Getting Started with Amazon Web Services

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

0:03certified cloud

0:04practitioner course. Now while that might seem like a mouthful, another name

0:08for this course

0:09could easily be the absolute beginner's guide to all things Amazon Web Services

0:14. In a few moments

0:15we're going to embark upon a journey together and this journey requires no

0:19prior tech background,

0:20no special IT knowledge and definitely no coding experience. In fact, the only

0:25prerequisite is

0:26that you bring a sense of curiosity which you seem to already have because you

0:30're watching this

0:31video. By the end of this course you're going to have a solid foundation in

0:35cloud concepts and

0:36Amazon Web Services. Enough that you're going to be able to sit for and

0:40hopefully smash that AWS

0:42certified cloud practitioner exam. Heck you might even be able to launch your

0:46own cloud based startup

0:47by the end of this thing. Even if you're not aiming for a certification or

0:51Bezos level fame and

0:53fortune but just want to be hip to the AWS lingo that all the cool kids seem to

0:57be using nowadays,

0:58you're in the right place. So let's get started.

0:00Okay, let's get this party started. Now, sometimes I may be popping up down

0:04here or over here,

0:06or maybe I'm just lurking in the shadows like this. So that's what I'm going to

0:12do for this

0:12video is I'm just going to lurk in the shadows and share with you some

0:16information about this course

0:18and how to use this course and some of my philosophy about how we go about

0:24learning some of this stuff.

0:26One of the first things just right out of the gate is I wanted to let you know

0:29that I am

0:30completely understanding of the fact that many of us are coming from different

0:34backgrounds and

0:35we're taking this course for different reasons. Perhaps we're just lifelong

0:39learners and we love

0:41learning and we just want to learn about AWS and maybe we're trying to set

0:46ourselves up for a

0:47career advancement, maybe a career change. Maybe if you're young, you're just

0:51getting into the industry

0:53and you're curious about what AWS can do and how you might be able to fit into

0:57that. Maybe

0:58you're middle aged and you're going through a career change. I can completely

1:02identify with that.

1:03After 30 years in corporate IT, I decided to take a pivot seven years ago and

1:08teach people how to

1:08cloud. Maybe you're curious about AWS or maybe you're skeptical. I'm sure we've

1:13all seen those

1:14memes of the cloud is nothing more than somebody else's computer. Well, it's a

1:18little bit more nuanced

1:19than that. But if you're here because you're skeptical and you just want to

1:23educate yourself

1:24and learn more about it, I definitely welcome you to this course. And then of

1:28course, we're going to

1:29have some folks here that were volunteered to take this course. Maybe their

1:34organization is adopting

1:36AWS and they were told, Hey, if you want to be part of this project, you're

1:39going to have to

1:40educate yourselves on AWS. So go take this course. I completely can empathize

1:45with that and understand

1:46that hopefully as we get into this course, you're not going to feel like this

1:50is a chore. And in fact,

1:52for this course and all my other courses, I really try to make them fun,

1:56enjoyable, and engaging to

1:57go through. So hopefully this is not like taking some nasty medicine or

2:01something like that. But

2:02nonetheless, I welcome each and every one of you into this course. Now I also

2:06want to touch on

2:08something else and it's called the Dunning Kruger effect. And it uses a curve

2:12like this. There were

2:14two psychologists a while back named David Dunning and Justin Kruger. And they

2:18did some experiments

2:19on how people estimate their own abilities and their own confidence. And this

2:25type of curve you

2:26may have seen before it's used in a lot of different things. Gardner has

2:29something they call the hype

2:31cycle, which kind of uses this curve as well. And it's not too far from that,

2:34as a matter of fact.

2:36What this is saying is that early in our experience, we're going to build our

2:40confidence and it's

2:41going to become pretty high because we don't really know what we don't know.

2:46And then at some point,

2:47we're going to realize, wow, there's way more that we don't know. And then our

2:52confidence is going to

2:53plummet, basically. And we're going to find ourselves in this trough of

2:57disillusionment. And we may

2:59experience imposter syndrome. Hey, we shouldn't be here. We're not worthy of

3:03learning this stuff.

3:05And along with that goes some self doubt. And the reason I wanted to point this

3:09out is that in this

3:11course, you're going to be learning new stuff. And sometimes learning new stuff

3:15is really hard.

