Getting Started

0:00Well hello there and welcome my name is Scott Fletcher and this is the AWS

0:04certified data engineer

0:06associate course. Now whether you're a grizzled veteran data commando who wants

0:11to learn this new

0:12fangled AWS thingy or maybe you're a seasoned AWS pro looking to add some data

0:16engineering skills

0:18to your toolbox you are in the right place. In this course we're going to take

0:23a deep dive into

0:24the world of AWS and data engineering we're going to talk about everything from

0:28storage solutions

0:29to big data processing to advanced analytics we'll even sprinkle on a little

0:34bit of machine learning

0:36because what self-respecting internet video isn't complete without their grat

0:40uitous use of machine

0:42learning. Anyway in this first skill I'm going to give you some course

0:46information and expectations

0:48then to round things out we're going to create an AWS account that will be our

0:53very own data

0:54engineering lab. Let's get started.

0:00All right, let's get this party started.

0:02Now, sometimes when I'm speaking to you,

0:04I'm going to be full screen like this.

0:06Sometimes I'm going to be a little picture down here

0:09in the corner.

0:10Sometimes I'm just going to be lurking in the shadows

0:14like this.

0:15And so let me go picture in picture here.

0:19And let's talk about the AWS Certified Data Engineer

0:23Associate Exam.

0:26The first thing that we should know about this particular exam

0:29is that they expect you to have a certain amount of experience.

0:33This is not an introductory exam,

0:35nor is it an introductory course.

0:38So they expect you to have somewhere between two and three

0:42years of experience with data and between one and two years

0:46of hands-on with AWS.

0:49Now, I understand that there are different degrees of hands-on

0:54because if you do the same job every day for two years,

0:57working with one and only one service,

1:00then that's going to be a much different experience

1:02than if you've worked with 17 different services on AWS.

1:06So just take that with a grain of salt.

1:08Really, what I'm after here is I would suggest that if you,

1:12if I used sentences like this,

1:15let's use our ETL tool to convert that CSV data into JSON format.

1:22If that makes sense to you, then you're probably okay.

1:25If that sounds like a totally different foreign language,

1:28then you might want to back up and try some more introductory type stuff.

1:33If I say structured, unstructured, unstructured,

1:37or semi-structured data, if that makes sense to you,

1:40then again, you probably are on the right track.

1:43If that is totally foreign to you,

1:46then maybe you might want to back up and reconsider some more introductory

1:50stuff.

1:51Now, if I put up a statement like this,

1:54if you can understand this and know what this is saying,

1:57then I think you're not going to have any problems whatsoever.

2:01If on the other hand, you're looking at this and saying,

2:04what in the world does this mean,

2:06then yeah, this may be a bit much of a course for you.

2:11So I am going to go back into the shadows right now.

2:14We're going to go on to the next slide here and talk about the exam itself.

2:19Now, the exam itself is a multiple choice or multiple response.

2:22Multiple choice is just have a question and then you have maybe five different

2:27options there

2:28and you have a little radio button and you can select one of those five

2:31different options.

2:32Multiple response is slightly different because you can actually select

2:38multiple responses.

2:40So there'll be little check boxes and they'll ask you which of the following

2:44pick three are the right choice

2:46and you can check, check, check, check, that sort of thing.

2:49Now, there are 50 scored questions and 50 unscored questions.

2:54Why in the world would they put unscored questions on an exam?

2:58Well, the exam writers are continually trying to write new questions for the

3:03exam bank,

3:04but it's a little bit unfair for them to write questions and then just put them

3:09out there in the test data bank

3:11and maybe the question has a wording error.

3:14Maybe it's a little confusing.

3:15Maybe it's a little controversial, something like that.

3:18They beta test these questions before they actually get minted into the test

3:24database.

3:25So you may see some questions out there that are a little bit strange or maybe

3:29they cover some sort of cutting edge

3:31service that just was released a few weeks ago and this is probably what those

3:36questions are.

3:37Now, one of the questions that I get all the time is that, hey, there's a new

3:41service that was just released

3:42last week.

3:43Do I need to worry about it being on the exam?

3:45The answer is no, you don't because AWS says that a service has to be generally

3:51available for at least six months

3:55before it will show up on an exam as a scored question.

4:00So don't worry about the services that just drop from the sky.

4:04They may show up as an unscored question while they're trying to build a

4:08question data bank about that particular service,

4:12but it's not going to be scored so don't sweat it if you get it wrong.

4:15Now, a passing score is 720 out of 1,000.

4:19Now, what constitutes 720?

4:21Is it 72% of the questions?

4:23No, not at all.

4:24It's kind of a mystery how they actually score things.

4:28They keep that to themselves to really account for the fact that no two test t

4:34akers are going to get these same

4:35identical tests because they have this giant question bank and the questions

4:39are different levels of difficulty

4:41and they cover different things.

