Hands-on Labs: 7 New AWS Labs for Aurora, CI/CD with AWS, Encryption, Redshift, IoT, and More

I’m happy to announce that we have just published 7 new AWS Hands-on Labs in the Cloud Academy content library! With these new additions, we now offer 60 hands-on labs in our catalog.  

Our AWS Hands-on Labs are one of our most important and appreciated products. With them, you can learn how to build real things on AWS with your Cloud Academy membership (if you are not a member, try it for free!) using a real AWS environment, and without having to pay for an AWS account. Our members complete thousands of labs every day, and our dedicated team is hard at work building more labs with a focus on real-world, production-ready scenarios.

Here is the list of our 7 new AWS Labs. You’ll find a full description, including prerequisites and learning objectives for each lab at the links below. You can find more labs inside all our Learning Paths for AWS Certifications.

Continuous Deployment and Integration with AWS Code Services

Upon completion of this lab you will be able to:

• Create and use AWS CodeCommit repositories for source control
• Build and test your code with AWS CodeBuild
• Automate your CI/CD process with AWS CodePipeline
• Use AWS CodeDeploy to automate your deployments to EC2
• Release and roll back using a blue/green deployment strategy

Getting Started with Amazon Aurora

Upon completion of this lab you will be able to:

• Log in to the AWS Management Console
• Connect to an EC2 instance to communicate with Aurora
• Create a multi-AZ Aurora database deployment
• Load and query data in Aurora
• Failover an Aurora instance and recovery with no data loss

Encrypting S3 and EBS data with AWS

Upon completion of this lab you will be able to:

• Explain key terms surrounding AWS KMS
• Create a new Customer Master Key (CMK) using AWS KMS
• Use the CMK to encrypt an EBS volume and attach that to a running EC2 instance for use
• Turn on CloudTrail for auditing purposes and deliver its logs to an encrypted S3 bucket
• Generate a CMK external to AWS and import it to attach and encrypt an EBS volume
• Disable and enable CMKs
• Confirm that encryption is turned on and working

Compliance check using AWS Config Rules

Upon completion of this lab you will be able to:

• Configure the configuration recorder to AWS resources
• Track and audit security changes using AWS Config
• Explore the integration between AWS Config and CloudTrail
• Use managed and custom rules to check compliance
• Analyze and correct non-compliant resources

Getting Started with Amazon Redshift

Upon completion of this lab you will be able to:

• Log in to the AWS Management Console
• Connect to an EC2 instance to communicate with Redshift
• Create and resize a Redshift cluster
• Load data into Redshift
• Query data within Redshift

Introduction to AWS IoT (Internet of Things)

Upon completion of this lab you will be able to:

• Secure device communication channels
• Publish and subscribe to MQTT topics
• Respond to topic messages using AWS IoT rules
• Update device state using thing shadows
• Monitor your IoT ecosystem

Monitoring AWS CloudTrail events with AWS CloudWatch

Upon completion of this lab you will be able to:

• Turn on and configure CloudTrail so that it captures key events and delivers log files to a specific S3 bucket
• Navigate the S3 bucket structure where CloudTrail logs are stored (as compressed JSON files)
• Generate traffic in order to verify CloudTrail is working
• Use the CloudTrail console to learn more about the events CloudTrail captures
• Configure CloudTrail to send events to CloudWatch
• Create a metric filter and alarm so that you receive a notification when specific events occur in AWS