3:16And so you might find yourself in this trough of disillusionment, this imposter

3:20syndrome. Hey,

3:20I'm just not cut out for this AWS stuff, maybe this self doubt. But I wanted to

3:25let you know that

3:26we've all been there. Everybody who has learned something new, most everybody

3:30who has learned

3:31something new has at some point or another faced these same things. So I just

3:36wanted to let you

3:37know that you're not alone. If you get to a point in this course where you feel

3:41like, hey, this is

3:41too difficult, just keep on charge and keep on pushing. And it's going to work

3:46out in the end,

3:46I promise you, there are thousands and thousands of other people that have

3:51already walked this path.

3:52And you can walk this path to. And there's a reason that we call it a learning

3:57curve. It

3:57doesn't happen all at once. Here's an example. If I were to say something like

4:02this, our AWS landscape

4:03consists of a static website hosted on S three front ended with CloudFront as

4:08our CDN.

4:08Our ecom site is hosted in uss two and runs on a multi AZ EC2 spot fleet behind

4:15an ALB back ended by

4:16Aurora RDS. You may be saying what in the world is he even talking about? But

4:23with just a little

4:24bit of cloud knowledge, a little bit of knowledge of AWS and some of the

4:27terminology and some of the

4:28services, you're going to be able to fully understand what I just said. And by

4:34the end of this course,

4:35you're going to know what all this stuff means. So I fully want to identify and

4:40recognize and

4:41empathize with the fact that somewhere in this course, you may say, Hey, this

4:45is way over my head,

4:46stick to it. I promise you, if you just stick to it, if you do the exercises,

4:51you answer the quiz

4:52questions and you do all the stuff, then you're going to get this, you're going

4:55to know this stuff.

0:00All right, let's talk about some of the different learning methods that we're

0:02going to use for this course.

0:03And when I talk about learning methods, I like to use something called Bloom's

0:06Taxonomy.

0:07And this is a hierarchy.

0:08This represents the different levels of learning that we can do.

0:12Now down here at the base, remember, and this is just memorization more or less

0:17.

0:18And I can remember when I was in school having to memorize my multiplication

0:21tables.

0:22I hated it, but supposedly that was serving as the basis for some higher level

0:28knowledge.

0:29Now, above remembering is we have understanding.

0:33Here's why things happen the way they do.

0:35We're not just remembering things and recalling facts.

0:38We're understanding how they work.

0:40Now, on top of that, we're able to apply that information.

0:45So once we understand stuff, we can apply it to other activities or other

0:50scenarios.

0:51Now, on top of apply, we have analyze, evaluate and create.

0:56Now, I'm not going to dive into these right here.

0:59Because for this course, we're mostly going to be focused on this, but I

1:03definitely

1:04don't want to spend a whole lot of time with memorization because that's not

1:08very useful to you.

1:10I want to really focus on this understanding and this applying as we go through

1:15this course content.

1:16And that's also what AWS has in mind when they laid out their certifications.

1:22So we are here down here at this cloud practitioner.

1:26And that's what they consider a foundational knowledge set.

1:29Now, on top of that, we have the sysops administrator, the developer solutions

1:34architect,

1:35associate and the data engineer associates.

1:38And these are kind of mid-level certifications and they kind of go to those

1:43applying and maybe a little bit of these analyzing as well.

1:48Now, once you get up to some of these higher level certifications, the advanced

1:53networking,

1:53machine learning, the security specialty,

1:55these are deep dives into these particular topics.

1:58Then we also have these two biggies right here and these are considered some of

2:03the most

2:04challenging certifications in the IT industry because they're so wide in their

2:10breadth and depth of the stuff that you need to know to pass these cert

2:15ifications.

2:16So this would be more analogous to up here at the top level, the evaluate and

2:22create.

2:23So for our purposes right now, it's going to serve us very well to get a

2:27baseline

2:28understanding and a foundational understanding of what AWS is.

2:32And then you can use that to if you want to pursue some of these other cert

2:37ifications.

2:38So here's my little disclaimer on certifications.

2:41Certifications mean proof of knowledge, right?

2:44No, they do not.

2:45They do not mean proof of knowledge.