4:43And so they kind of use the scaling factor behind the scenes to try to figure

4:48out and make it fair for test takers.

4:51So now that we've talked a little bit about the exam itself, in the next video,

4:57I wanted to kind of explain my learning philosophy

4:59and how we're going to attack getting you to the point where you're going to

5:04feel comfortable getting in there and sitting for this data engineering

5:08associate exam.

0:00Okay, one of the things that I fully recognize about anybody that's taking this

0:04course is

0:06that we all have different learning journeys.

0:09We're coming from different places.

0:10There may be some folks who just have a love of learning and they want to go

0:13out there

0:14and just learn all the things.

0:16There may be some folks who are taking this course because they want career

0:22advancement.

0:23They want to raise or promotion or they want to move themselves into a data

0:27engineering

0:28career from some other career job.

0:32Now there are others out there that may be curious or maybe they're skeptical.

0:37They've heard about this AWS thing and all this data engineering and data

0:40management

0:41that AWS can do and they're wanting to learn a little bit more about that.

0:46That's kind of how I got into machine learning as a matter of fact.

0:49I was skeptical.

0:50I was trying to figure out what is all this stuff about.

0:53It's not magic.

0:54Well, no, it's not magic.

0:56And that's how I got into that.

0:57So I can appreciate if you're skeptical or just curious.

1:01Now there are other folks who have been volunteered to take this course and I

1:07sympathize with

1:08that as well.

1:10Maybe your organization has decided to move to AWS or move your data warehouse

1:15to AWS

1:16and it's part of the process that we make sure that everybody in the

1:19organization or

1:20at least everybody that's involved in that transition is up-skilled enough so

1:25that you

1:25know what you're doing.

1:26And I think that's very respectable.

1:28But I also understand that some may see this course as a bit of a chore.

1:33So what I would say to that is just bear with me.

1:36This is not your traditional course.

1:39I do not have a traditional sage on the stage type teaching style.

1:44I'm more of a guide on the side.

1:46So hopefully you'll see that come through as we go through this course.

1:50Now I wanted to introduce something else to you.

1:52This is called Bloom's Taxonomy.

1:55And this is something that is useful when we're trying to figure out how we

1:58want to try to

1:59attack things or how we want to learn new things.

2:02The base here is remember.

2:05That's all about memorization.

2:07You just develop the ability to just recall facts.

2:10Now on top of that, the next level up in complexity and sophistication from a

2:15learning

2:15standpoint is being able to understand things.

2:19You can explain things or concepts.

2:22Now above that is apply.

2:24Now once we understand things, it makes sense that we need to be able to apply

2:30them to certain

2:31things.

2:32Now in this course, we are going to try to focus on this apply step here.

2:38Now one of the things in the AWS data engineer blueprint that they say is

2:43specifically out

2:44of scope is the ability to analyze stuff with the data that we're going to be

2:49manipulating

2:50and moving around.

2:51Now basically that would be the next step up here being able to take that data

2:56and make

2:56business decisions out of it.

2:59They specifically say that's not really the purpose or the scope of this

3:03certification,

3:04which I can completely understand.

3:06What our intent here is I want to get you to the point where you can apply

3:10these concepts

3:11to build data pipelines or data cleansing processes or stuff like that that

3:17will help

3:17you build what you need to do to have your data engineering processes work

3:25smoothly on

3:26AWS.

3:27So to that end, we're not going to spend a whole lot of time on memorization or

3:32the

3:33understanding aspect.

3:35What I'm going to do is I'm going to present stuff to you and then we're going

3:38to work

3:39through it using a series of challenges.

3:42And once we get to the first challenge, I'll show you how they're going to work

3:45.

3:45But the idea there is they let you kind of choose your own path, choose your

3:49own level

3:50of difficulty.

3:52And hopefully you're going to choose the most difficult level because I think

3:55that's the

3:56most fun and you're going to learn the most.

3:58But it's a little bit adjustable based on your level.

4:02So if we look at the certification family of AWS, here we have the data

4:07engineering associate.

4:09So it is a mid tier certification.

4:12The entry level is a cloud practitioner.

4:15And some of these more advanced ones are stuff that you would take after you

4:19take probably

4:20some of these mid tier items here.

4:23So we are not going to be talking about ultra advanced stuff.

4:26But if it's new to you, then it's going to be pretty challenging, I'm sure.

4:31So you enrolled in this course, you're going to get a certification.

4:34Great.

4:35Does a certification mean that you know this stuff?

4:38Is it proof of knowledge?

4:40Well, no.

4:41Many, many people who are brilliant, but in an exam environment, they just

4:47crumble.

4:48And maybe that's you too.

4:49Now, conversely, I've met some people who have loads of certifications, but in

4:54a practical

4:54setting, they couldn't figure their way out of a wet paper bag on AWS.

