs
: AWS provides a number of HTTP endpoints. These endpoints can be used to send
GET
and
PUT
HTTP requests to AWS to obtain the present status and information for various AWS resources.
AWS overview
AWS provides a highly reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that powers hundreds of thousands of businesses in 190 countries across the world. The following portion of the chapter provides a high-level overview of the basic AWS concepts that you should understand before you start working with AWS services.
AWS global infrastructure
AWS services are available at multiple locations across the globe. AWS provides these services with their infrastructure spread across the globe. The AWS infrastructure is connected and isolated in the form of Regions, Availability Zones (AZs), and Edge Locations based on geography. Let's understand some basic concepts of the AWS global infrastructure.
Regions and AZs
Each region, as shown in the following screenshot, is a collection of at least two or more AZs. Each region is independent and they are isolated from each other to keep each of them safe from catastrophic events. Such regions actually correlate with geographical areas such as Asia, Europe, and North America:
Each AZ, as shown in the following figure, is separated based on a metropolitan area within a region, but they are internally connected with each other through dedicated low-latency networks within the same region to provide failover architecture:
It is highly recommended you select an AWS region based on distance to the targeted market or based on legal compliance. For example, if a client's e-commerce website is selling goods and services only in the EU then it is suggested you host the website in Frankfurt or Ireland to minimize latency. You should also consider compliance requirements specific to a region while deciding on a region for hosting the application infrastructure. For example, if a client is running a website for betting, it may be illegal in one region, but it could be permitted in another region in line with the legal compliance requirements of the region.
AWS constantly evolves its service offerings. New services are launched in specific regions and then gradually supported in other regions. Due to the gradual approach of AWS in launching a service, there is a chance that not all the services may be available in all regions. It is a best practice to review available services in each region before planning, designing, or proposing any architecture.
What are SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS?
Cloud computing is a broad term and covers many services. Common cloud computing models are Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).
Let's broadly understand these models:
IaaS
: When a service provider offers virtualized hardware or computing infrastructure as a service, such an offering is called IaaS.
PaaS
: PaaS is a type of cloud service in which a service provider offers application platforms and tools over the cloud, usually to enable application development. In this service model, underlying hardware and software are hosted on the service provider's infrastructure.
SaaS:
In the SaaS model, the service provider offers software or applications as services. Such services are hosted by the providers and the end customer simply consumes this SaaS without worrying about the underlying hosting platform, infrastructure, and maintenance.
The line of responsibilities in IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS is explained in the following figure:
Understanding virtualization
Virtualization is a process of virtually segregating physical hardware resources into a set of virtual resources that can independently work as a computing resource and provide customized and dedicated CPU, RAM, storage, and so on. Each server and its resources is created in an isolated environment. Each isolated environment is abstracted from the physical operating system and underlying hardware configuration. Such resources are called VMs or instances.
Virtualization is achieved using virtualization software that maintains the abstract and virtual layers on top of physical hardware. Let us understand these virtualization software and virtualization types in the following sections.
Virtualization types based on virtualization software
As shown in the following figure, virtualization software can be broadly categorized into two categories, class 1 and class 2:
Class 1 type
: This is also known as the bare metal virtualization type. Very thin (that is of a small size) virtualization software called a hypervisor is installed directly on the physical server. The AWS cloud uses a customized
Xen hypervisor
. Class 1 hypervisors are faster than class 2 hypervisors. Examples of class 1 hypervisors are Xen, OpenStack, Hyper-V, and vSphere.
Class 2 type
: This is also called a hosted hypervisor. These types of hypervisors are installed above the base operating system such as Windows or Linux. Examples of class 2 hypervisors are VMware Workstation, VirtualBox, and Virtual PC.
Virtualization types based on virtualization methods
As shown in the following figure, virtualization can also be categorized as per the virtualization methods, as follows:
OS-level virtualization
: Host machines and VMs have the same OS with the same patch level
Software virtualization
(hypervisor):
Binary translation
: Sensitive instructions from VMs are replaced by hypervisor calls.
Para Virtualization Mode
(
PVM
): Guest OS is modified to deliver performance.
Hardware Assisted Virtual Machine
(
HVM
): Creates an abstract layer between host and guest VMs. Uses special
CPU
instruction sets (that is, Intel-VT and AMD-V) to boost guest VM performance.
Elasticity versus scalability
Elasticity and scalability are two important characteristics of cloud computing. They describe the way cloud infrastructure is able to expand and shrink to match the actual dynamic workload and are discussed as follows:
Scalability
: This means adding resources either to the existing instance (scale up) or in parallel to an existing instance (scale out). Scalability is essential to achieve elasticity:
Scale up
: Changing the instance type from small to large (that is, changing to more memory or compute) is called scaling up. It is also called
Vertical Scaling
. It may require stopping the existing and running instance. Usually, scaling up is done to get more compute and memory on the same instance. Scaling up is usually suggested for an application that does not support clustering modes easily such as, RDBMS. Usually, scaling up is achieved manually and requires downtime.
Scale out
: Placing one or more new instances parallel to the existing instance is called scale out. It is also referred to as
Horizontal Scaling
. It gives good performance and availability as instances can be placed across multiple AZs. By having individual resources such as a NIC and disk controller for each instance, much better performance can be achieved compared to scaling up. Usually, scaling out is suggested for clustering-enabled applications such as stateless web servers, big data, and NoSQL. Scaling out generally does not require any downtime.
Elasticity
: In physics, elasticity can be defined as a material's ability to expand and shrink with external parameters. Similarly, in the cloud infrastructure, elasticity can be defined as the ability to automatically provision additional resources to meet a high demand and reduce the extended number of resources when the demand lowers.
Unlike a public cloud, generally, traditional data centers do not have on-demand scalability and elasticity. The following sections compare traditional data centers and cloud infrastructure resourcing.
Traditional data center resourcing
As shown in the following screenshot, in traditional data centers, there may be situations when provisioned infrastructure capacity is either more than what is needed or less than required. When the capacity is more than what is required, it's a waste of CapEx and when it is less than required, it throttles performance:
Cloud infrastructure resourcing
In contrast to traditional data centers, cloud infrastructure can be designed with dynamic scalability and elasticity based on actual workload. As shown in the following screenshot, such flexibility almost nullifies the wasting resources or performance throttling. Until the soft limit is reached, cloud infrastructure can keep scaling out and scaling down based on the actual workload.
To achieve such flexibility, cloud infrastructure has to be designed and automatically provisioned in line with such requirements using various services offered by the respective cloud service providers:
Comparing AWS cloud and on-premise data centers
Whenever an organization thinks of migrating their infrastructure over to a public cloud, the first question that strikes the organization is cost. AWS provides major advantages over on-premise environments as there is no upfront cost from using AWS. Thus, there is no CapEx requirement as AWS works on OpEx. That means a customer pays only on a monthly basis based on actual consumption of AWS resources.
The following table differentiates cost on various counts between AWS and on-premise environments:
Pricing model
One time upfront cost
Monthly cost
Public cloud
On-premise DC
Public cloud
On-premise
DC
Server hardware
0
$$
$$
0
Network hardware
0
$$
0
0
Hardware maintenance
0
$$
0
$
Software OS
0
$$
$
0
Power and cooling
0
$$
$
$
Data center space
0
$$
0
0
Administration
0
$$
0
$$$
Storage
0
$$
$$
0
Network bandwidth
0
$
$
$
Resource management software
0
0
$
$
24x7 support
0
0
$
$
