Hello, and welcome to this course focusing on virtual private clouds and a number of its related networking components. My name is Stuart Scott, and I'm one of the trainers here at Cloud Academy, specializing in AWS. Feel free to contact me with any questions using the details shown on the screen. Alternatively, you can always get in touch with us by sending an email to support@cloudacademy.com, where one of our Cloud experts will reply to your question. 

This course has been created for those who are relatively new to AWS to gain a better understanding of how to construct and architect a virtual private cloud, a VPC, also, anyone who is looking to learn more about AWS networking features and components. And if you are studying for the AWS Solutions Architect certifications, then you really need to know VPCs inside and out.

This course is comprised of nine technical lectures, each covering a different component. As a lot of this content is architectural-based, I've created the lectures using a digital drawing pad to sketch the designs as I go, which will hopefully make things easier to absorb as you watch the videos. 

I've split the lectures to focus on the components as follows: 

Firstly, I'll be taking a look at virtual private clouds, explaining what they are and what they are used for.

This will then be followed by a lecture explaining and defining what subnets are and how they fit into the VPC architecture.

Next, I shall discuss route tables and how they can be used to direct traffic to different destinations, both internally and externally. 

I then start looking at some of the security features offered, starting with network access control lists, or NACLs, and how they filter traffic on the subnet level of your VPC. 

And this then leads nicely onto security groups, which filter traffic at the instance level.

Following security groups, I dive into NAT gateways, explaining what they are and their different use cases.

Then I look at bastion hosts and how they can be used to access resources within your private subnets from trusted external sources outside of your VPC. 

I then move focus onto connectivity to and from your VPCs using different methods, starting with how VPN and Direct Connect connectivity operate. 

And following this, there is a lecture dedicated to VPC peering, which explains how to connect two VPCs together to access resources in each VPC from each other. 

And then finally, I look at the VPC transit gateway, which allows multiple VPCs and remote sites and data centers to connect to each other with simplicity and ease. 

The course will then be rounded off by a summary detailing key points from all the previous lectures. 

By the end of this course, you'll be able to confidently architect a VPC across multiple subnets within a single region. You will have the knowledge to explain different networking components commonly used within AWS VPCs, and you'll also have an understanding of how to secure your VPCs, helping you to protect your resources within them. Finally, you'll be able to assess which method of connectivity to your VPCs would be best in different scenarios. 

To get the most from this course, then you should have some exposure to AWS. However, this is not essential, as I will explain all the components from the ground up. 

Feedback on our courses here at Cloud Academy are valuable to both us as trainers and also to students looking to take the same course in the future. If you have any feedback, positive or negative, I would really appreciate it if you could contact support@cloudacademy.com. 

That brings me to the end of this lecture. Coming up next, I shall be providing an overview of the AWS virtual private cloud, the VPC.