5:00So just so we're on the same page, I do not think that certifications equal

5:05proof of

5:06knowledge, not at all.

5:08But I really rather I see them as a framework for learning.

5:11They set out a framework that you can kind of study or learn or progress

5:17towards.

5:18And that sitting for the exam isn't the finale.

5:23That's just a checkpoint in that process of learning.

5:26So to summarize here, memorize versus understand, apply and analyze.

5:31I most definitely want us to focus on the understand, apply and analyze.

5:37Now, certification is going to help keep us focused because let's be frank,

5:42there are

5:43a ton of things out on AWS that you can kind of squirrel rabbit hole down.

5:49But there are things on the exam blueprint that specifically say, hey, this is

5:53in scope,

5:54this is out of scope.

5:55And those guardrails are going to help us stay focused.

5:59And I also want to convey the fact that I believe that this is greater than

6:03just passing

6:04an exam.

6:05Sure, you can pass an exam.

6:06There are a lot of great test takers that can pass an exam, but does that

6:10really mean they

6:11truly understand what they're doing?

6:13Probably not.

6:14Now, in a lot of cases in this course, we're going to be talking about scenario

6:19based activity.

6:20So I'm going to build out a scenario and you're going to have to work your way

6:24through that

6:24scenario.

6:25So that is how we're going to kind of sidestep this whole memorization stuff

6:30and really focus

6:31in on this understand, apply.

6:34And maybe not so much analyze in this particular course, but certainly apply

6:40and understand.

6:41So how are we going to do these things?

6:43Well, in this course, obviously we're going to have an audio visual component

6:48says Mr.

6:49Obvious, but the adept learning platform, that's the platform you're taking

6:53this course

6:53on right now has some other features as well.

6:56And I'm going to include some text, sometimes for clarification, sometimes for

7:01reinforcement.

7:02And sometimes it's just going to be a complete non sequit, sequiter to keep

7:06things interesting.

7:07Now occasionally I might, I might direct you to specific AWS resources such as

7:12a YouTube

7:13video or a blog article that I found particularly helpful.

7:17We also have quiz questions throughout the skill.

7:21Some of these questions are designed to be very similar to exam questions to

7:27get you

7:27in the practice of doing those.

7:29As a matter of fact, at the end of every skill, we are going to have a

7:33validation section

7:34that's going to consist of some quiz questions that mimic or look like AWS exam

7:40questions.

7:41And I'm going to present them to you.

7:43I'm going to ask you to do your best to try to answer those.

7:46And then at the end of that, I'm going to have a video walking through those

7:49questions,

7:50not only to kind of reveal the answer, but also share with you my strategy of

7:57how I can

7:57try to simplify those questions and improve our odds of getting the right

8:03answer.

8:04Now another thing about this course is I do believe one of the best ways to

8:08learn is just

8:09roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty and go make some mistakes.

8:13In some skills, I'll step through an activity on AWS and you can follow along

8:18if you wish.

8:19Additionally, there are going to be other skills that I'm going to have a

8:22challenge for you.

8:23And these are kind of real world modeled scenarios where you can decide the

8:28level of difficulty.

8:29And I mentioned that earlier in this video and we'll explain that more once we

8:34get to

8:34our first challenge.

8:36So what are some other ways that you can accelerate your learning?

8:39Well, one of the ways that I found is pretty useful.

8:42If you happen to be taking this course with colleagues, maybe you just all take

8:46it together

8:46and you have a group study session.

8:48Maybe you do a lunch and learn or something like that where you watch a video

8:52session

8:52and then you challenge each other to do the challenges and compare notes after

8:58that.

8:59I've seen other people make flashcards.

9:01Again, that's more of the memorization thing, but sometimes that can be useful

9:05to help you

9:05make associations.

9:07Yes, the AWS docs are quite good.

9:11And although I generally don't like reading documentation at all, whenever I

9:16want to truly

9:17understand something, guess what?

9:18I go to the AWS docs.

9:20Now, they also have some little key pieces of information in there and I'll

9:23point those

9:24out when we go through those things.

9:27Sometimes there are things in the documentation that are called out

9:30specifically and those

9:32are good fertile ground for ending up on exam questions because AWS believes

9:38that you really

9:38need to know that thing and I'll point some out as we see those.

9:42And also talk to folks, talk to folks who have been there, done that.

9:47Folks who are experienced on AWS or experienced in data engineering just talk

9:52to them and

9:53they're always most in most cases, they're always happy to share their

9:57experiences and

9:58how it got to where they are and what they wish they would have done

10:00differently and so

10:01forth and so on.

10:02So by the end of this course, I would hope that you're going to become familiar

10:07with

10:07common data engineering strategies and concepts, especially when they relate to

10:13AWS and the

10:13AWS platform.

10:15You should be hip to the AWS lingo at least in the data engineering space.

