Hello and welcome to this learning path that has been designed to help you prepare for and pass the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Certification. 

My name is Stuart Scott. I'm one of the trainers here at Cloud Academy specializing in AWS, Amazon Web Services. Feel free to connect with me with any questions using the details shown on the screen. Alternatively, you can always get in touch with us here at Cloud Academy by sending an email to support@cloudacademy.com where one of our cloud experts will reply to your question. 

The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification has been designed for those who are not necessarily within a technical role but do have some exposure and experience with AWS and the services that it provides. Perhaps, being involved from a sales, financial or managerial perspective. The subject caught here of the exam can be broken down into four distinct domains, these being cloud concepts, security, technology and billing and pricing. And each of these domains carry a specific percentage weighting within the exam. These are shown on the screen. 

To allow you to understand and define these domains, they can each be broken down further. So, let's take a look. 

Domain one, cloud concepts. This domain focuses on three key areas. Define the AWS cloud and its value proposition, identify aspects of AWS cloud economics and list the different cloud architecture design principles. This will test your knowledge of general cloud concepts and principals. Looking at the benefits of the cloud and what it can bring to your business from both a financial and operational perspective. 

Domain two, security. This domain looks at four components of cloud security. Define the AWS shared responsibility model, define AWS cloud security and compliance concepts, identify AWS access management capabilities and identify resources for security support. This security domain will test your understanding of cloud security ensuring you understand the boundaries of where specific responsibilities lay between you and AWS. It will also access your knowledge of access control to your AWS resources and how you can maintain compliance within your environment and how to request additional support if required. 

Domain three, technology. Much like the previous domain, this also has four key areas of interest. Define methods of deploying and operating in the AWS cloud, define the AWS global infrastructure, identify the core AWS services and identify resources for technology support. This domain will test your knowledge of the core components of AWS, its global infrastructure and its key services across a spectrum of categories such as compute, storage, databases and networking. You must know the differences between specific services and what those services are used for. 

Domain four, billing and pricing. This domain assesses you in three areas. Compare and contrast the various pricing models for AWS, recognize the various account structures in relation to AWS billing and pricing and identify resources available for billing support. This domain is all about your understanding and awareness of how to track and trace your cloud spend when using AWS using a variety of tool sets that are available. Knowing the differences between these tools is essential. 

This learning path is comprised of a number of courses and hands-on labs that cover all elements within these domains to ensure you have the required knowledge and sufficient understanding to enable you to pass this certification. There are nine courses and four labs in total. Starting with the course, what is cloud computing? This will provide an introduction to cloud computing itself before we focus on components of AWS. Then we have the AWS compute fundamentals, which we'll look at some of the core compute services offered by AWS at a foundational level. Then this leads you on to your first hands-on lab allowing you to create an ET2 instance by following step by step instructions within a live AWS environment, all of which is provided by our platform. Next will be another course, this time focusing on the key storage services and again once you have understood the theory behind this lecture, you will have the opportunity to create your first S3 bucket, again, using one of our hands-on labs. Database fundamentals will then follow this lab which will introduce you to services such as RDS and DynamoDB. And you can then create a relational database service instance by following the step by step lab. Networking fundamentals is next which introduces you to essential networking elements of AWS including virtual private clouds which then leads nicely onto the final lab of this learning path which provides an introduction to what a VPC is and how they are created. Security fundamentals introduces you to some of the key security services that are used to control access and secure your environment. The management fundamentals course focuses on the services and features that are available to help you manage and operate your cloud resources and infrastructure. AWS architecture fundamentals provides an understanding of the global AWS infrastructure and how to deploy services and solutions upon this infrastructure using best practices with the help of the well-architected framework. The AWS cost management and customer support cost looks at the different pricing and support plans that are available and the tool sets that are available to help you manage and monitor your cloud spend. 

And finally, there will be a summary of all the content that this learning path provided. These lectures and courses within this learning path have been created and recorded by myself, Andrew Larkin, the AWS content lead and John Chell, our Content Product Specialist. 

Feedback on our learning paths here at Cloud Academy are valuable to both us as trainers and any students that are looking to take the same learning path in the future. If you have any feedback positive or negative, it would be greatly appreciated if you can contact us at support@cloudacademy.com. 

That brings me to the end of this lecture. Coming up next, let me begin by introducing you to what is cloud computing.