2:47I look at them more as a framework for learning.

2:50Sure, we know many people who are absolutely brilliant, but maybe in an exam

2:55environment,

2:56they just crumble or maybe you're like that too.

2:58Yes, the certification is something to be proud of, but it's not the be all end

3:03all.

3:03I've met some people who have loads of credentials, but in a practical setting,

3:08they couldn't architect their way out of a wet paper bag.

3:10So just so we're on the same page, I didn't want you to obsess about getting

3:14the certification.

3:16I want you to think about the knowledge journey rather than the end goal of

3:22just

3:22passing that exam, because if you look at this as a journey and a knowledge

3:26building

3:26process, the exam stuff's going to take care of itself.

3:30So here are some learning methods that we're going to be using in this course.

3:34Now, obviously there's an audio visual component.

3:36You're sitting here watching a video and you're listening to me,

3:39Yay, Moron also includes some text in the skills, sometimes for clarification,

3:44sometimes for reinforcement, and sometimes just as a complete non sequitur to

3:49keep

3:49things interesting.

3:51Now, occasionally I might direct you to a specific AWS resource, such as a

3:56YouTube

3:56video or a blog article that I found particularly helpful.

4:00We also have quiz questions throughout the skill.

4:04Some of the questions are designed to be similar to exam type questions to get

4:08you

4:09in the practice of doing those things and get you comfortable with those.

4:12Others are more just to check in and see how you're feeling as we progress

4:16through

4:17this course. Now, although this is considered a beginner course,

4:20I do believe that one of the best ways to learn is just to roll up your sleeves

4:24and get your hands dirty.

4:25In some skills, I'm going to step through an activity on Amazon Web Services

4:30and you can follow along if you wish.

4:33Additionally, in some skills, I have some challenges for you.

4:37And these are real world scenarios where you can decide the level of difficulty

4:41.

4:42Kind of like a choose your own adventure type thing.

4:44And I'll explain more about those when we get there.

4:47But wait, there's more because this is your learning journey.

4:51You can customize this journey.

4:53One of the things that I've heard from a lot of students is that if they come

4:58together as a group to take this course, they get some more out of this

5:03material.

5:04They can kind of communicate with one another and discuss some of the lessons

5:08and maybe help each other out on the challenges or the hands on.

5:11Plus, when you get a group together, there's a little bit of accountability

5:15and you can help motivate each other in your learning journey.

5:18I've also heard of people creating flashcards for AWS services.

5:22And some of these acronyms can really seem like just an absolute alphabet soup

5:27when we're just getting started.

5:29So people will write the acronyms on one side and then the either the function

5:33or the purpose or the full name on the other side and they can help quiz

5:37themselves

5:38on this. Again, that's more of that foundational

5:41summarization that I really didn't want to focus in on in this course.

5:46But feel free to use that as a method to learn some of this stuff.

5:49I also wouldn't underestimate AWS blogs or dare I say it, reading the

5:54documentation.

5:55And yes, I'm saying that as someone who generally throws the instructions

5:59into the recycling bin, AWS documentation isn't that bad.

6:04And also talk to folks, talk to folks who are already working in AWS, ask them

6:09how they got started and what they found was their best way to learn.

6:12Most people are really eager to share their story.

6:15And this is where we can get the real story.

6:18We can see how people kind of had their own struggle to get to where they were

6:23getting and trust me, everybody struggles sooner or later when you're trying to

6:27learn

6:27new stuff and I know it may not seem like it if you go out to LinkedIn.

6:31You see the highlight reel of everybody's promotions and stuff like that.

6:34But there's a lot of hard work behind the scenes and you're only going to get

6:38a real story if you just start talking to people.

6:40So by the end of this course,

6:42I would hope that you're going to have a very good understanding of some common

6:47cloud computing strategies and concepts.

6:50Now, I also want you to be hip to the AWS lingo.

6:53So if somebody's talking AWS speak,

6:56that you're going to be able to understand what they're talking about.

6:59And then also I want you to be familiar with some of the AWS best practices

7:04and the potential danger zone.

7:06Yes, there are danger zones and because I am not an employee of AWS,

7:11I can share the good and the bad with youth that I've seen over the years.