10:19You should also know about some of the best practices and the potential danger

10:24zones that

10:25AWS wants us to know about to make sure we don't do something bad.

10:29Now of course, I want you to be able to smash that AWS certified data, data

10:33engineer associate

10:34exam, but also I want you to be able to help somebody else start their own

10:41cloud journey

10:42because one of the important things that we have as learners going through the

10:46learning

10:46process is once we learn something, it's very helpful and useful to be able to

10:51help teach

10:52that to somebody else because that not only helps them, but it helps us because

10:56it helps

10:56us solidify that information.

10:59I'm sure you've heard the saying C1, do one, teach one, that is a really

11:04powerful learning

11:05mechanism.

11:06[BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00All right, for the remainder of this skill, we are going to roll up our sleeves

0:03and get our hands

0:04dirty. We are going to get into the AWS console. But before we get into the AWS

0:08console, we're

0:09going to have to create an account. Now, I understand you may be starting with

0:13maybe a company that

0:14already has accounts for you to use. Do not use a production account for doing

0:20stuff in this course.

0:21It's going to create a big mess. And you could actually get in trouble security

0:25wise by doing that.

0:27What I would recommend is create a special account all by yourself. Maybe if

0:31your organization wants

0:32to create an account for you like a sandbox account, where you can pretty much

0:36do everything,

0:37you will need to have administrator access into this account to do some of the

0:41activities that

0:42we're going to do in this course. So my recommendation is just create an

0:46account from scratch. You're

0:48going to be in the free tier for the most for most of the services that we're

0:52going to use,

0:52they probably fall within the free tier, or at least they're just pennies to

0:56use that sort of thing.

0:58So just go ahead and go out there and then create an account. And then you don

1:04't have to worry about

1:05inadvertently exposing your company's secrets to the internet or something like

1:09that. So let's get

1:10started. So to create our account, we're going to go out to AWS.amazon.com. And

1:16this is AWS's

1:17main web page. Now your screen may look different. These advertisements and

1:22promotions they have

1:24going here tend to change. So if your screen looks different, then don't worry

1:28about it too much.

1:29What we're most interested here is this button up here. This is create an AWS

1:34account. I'm going to

1:35click on that. And it's going to take me to a sign up page, or at least the

1:40first part of the

1:41sign up page. So if I have an existing account, I can already sign into that

1:45there. But I am going

1:47to set up a new account. So right here at this first screen, let me enlarge it

1:52a little bit.

1:53We're being asked for a root user email address. Now this root user is the most

2:00powerful user in

2:01our AWS account. It's going to be the first user in our account. It's going to

2:05be the most powerful.

2:06It has the ability to do basically everything inside that account. It's not

2:11best practice to

2:12use this root user to do a lot of stuff with because it's so powerful and it's

2:16easy to make

2:17a mistake with this root user. So best practices say we should use another

2:22account and we'll get

2:23into that later. But for right now, we're being asked for a root user. Now this

2:26can be your own

2:27email address. This can be an alias. This can be an email address that forwards

2:32to some other

2:33location. It does need to be a real deliverable email address because when you

2:38sign up, they're

2:39going to send you information and confirmations and your monthly invoice to

2:44this email address.

2:45So I'm going to enter this email address here. It's got pleasure plus cloud

2:48practice at cbtnuggets.com.

2:51That is going to go to my email address or an email address box that I have

2:56access to.

2:56Next, we're being asked to provide an account name. Now this account name can

3:01be really anything

3:02you want, but it does have to be unique amongst other account names. So it may

3:08take a little trial

3:09and error to try to figure out the best account name here. So I'm going to try

3:13Fletcher cloud

3:14practice. We're going to verify that email address. And what this is going to

3:17do is send an email

3:19to this address here and make sure it's a real address. And so now I have to go

3:23check my email

3:24box in it's asking me to put in a verification code. So let me do that. I do

3:29have my verification

3:30code that I just received it is this 903 and verify. And so it has verified

3:37that our email

3:38address is in fact a real email address. Now we're being asked for our root

3:43password. Now because

3:45this root user is the most powerful in our entire account, we should use a

3:50pretty complex root

3:52password that's not easy to guess. Because if it's easy to guess, somebody

3:56could get into your

3:57account and do bad stuff. So I'm going to enter a password here that tries to

4:02satisfy these

4:03conditions here has to have some uppercase letters, some lowercase letters,

4:07numbers, and some non

4:08alphanumeric characters. And I have to enter it in here again to confirm. And

4:14then it's saying,

4:15hey, we can continue on to the next step. So we're going to click that. Now we

4:20're being asked how

4:21we're going to use our account, either it's business or personal. I'm just

4:25going to select

4:26personal here. And it's going to ask for who should we contact about this

4:30account. This is our

4:31contact information. So I'm going to put my stuff in here. And I'm going to

4:35fill out my phone number

4:37and address and postal code and all that stuff. And then I'm going to check

4:41this little box down

4:42here that says, yes, I have read and agreed to the terms of service. I would

4:47encourage you if you're

4:48concerned about these types of things, do read through the terms of service,

4:52there are certain

4:53things in here that you cannot do you are confirming that you agree that you

4:59cannot do certain things.

