AWS Training Update: Cloud Academy Learning Paths

Amazon Web Services has great content for getting started. Cloud Academy takes you to the next level.

AWS recently posted an update to their instructor-led training courses. Revised AWS Technical Essentials and Architecting on AWS Training Update. They are always improving — and so are we.

Our approach differs in a few critical ways. We help you quiz yourself and we support the hands-on implementation of new concepts. Reinforcing critical knowledge with flexible tools produces better results, faster mastery, and greater confidence.

Cloud Academy offers Learning Paths that include video courses, hands-on laboratories, and quizzes (with answers and links). These paths create a for a real-life professional educational experience that we stand behind.

AWS updated their course materials for their AWS Technical Essentials course.

AWS Technical Essentials introduces you to AWS products, services, and common solutions. It provides you with fundamentals to become more proficient in identifying AWS services so that you can make informed decisions about IT solutions based on your business requirements and get started working on AWS.

Their courses are great. They offer instructor-led education at a specific site. This is a 1/2 day course and sounds valuable.

Cloud training should occur in the Cloud

Cloud Academy has an aligned Learning Path that has some notable advantages. Our courses are delivered digitally and you may consume them in a single sitting our in as many parts as you like 24 x 7. Digital learning may be conducted from any Internet-connected location. Cloud Academy offers subscription-based education because many certifications, like AWS, require regular re-certification. With subscriptions, the learning is continuous without additional costs, such as transportation or parking.
Fundamentals of AWS represents the best we have to offer and when you consider what we offer you might be impressed. Our Learning Path features:

  • 6 Video Training Courses for 7 hours and 39 minutes
  • 6 Quiz Sessions (2 modes–test and study) with X questions, answers, and links to Amazon documentation
  • 7 Hands-on Labs

The courses we describe our Learning Paths as this:

AWS is a huge player in the cloud computing world, so if you want to become a cloud architect, AWS Fundamentals is a great place to start. But it’s about much more than AWS: this path will introduce you to some core cloud principles like distributed storage, concurrent computing, redundancy, and security.

Video Courses

video courseTechnical Fundamentals for AWS
This course (AWS 110) is the introduction to Cloud Academy’s comprehensive Amazon Web Services learning tracks series. While subsequent courses in this series will explore individual AWS service categories (like networking or data management) and broader skills (like design principles or application deployments), this course offers a brief summary of everything that AWS has to offer. Technical Fundamentals is also the introduction to the 100 level courses (the AWS Technical Foundation Track) which, in turn, lays the groundwork for our 200 series (intermediate level skills) and 300 series (advanced skills)

Compute Fundamentals for AWS
Course creator David Robinson begins with the basics: configuring and launching virtual servers in Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). While in some cases, this could be all you’ll need to get started, you will also want to at least be aware of some of the ways you can greatly expand the power and reliability of your AWS deployments. So AWS 120 covers tools like Auto Scaling, Load Balancing, Lambda (for event-generated deployments), and the EC2 Container Service, for launching fast and efficient container clusters.

Storage Fundamentals for AWS
As you’d expect, Amazon’s AWS has some pretty effective data backup and storage solutions. This course will introduce you to the basic roles and practical use of Amazon’s entire storage family. We’ll explore the function and structure of Amazon’s S3, Glacier, and Storage Gateway services, how those services can be used together to create an end-to-end data backup and storage management system, and how EBS volumes work with EC2 instances.

Networking Fundamentals for AWS
AWS 160, from Cloud Academy’s comprehensive Amazon Web Services learning tracks series, provides a full introduction to AWS networking. You’ll get a good first look at some of the key structural elements of AWS traffic control, like Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs), security groups, and IP addresses. We’ll also briefly discuss such critical networking services as CloudFront, Route53, Auto Scaling, and Load Balancing.

Database Fundamentals for AWS
AWS 180, from Cloud Academy’s comprehensive Amazon Web Services learning tracks series, provides an introductory tour of Amazon’s database solutions. You’ll learn about managed database solutions and about the basic structure and function of Amazon’s SQL-based RDS database – whether using the MySQL or AWS’s new Aurora database engine. You’ll get a walkthrough of an actual configuration and launch of a highly available MySQL RDS instance. And finally, you’ll learn about NoSQL database formats, focusing on Amazon’s DynamoDB.

Security Fundamentals for AWS
This course is an introduction to AWS security. During this Course, we will get started with the most important topics by covering the AWS Shared Responsibility model, the AWS Acceptable Use policy, and penetration testing rules. We will then explore each of the services in the security and identity category. Besides the most obvious of those, Identity and Access Management (IAM), we will also learn about AWS Directory Service, the brand new Inspector service (which is still in preview mode), the recently announced Web Application Firewall (WAF) and Microsoft AD, an Enterprise-level domain hosted in the cloud. Also, we will take a quick look at the most basic security best practices that we need to be aware of when working with AWS.

The courses and descriptions offer a deep insight into the topics and focus of this Learning Path.

Quizzes in the Learning Path present questions in study and test mode

quiz
  1. EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)
  2. S3 (Simple Storage Service)
  3. EBS (Elastic Block Store)
  4. VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)
  5. RDS (Relational Database Service)
  6. IAM (Identity and Access Management)

quiz questions

Hands-on Labs offer a real-world experience for learners

labs
  1. Create Your First Amazon EC2 Instance (Linux)
  2. Create Your First Amazon EC2 Instance (Windows)
  3. Create Your First Amazon S3 Bucket
  4. Managing Instance Volumes Using EBS
  5. Introduction to Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
  6. Create Your First Amazon RDS DatabaseIntroduction to IAM
  7. Introduction to IAM

hands on lab
Students can download a certificate once they have completed the full Learning Path.

Conclusion

Amazon has great courses and useful documentation. Our courses are deeper and more flexible. The Cloud Academy quizzes support and reinforce the lessons while preparing students for an eventual certification, or job interview. The quiz experience is available for mobile and users report making use of otherwise wasted snippets of time.

Our Hands-on Labs offer safe, directed learning environments where students interact with real AWS environments while building real products. Experiment without leaving the Cloud Academy site.

Dynamic learning for dynamic subjects makes sense. Users typically pull resources from a variety of places in mastering a subject. We offer complete, directed learning paths that speed students along their journey. Additional resources and links to documentation are great. Some people appreciate multiple information streams. We have that too.
See how much you can learn in a week with our free 7-day trial subscription. I bet you’ll want more.

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