7:15So we have certain responsibilities that are ours and if we do not fulfill

7:19those

7:19responsibilities properly, then bad things can happen.

7:22And I also want you to have a very good chance at passing that AWS certified

7:27cloud practitioner exam.

7:28But again, as I said earlier, don't obsess over this.

7:32This is a learning journey.

7:34You learn the material, the exam will take care of itself.

7:37Now, finally, after you've gone through your cloud journey,

7:41I want you to help somebody else start their cloud journey.

7:44As I said earlier, it's very important.

7:47It's very useful, I think, to talk to other folks who have gone before you

7:52and learn about what worked for them, what didn't work for them, what was

7:55confusing,

7:56what was easy.

7:57And I think we all have that responsibility to help somebody else as they're

8:01just

8:02because invariably somebody is going to help you

8:05as you're just starting.

0:00It may be hard to believe that only about 25 years ago Amazon was just a scrap

0:04EE

0:05commerce startup.

0:06And this is a picture of their webpage from 2002 courtesy of the Internet

0:10Archive.

0:12And you can see here the Nintendo GameCube system is now available for $99.

0:17Looks like Halo was just released here.

0:20And if you remember if you're old school on Amazon you remember this gold box,

0:24the

0:24little treasure box that you can get some deals in.

0:27Now from the outside looking in, somebody would probably just assume this is a

0:31perfect

0:31success story.

0:32They started in 1994, enjoyed growth.

0:36But like many other startups, they eventually became victim to their own growth

0:41.

0:42And in 2000 they realized that their growth was being hampered by something

0:46called technical

0:47debt.

0:48And that brings us to our first techie term, technical debt.

0:53It's the future cost incurred by making an easier choice in the near term.

0:57In other words, if you're familiar with the Popeye universe, if that is a thing

1:02, there's

1:02a character in Popeye called wimpy and it's catch phrases.

1:06I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

1:10Another analogy here is plopping down that credit card to buy that new GameCube

1:15for example,

1:17and just saying yeah, I'll pay it off later.

1:19So that is technical debt and that's a real thing.

1:22Now, technical debt can mean monetary debt or it could just mean functional

1:28debt, meaning

1:29that to progress at some point in the future to progress, you're going to have

1:33to satisfy

1:33that debt or maybe re-engineer something to get around that.

1:38It's easy in retrospect to say yeah, we should have anticipated that technical

1:42debt but in

1:42a lot of cases, you just don't know that you're incurring technical debt in the

1:47moment.

1:47For example, another analogy here is the three little pigs.

1:52The two of the three little pigs probably incurred some technical debt when

1:55they decided

1:56to build their houses out of straw and sticks because maybe it was cheap and it

2:00was readily

2:01available, but they really had no way of predicting that the Big Bad Wolf was

2:05going to come by

2:05and blow their house down.

2:07Now if they had known that, they probably would have built it out of bricks

2:10like the

2:10other pig did, but nonetheless, Amazon had found themselves under the weight of

2:15this

2:15technical debt.

2:17And what they decided is that it was a prime time, it was a perfect opportunity

2:21for them

2:22to start re-architecting things.

2:24And they created these modular services, these services that can be reused by

2:30their developers

2:32rather than having the developer having to create something from scratch every

2:35time they

2:36needed a new function.

2:38They created these modular services that were shared across their organization.

2:42Now somebody inside Amazon said, hey, maybe there's a business opportunity here

2:47.

2:47And in 2004, they released something called the Simple Q service.

2:52And this is considered the first AWS service that was publicly available.

2:58And two years later, they relaunched Simple Q service.

3:02And they also added Simple Storage service and Elastic Cloud Compute.

3:07Now we'll get into what these services are later, but these were considered the

3:11first

3:11services.

3:12And back in 2006, nobody else was doing this.

3:16These were services that you could just pay for.

3:18You could just rent computing capacity.

3:21And when you didn't need it anymore, you could just stop paying for it.

3:23And that was something that was completely novel.

3:26Now because AWS had that first mover advantage, they enjoyed the market lead

3:32for a very long

3:32time, even up to today.

3:35Now other competitors like Microsoft's Azure and Google Cloud have been upping

3:39their game

3:40for sure.

3:41Any Azure is considered probably the prime competitor to AWS right now, nipping

3:47at AWS's

3:47heels.