5:00Those certain things are stuff that you probably wouldn't do anyway, like use

5:06the AWS account to

5:07launch attacks on other accounts or other companies or send viruses and stuff

5:13like that. That's kind

5:14of crazy stuff. It also says that you agree to pay your bills. So I am going to

5:19fill out all this

5:20information. And then I'm going to progress to the next screen. Now I've

5:23progressed to the next

5:25screen and is asking for my billing information. And there's a note here that

5:29says we will not

5:30charge you for usage below the free tier limits. But we may temporarily hold up

5:34a $1 USD or equivalent

5:37as a pending transaction just to verify that this is indeed a valid credit card

5:42number. So I am going

5:43to enter my credit card number information here and then progress to the next

5:47screen.

5:48Okay, after I entered my credit card details, I progressed to the next screen

5:52and it's asking me

5:54to confirm my identity. I can do it two ways. I can have them text me or call

6:00me. And I'm going to

6:01have them text me. I'm going to enter my mobile phone number here. I have to do

6:04this little capture

6:05phrase here to prove that I'm not a robot, I guess. And then I can click on

6:10send SMS. So let me do

6:12that now. Okay, so I've just entered my phone number information and the little

6:17capture code.

6:18I'm going to check my phone here. And sure enough, I do have a text. And let me

6:23enter that code here.

6:25There we go. And I can continue. Now it's prompting us for what sort of support

6:31plan we want to

6:32sign up for. Now, because this is just a learning account, we can stick with

6:36basic support. That's

6:38more or less just email support. You're pretty much going to be at the bottom

6:42of the queue. Now,

6:43if you want a level up from that, you can get developer support from $29 a

6:48month, or you can

6:49get business support from $100 a month. Now, if you are a business who intends

6:54on running workloads

6:55on top of AWS, I highly recommend you go with at least the business support

7:02level support.

7:03Because if you happen to be running mission critical applications or

7:08applications that are

7:09critical for your business to function, then you definitely don't want to be

7:14waiting around for

7:15somebody to eventually get to your support question. So this is going to give

7:19you some priority response

7:21time here. And it has some other benefits too. But for now, we're just going to

7:25use basic support.

7:26And I'm going to complete the side up. Congratulations. Thank you for signing

7:32up with AWS. Now,

7:34we can go to the AWS management console. We can click on this button right here

7:38.

7:38It's going to prompt us for logging in. And we have two options. We have a root

7:43user, which is the

7:44user that we just created. And then we also have something called an I am user.

7:49And we're going to

7:50talk about that in a later skill. But for now, if we want to log in, we can

7:54just put our root user

7:55name right here. And then I can click next, and it's going to prompt me for my

8:00password,

8:01and click sign in. And then that is going to allow us to get into our AWS

8:10console.

0:00Alright, now we have our AWS account. We're ready to roll, right? Well, we have

0:04a few more things to do.

0:06First and foremost, we need to put multi-factor authentication on our root

0:11account. Now, I happen

0:13to use UB keys. You can also use a little device like this that gives you a

0:17little number here

0:18that you would enter one time password, that sort of thing. You can also use an

0:23application. If you have

0:25like Bitwarden or LastPass or something like that, we are going to put multi-

0:29factor authentication

0:31on our root user because that root user is the most important user in our

0:35account. And if that

0:37gets compromised, we are in trouble. So we are going to do that first and

0:40foremost. Next,

0:42we are going to create an IAM user for our daily use. It's bad practice to use

0:50our root user for

0:51everything because it's just too powerful. We don't need it. We're going to

0:55create an IAM user

0:57for that purpose. We're also going to put multi-factor authentication on that I

1:02AM user, of course,

1:04just use multi-factor authentication always just. It shouldn't be even negot

1:08iable. Okay.

1:10So the other thing we're going to do is we are going to enable CloudTrail. And

1:15I'll explain what

1:16CloudTrail is. If you already know, then you know, and we are also going to

1:21enable an AWS

1:22budget. And that is going to be very important because it's going to make sure

1:25that if we accidentally

1:27leave something on, we're not going to be surprised by this gargantuan bill at

1:31the end of the month.

1:32So these are some things that I recommend that everybody do whenever they

1:36create a new account.

1:38So let's go. So one of the things that I do want to share with you right now is

1:43for our root

1:45account user, we most definitely want to turn it on something called multi-

1:51factor authentication.

