This section provides detail on the AWS management services relevant to the Solution Architect Associate exam. These services are used to help you audit, monitor and evaluate your AWS infrastructure and resources. These management services form a core component of running resilient and performant architectures.
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Learning Objectives
- Understand the benefits of using AWS CloudWatch and audit logs to manage your infrastructure
- Learn how to record and track API requests using AWS CloudTrail
- Learn what AWS Config is and its components
- Manage your accounts with AWS Organizations, including single sign-on with AWS SSO
- Learn how to carry out logging with CloudWatch, CloudTrail, CloudFront, and VPC Flow Logs
- Understand how to design cost-optimized architectures in AWS
- Learn about AWS data transformation tools such as AWS Glue and data visualization services like Amazon Athena and QuickSight
AWS credits are applied to bills to help cover costs that are associated with eligible services. They are applied until they are exhausted or they expire. With credits AWS introduced a sort of reward system for particularly active users and developers. You can use them instead of spending money on certain services.
So you may ask yourself, "How do I get credits?" So, there are multiple ways. For example, developing and publishing a skill for Alexa or by attending webinars and events. As a startup, you can use the AWS Activate program or through the AWS Credit Program for Nonprofits.
In my case, let's jump here to the credits section, I did a few AWS certifications, and for that I was rewarded by AWS with two $300 credit vouchers which is pretty cool. I used them here for my private account to play around with a few services that I was interested in and as you can see here, you can see a list of which these credits can be applied to. And there are almost all services that are available for AWS. And what's quite funny is, the AWS cost explorer that can also cost money when you are using the API is not listed here. So, for the billing services and the cost services you can't use these credits.
Stuart has been working within the IT industry for two decades covering a huge range of topic areas and technologies, from data center and network infrastructure design, to cloud architecture and implementation.
To date, Stuart has created 150+ courses relating to Cloud reaching over 180,000 students, mostly within the AWS category and with a heavy focus on security and compliance.
Stuart is a member of the AWS Community Builders Program for his contributions towards AWS.
He is AWS certified and accredited in addition to being a published author covering topics across the AWS landscape.
In January 2016 Stuart was awarded ‘Expert of the Year Award 2015’ from Experts Exchange for his knowledge share within cloud services to the community.
Stuart enjoys writing about cloud technologies and you will find many of his articles within our blog pages.