3:48But nonetheless, AWS claims that at least 90% of the Fortune 100 companies use

3:53their services

3:54and products.

3:55Now mind you, that doesn't mean they use their services and products

3:59exclusively.

3:59It is not uncommon at all for large corporations to use multiple clouds.

4:04But that is a topic for another time.

4:07What's important here is just understand the origin story of how AWS came to be

4:11.

4:11It really is a story of Amazon trying to solve their own internal problems.

4:16Low and behold, other companies had those same problems as well.

4:21And thus the cloud computing market was born.

0:00Now in certain parts of this course, I am going to go out to AWS, the AWS

0:04console and do stuff and walk through stuff.

0:07And I would love for you to walk through that with me as well.

0:10And to do that, you're going to need an AWS account.

0:13Now, if you already have one, that's cool.

0:15You can use that.

0:16If you don't, I'm going to walk you through the process of setting up an

0:19account.

0:20Now, the cool thing about AWS is that for new accounts, they have something

0:24called a free tier.

0:26So there's a lot of stuff that you can do that's not going to cost anything.

0:29But I will caution you, we are just setting up the account.

0:32It is not going to be ready for prime time just yet.

0:36You're going to have to stick around to subsequent skills where we're going to

0:39put

0:39some security measures in place and some budgetary measures in place to make

0:43sure

0:43that we don't spend more than we want.

0:46Or maybe we don't go past what is already available free for our account.

0:52So let's get started.

0:53So to create our account, we're going to go out to AWS.Amazon.com.

0:58And this is AWS's main web page.

1:01Now your screen may look different.

1:03These advertisements and promotions they have going here tend to change.

1:08So if your screen looks different, then don't worry about it too much.

1:12What we're most interested here is this button up here that says create an AWS

1:16account.

1:16I'm going to click on that.

1:18And it's going to take me to a signup page or at least the first part of the

1:24signup page.

1:24So if I have an existing account, I can already sign into that there.

1:29But I am going to set up a new account.

1:32So right here at this first screen, let me enlarge it a little bit.

1:35We're being asked for a root user email address.

1:39Now this root user is the most powerful user in our AWS account.

1:45It's going to be the first user in our account.

1:47It's going to be the most powerful.

1:49It has the ability to do basically everything inside that account.

1:53Now, spoiler alert for a future skill.

1:56It's not best practice to use this root user to do a lot of stuff with because

2:00it's so powerful.

2:01And it's easy to make a mistake with this root user.

2:04So best practices say we should use another account and we'll get into that

2:09later.

2:09But for right now, we're being asked for a root user.

2:12Now this can be your own email address.

2:13This can be an alias.

2:14This can be an email address that forwards to some other location.

2:19It does need to be a real deliverable email address because when you sign up,

2:24they're going to send you information and confirmations and your monthly

2:28invoice to this email address.

2:31So I'm going to enter this email address here.

2:33Scott Pletcher plus cloud practice at CBT nuggets.com.

2:36That is going to go to my email address or an email address box that I have

2:41access to.

2:42Next, we're being asked to provide an account name.

2:45Now, this account name can be really anything you want, but it does have to be

2:49unique

2:50amongst other account names.

2:53So it may take a little trial and error to try to figure out the best account

2:56name here.

2:57So I'm going to try Pletcher cloud practice.

3:00We're going to verify that email address.

3:02And what this is going to do is send an email to this address here and make

3:06sure it's a real address.

3:07And so now I have to go check my email box and it's asking me to put in a

3:11verification code.

3:13So let me do that.

3:14I do have my verification code that I just received.

3:17It is this 903 and verify.

3:21And so it has verified that our email address is, in fact, a real email address

3:26.

3:26Now we're being asked for our root password.

3:29Now, because this root user is the most powerful in our entire account, we

3:35should use a pretty

3:36complex root password that's not easy to guess because if it's easy to guess,

3:42somebody could get into your account and do bad stuff.

3:44So I'm going to enter a password here that tries to satisfy these conditions

3:49here.

3:49So I have some upper case letters, some lower case letters, numbers and some

3:53non-alpha numeric characters.

3:55And I have to enter it in here again to confirm.

3:59And then it's saying, hey, we can continue on to the next step.