1:53And you probably use this in your own personal accounts with maybe your bank or

1:57your employer,

1:59where you have to enter your username and password. And then maybe they

2:03challenge you to enter another

2:05code that an app provides for you, or maybe they text you an SMS message and

2:11you have to enter that

2:12code. That is multi-factor authentication. And so we most definitely want to

2:18add that to our root

2:20user, because again, that root user is the most powerful user in our entire

2:25account. So it's

2:27given us this warning here, how I got here is I went to this little dropdown

2:31clicked on security

2:32credentials. It took me to this screen. And I went to assign an MFA. Now we

2:38have an option of

2:40several different types of FFA's. We can use an authenticator app that's

2:44something like,

2:45I don't know, LastPass Bitwarden Duo, I think also does this to where you can

2:51specify that you

2:52want to store your code generator, your one time password code generator in

2:57some sort of authentication

2:59app. We also have a security key, which is a hardware key. And examples of this

3:05are UB keys or

3:07other FIDO security keys. I'm partial to UB keys. I use UB keys for as many

3:13accounts as I can,

3:16and as many places as I can, because I just like the ease of use. And they're

3:20extremely secure.

3:21And we also have a hardware token down here. Now this is a bit old school, but

3:27you may still have

3:28these. You can buy these little tokens that have this little LCD screen, and

3:32you press a button,

3:33and it shows you a code here. And you can enter that code into the AWS login

3:38process here when

3:39we're logging in, and it will allow you through. Now for our purposes, I'm

3:43going to use an authenticator

3:45app just because I think that's probably the most common way that you're

3:49probably going to have to

3:50create a multi factor authentication. Now if you don't have an application to

3:54do this,

3:55you can download one pretty easily. I think Microsoft has one, Google, I know

4:00has one,

4:00basically any sort of password manager will probably have the ability here.

4:05Like I said,

4:06last pass bit warden, those things. So I am going to say, let's see, bit warden

4:11,

4:12because that's the password manager that I use. And I'm going to choose

4:17authenticator app. And so

4:18I'm going to click next. Now it offers me the option here to show a QR code.

4:24And if I have

4:25this application on my mobile device, then I can just easily scan this QR code

4:31here.

4:31And if I don't have that ability, I can show my secret key. And this secret key

4:37right here,

4:38I would copy and paste and put into my password manager. And then it's going to

4:42challenge me

4:43to enter these two consecutive codes to MFA device codes. And this just

4:48synchronizes my device,

4:50my the codes that my device is generating with what AWS is keeping up with my

4:56device. And it

4:57uses the secret code, plus there's a time function as well. So I'm going to

5:02scan this QR code with

5:04my bit warden mobile account here. And I'm going to save it. Oops. Okay, I've

5:10saved it. Now I can go

5:11back out and pull that back up. And it is providing me with a one time password

5:17. So I'm going to enter

5:18that. And then I'm going to wait until it generates a new one, and then enter

5:23that as well. And just

5:25in case you're on the security side of things, and you're saying, how dare he

5:30show his MFA code?

5:31Isn't that dangerous? Well, as soon as I record this video, I'm going to delete

5:35this particular

5:36MFA code and change it to something else. So in addition, probably by the time

5:42this course gets

5:43published, this account is going to be long gone anyway, because I cycle

5:47through accounts very

5:49readily. So I'm going to enter my second one time password there, add MFA. Okay

5:55, so I can register

5:57up to eight MFA's. And I would really recommend if you have the opportunity to

6:00enter multiple MFA's,

6:02especially if you're using a hardware MFA, they could potentially get lost.

6:06Then it's always good

6:07to have a backup. So here my multi factor authentication is enabled. And next

6:14time when I log in,

6:16well, after I enter my password, it's going to prompt me for this one time

6:20password. So that is

6:21something that you must do. Again, you know, it is optional. But these are some

6:26of the best practices

6:28that people do. And those that do these things don't end up on front page news

6:34about having all

6:34their AWS data stolen or compromised. So we have to do the best practices, we

6:40have to follow those

6:41best practices.

0:00Okay, so here I am back in my live account and first things we're going to do

0:04is turn on cloud

0:05trail. So we can go up here search for cloud trail and there it is. Now,

0:11because I'm using

0:13control tower and AWS organizations, both those services are really beyond the

0:17scope

0:18of this particular course. But I had created this account using those services

0:23and they have

0:24already created trails for me. What is cloud trail? Well, cloud trail, I kind

0:29of think of it as like,

0:30it's a security camera, it's the eye in the sky that sees everything, every API

0:34interaction

0:35that somebody anybody has with this particular account, it is going to register

0:40in cloud trail.