4:03So we're going to click that now.

4:05We're being asked how we're going to use our account, either it's business or

4:10personal.

4:10I'm just going to select personal here and it's going to ask for who should we

4:15contact about this account?

4:16This is our contact information.

4:18So I'm going to put my stuff in here and I'm going to fill out my phone number

4:22and address

4:23and postal code and all that stuff.

4:25And then I'm going to check this little box down here that says, yes, I have

4:28read and agreed

4:29to the terms of service.

4:32I would encourage you if you're concerned about these types of things.

4:35Do read through the terms of service.

4:38There are certain things in here that you cannot do.

4:41You are confirming that you agree that you cannot do certain things.

4:46Those certain things are stuff that you probably wouldn't do anyway, like use

4:51the AWS account

4:52to launch attacks on other accounts or other companies or send viruses and

4:58stuff like

4:59that. That's kind of crazy stuff.

5:00It also says that you agree to pay your bills.

5:03So I am going to fill out all this information and then I'm going to progress

5:07to the next screen.

5:09Now I've progressed to the next screen and is asking for my billing information

5:13.

5:14And there's a note here that says we will not charge you for usage below the

5:17free tier

5:17limits, but we may temporarily hold up a one dollar USD or equivalent as a

5:22pending

5:23transaction just to verify that this is indeed a valid credit card number.

5:28So I am going to enter my credit card number information here and then progress

5:32to the next screen.

5:34OK, after I entered my credit card details, I progressed to the next screen and

5:38it's

5:38asking me to confirm my identity.

5:41I can do it two ways. I can have them text me or call me and I'm going to have

5:47them text me.

5:47I'm going to enter my mobile phone number here.

5:49I have to do this little capture phrase here to prove that I'm not a robot, I

5:53guess.

5:54And then I can click on send SMS.

5:57So let me do that now.

5:59OK, so I've just entered my phone number information and the little capture

6:03code.

6:03I'm going to check my phone here.

6:06And sure enough, I do have a text and let me enter that code here.

6:10There we go.

6:12And I can continue now it's prompting us for what sort of support plan we want

6:17to sign up

6:18for now because this is just a learning account.

6:21We can stick with basic support.

6:23That's more or less just email support.

6:25You're pretty much going to be at the bottom of the queue.

6:28Now, if you want a level up from that, you can get developer support from $29 a

6:33month

6:33or you can get business support from $100 a month.

6:37Now, if you are a business who intends on running workloads on top of AWS,

6:43I highly recommend you go with at least the business support level support

6:48because

6:49if you happen to be running mission critical applications or applications that

6:55are

6:55critical for your business to function, then you definitely don't want to be

6:59waiting

7:00around for somebody to eventually get to your support question.

7:04So this is going to give you some priority response time here.

7:07It has some other benefits too.

7:09But for now, we're just going to use basic support.

7:12And I'm going to complete the site up.

7:14Congratulations.

7:16Thank you for signing up with AWS.

7:18Now we can go to the AWS Management Console.

7:22We can click on this button right here.

7:23It's going to prompt us for logging in and we have two options.

7:28We have a root user, which is the user that we just created.

7:32And then we also have something called an IAM user.

7:35And we're going to talk about that in a later skill.

7:37But for now, if we want to log in, we can just put our root user name right

7:42here.

7:43And then I can click next and it's going to prompt me for my password and click

7:47sign in.

7:49And then that is going to allow us to get into our AWS console.

7:54Now I'm going to stop the video right here because in another video,

7:57I wanted to walk you through this console, all the parts and pieces and what

8:02are

8:02the important things that you may need to pay attention to.

0:00All right, we have three main ways to get stuff done in AWS or on AWS,

0:05depending on how you want to phrase it.

0:07The first option we have is something called a command line interface.

0:11And sometimes people call this CLI, just kind of abbreviated as CLI.

0:17And what a command line interface is, it's a piece of software that we can

0:22download from AWS, they provide it to us.

0:26And we can install it on our computer. And then once we've installed it on our

0:29computer, we can use that to send instructions to AWS from our computer.

0:36Maybe not our computer, it can be a server somewhere or some other computer.

0:41And generally this is done at what we call a command line.

0:46This is a pretty low level old school way of issuing commands to anything.