0:41And that's very useful. If for instance, you have some sort of security event

0:45or you have a data

0:46breach, then you can use these cloud trail logs to try to do some forensics and

0:50try to figure out

0:51how much data did they get? What did they get? That sort of thing. So I already

0:55have my trails

0:56set up now if you set up your account as a standalone, you probably don't have

1:00these here. So we're

1:02just going to go here to create trail. And I'm going to call it something, let

1:06's just call it data

1:08engineering trail. And it's going to ask if we want to create a new S3 bucket

1:15or an existing S3

1:17bucket. Now I'm just going to leave it here to create new bucket, it's going to

1:20create a new bucket

1:21with this name here. Now, normally speaking, you probably would just leave this

1:26enabled here, this

1:27log file SSE KMS encryption. What this is is using KMS key management service

1:34to encrypt the logs

1:36when they get written to that bucket. Now, you would probably think at least

1:40best practices would

1:41say that yeah, sure, encrypt everything at rest. Well, the problem that this

1:47creates is that every

1:48time an API is registered, it's going to go out and write that to S3. And it's

1:54going to call KMS

1:56to encrypt that piece of data. Well, every call to KMS ends up costing a tiny

2:02bit of money, but it

2:04really adds up over time. So I am going to uncheck this. This is just a sandbox

2:09account. I'm not

2:10very interested in making sure it's encrypted. If you were using this in a live

2:15account,

2:16probably somebody who have already set up these things for you would have

2:20already taken care of

2:21that. You don't have to worry about that. But I'm just going to uncheck it. Now

2:25down here,

2:25log file validation, I don't really care about that. And don't really care

2:28about SNS, I'm going to

2:30leave all that the same. I'm going to click next. Okay, now it's asking me what

2:34types of events do

2:36I want to record? Now I could select data events, and I can go down here to

2:41data events. And I can

2:42select the actual service and is going to log those particular data events.

2:47What is a data event? Well,

2:48that's anytime data is written or read or modified. So if we're talking Lambda,

2:55for example, or DynamoDB,

2:58then that's going to record all events if we choose to or only read only events

3:03or write only events.

3:04That's a lot of stuff. So we're not going to do that right now. I'm going to un

3:09select data events.

3:10I'm really more interested in management events. Those are events like logs and

3:14log ins, log outs,

3:16account creations, that sort of thing. And I'm going to click next. And it's

3:20going to give me a

3:20little confirmation here. I'm cool with all that stuff. And my trail is created

3:26. So that's all I

3:27have to do. I have created this little trail here, we can click on this. And it

3:30's going to take us

3:31out to that S three buckets. And here it is created a cloud trail. And it takes

3:36a little while to

3:37populate some data in there. So we can check back on that later. As a matter of

3:41fact, one of the

3:41things that we're going to do as part of this course is use cloud trail to

3:45monitor some of the

3:46API access to our data services. Okay, so that is enabling cloud trail. Now the

3:52very next thing I

3:53want you to do is go out and set up a budget. So you don't get surprised by

3:59overspending. So we're

4:01going to go to billing and cost management. And we are going to scroll down

4:07here to budgets.

4:08And there's our here's our budget. We're going to create a budget. Now we have

4:13some options here,

4:14we can use this simplified template that's already provided here, or we can

4:19customize our budget.

4:20I'm going to use a template here. Now we can choose zero budget. That would

4:26basically mean if

4:26we spend over a penny, it's going to alert us and say, Hey, you spent over $0.

4:33And that's pretty

4:33useful if you want to be sure that you're sticking with the free tier. I always

4:38find that to be very,

4:39very difficult, especially with some of the services that I end up using, they

4:43do cost money

4:44sometimes, but they're just pennies. So I'm going to use a monthly cost budget.

4:49And I'm going to leave

4:50that name the same here. And I'm just going to say 50 bucks. If I spend over 50

4:54bucks, then it's

4:55going to notify me. And now I have to enter what my email recipient is. And

5:00that's going to be my,

5:01my account here. There we go. And I'm going to click create budget. That's it.

5:08That's all you

5:08have to do walk away. You now have a budget. Now the last thing that we have to

5:12do is we want to

5:13create an I am user that we're going to use on a daily basis, because we do not

5:20want to use our

5:21root user for any more than we absolutely have to. Now I am going to go out to

5:26I am

5:27identity and access management. Hopefully in your experience with AWS, you

5:35should have a little

5:36experience with AWS. I am is kind of one of those core services that it's hard

5:40to miss. So I am

5:43is going to be something that we're going to see in this course a little bit.

5:46So I'm not going to

5:47spend a whole lot of time describing exactly what it is. You should already

5:50know that.

5:51But we will dive into some of the roles and policies and so forth. So I'm going

5:55to create a user.

5:56I'm going to call this Scott. And I want to provide user access to the AWS

6:02management console. Yes.

6:03And it's going to ask me I can enter a custom password or can auto generate a

6:08password. I'm

6:09going to enter my own password here. And then it's going to ask should the user

6:15create a new password

6:17at next sign in I'm going to uncheck that because I am me. I just created my

6:20password. That's a

6:21password I want. Click next. No, don't say now I'm going to have the option

6:28here to add this user

6:30to a group. And well, I think that's a pretty good idea. I'm going to create a

6:34group. And I'm

6:35going to create a group with administrator access. So we can scroll out here.

6:40You can see we have

6:42different administrator access groups for some different services. This is kind

6:46of the top level

6:47administrator access. And for the activities that we're going to be doing in

6:51this course,

6:52you will need administrative access. So I'm just going to check that one and

6:56click create a group.

6:57Oops, got to give it a name administrators. Create a group. There we go. And

7:05now I can select

7:06that group and say I want to become a member of that group. My username, a

7:10member of that group

7:12create user. Now, of course, what I would want to do is immediately set up

7:19multi factor authentication

7:21on this account as well. So I'm going to basically repeat the process enable

7:25without multi factor.

7:27And it's given me a little warning here it says, come on, come on. So I'm going

7:31to go to security

7:32credentials, scroll down here to multi factor authentication, and rinse and

7:37repeat the same process

7:39that I've already done. I am sure that you can figure this out. So there we

7:45have it. We have

7:46implemented our account. We have secured the root user with MFA. We have added

7:53a budget alert.

7:54And we have also turned on cloud trail. We have also created a daily driver

7:58user in our individual

8:00user. And from now on, we're going to use this user to log into our console.

8:05And we are basically

8:06We're going to forget about our root user because we don't need it.

0:00Now at the end of every skill, I'm going to have three questions and they're

0:03going to simulate exam questions and I do this for two reasons.

0:06Number one, just to try to reinforce what we learned in the skill and number

0:10two, taking AWS exam questions is a bit of an art and a science.

0:14And there are some tips and tricks that can help you really increase your

0:18chances of getting that question right, even if you're a little bit shaky on

0:23the subject matter of the question itself.

0:25So I'm going to kind of show you how I walk through these questions.

0:29Now, because this is a first skill in our course, there's not a whole lot of

0:34meat on the bone, so to speak.

0:36So our questions here are kind of lighthearted, but I still wanted to walk

0:40through them just to give you an idea of what to expect at the end of every

0:43skill.

0:44So here we go.

0:45First question, which of the following are best practices after creating new

0:50AWS accounts?

0:51Choose four.

0:52Well, we have a couple of different ways we can approach this.

0:54We can choose four or because there's only one, two, three, four, five options

0:58here.

0:59We can just find one that's clearly not the answer and the rest of them have to

1:03be the answer.

1:04So we can look down through here and able clown trail.

1:07Yep, I want to do that.

1:08Enable MFA on root users.

1:10Yep, create a budget.

1:11Yep, create an IAM user rather than user root user.

1:14Yep, I should do that crack open a cold beverage and watch Simpsons reruns.

1:19I would love to do that as a best practice, but alas, AWS doesn't think that

1:24that's a best practice when creating a new account.

1:27So if we were going about it a different way, we could just find that option

1:31right there.

1:32Say that's not one.

1:33Here's all the rest of them.

1:35And so this is my final answer moving right along.

1:39What purpose does Amazon cloud trail serve for our account?

1:43Number one, it protects our account from denial of service attacks.

1:47No, it doesn't really protect us from anything.

1:50If you remember, cloud trail records stuff, as a matter of fact, here's the

1:56answer.

1:56Records all API calls coming in and out of our account.

1:59That's exactly what cloud trail does.

2:01Does it provide a way for us to log in using a federated account management?

2:05Nope, it does not do that.

2:07Does it ensure that accounts only have access to the stuff they're supposed to

2:10have?

2:11No, it does not do that.

2:12So this answer right here is my final answer moving right along.

2:18What is a key strategy to improve your chances of selecting the correct answer

2:24in an exam?

2:25Relying solely on memory?

2:27Nope.

2:28Guessing only randomly?

2:30No, I wouldn't say that focusing on only on familiar topics.

2:33Well, you were going to have exam questions that you are not familiar with.

2:37So that's probably not a good strategy as well.

2:40Approaching exam questions with an art and a science.

2:44Yes.

2:45Which is a good answer in my opinion.

2:48Skipping difficult questions.

2:49No, that's not a really good strategy.

2:52However, one of the things I do recommend for exam takers is that you make a

2:57single pass,

2:58a first pass through all the questions and kind of get a lay of the land.

3:02And any questions that you can immediately answer, go ahead and answer those.

3:05Any questions that are giving you a little bit of difficulty, mark them and

3:08come back.

3:09But I do not recommend just totally skipping them and pretending they don't

3:13exist.

3:13So we'll get into that in later skills and I'll show you how I walk through my

3:18exam questions.

3:19So I hope this has been informative for you and I'd like to thank you for

3:23viewing.