0:52We can use command lines for many different purposes.

0:55But in this case, this is an example of executing the AWS CLI, which here is

1:02called AWS.

1:04And then these things right here are instructions that we are sending to AWS to

1:10do stuff.

1:11In this particular case, this command is trying to copy a cat picture to an S3

1:19bucket on AWS.

1:20Now, you don't have to worry about what S3 is or what any of this stuff is.

1:25But just know that this is how a command line interface looks and this is how

1:29we can use it.

1:30Now, generally speaking, it's pretty utilitarian. It's no frills.

1:35We can download this for Windows or Linux or Mac or whatever operating system

1:40we happen to be using.

1:42And generally speaking, you're going to go out to something called a terminal

1:45session.

1:46And that's what this thing is right here. It's called a terminal session.

1:51It kind of harkens back to the days when we had mainframes and you would have a

1:56terminal that you would sit down with a keyboard and that giant monitor.

2:00And then you would just pick away and give it instructions.

2:03Well, today we call that a terminal session because of that that origin of

2:09having a computer terminal that we would send instructions.

2:12So this is still part of most operating systems nowadays.

2:16You can open up a terminal session and generally you don't use this unless you

2:21're doing some automation or scripting or if you want to do some pretty advanced

2:26capabilities.

2:27And that's where the command line interface for AWS comes into play.

2:32Very often it's used for putting into scripts, meaning we can put a series of

2:38instructions into a piece of code.

2:41And that's going to execute those instructions in that order thereby saving us

2:46from having to execute each individual instruction all the time.

2:49So if we wanted to have a backup that ran maybe daily of all our documents, we

2:55could create a script that would execute the CLI command and copy all our

2:59documents out to AWS, for example.

3:02Now the command line interface is generally pretty popular for folks that have

3:07like DevOps roles or sysops roles.

3:09Those are the folks that are really responsible for making things run kind of

3:13behind the scenes under the covers, so to speak.

3:16And generally speaking, if you're just starting out with AWS, you're probably

3:20not going to use the command line interface.

3:22The next option we have for doing stuff on AWS is something called the software

3:27developer kit.

3:28It's also abbreviated as SDK sometimes.

3:32So you may hear it in those terms and software developer kits are kind of what

3:36they sound like.

3:37Again, their software provided by AWS and it allows us to do stuff with

3:43whatever our favorite programming language is.

3:47And generally these software development kits are used by software developers

3:51to write software to do stuff with and to AWS resources.

3:56And there's a lot of supported programming languages.

3:59There's JavaScript.

4:01There's Java.

4:02There's Python.

4:04There's Rust.

4:05There's go.

4:05And the list goes on and on and on.

4:08There's probably maybe about 13, 14, maybe even 15 different languages that are

4:14supported by AWS.

4:16And you can go out and freely download these software development kits and then

4:20you can install them on your computer.

4:22And if you're a software developer, you'll have something like an integrated

4:25development environment and IDE.

4:28And you can use the software development kits to code stuff.

4:32And because we can write our own code, our own instructions for doing stuff,

4:38yet we can also leverage some of the libraries that are provided in these

4:44software development kits.

4:46It makes our development go much faster than if we were trying to do everything

4:50from scratch.

4:51So therefore, the software development kits and this method is pretty flexible

4:56and it's very versatile.

4:57Because we can insert our own logic and our own processes to do things.

5:02And an example of who might use this is maybe somebody is creating a mobile app

5:07that is supposed to upload a picture you shoot from your phone, for example.

5:12They would create that software.

5:14They would use AWS as software development kit for whatever language they're

5:19programming in.

5:20Then you can install that application on your phone.

5:22And then behind the scenes that software development kit is going to kick in

5:27and whenever it needs to interact with AWS, it's going to know how to interact

5:32with AWS.

5:33And it's going to handle all that connectivity and all those instructions all

5:36by itself.

5:37So the developer or you as the user don't have to worry about any of that stuff

5:42.

5:42And the final way we have to get stuff done on AWS is something called the AWS

5:47console.

5:48And that's exactly what we're going to dive into now.

0:00Okay, so in our last video, we kind of left off at this point, we had just

0:04created our brand new AWS

0:06account, we had logged into it using our root user. Remember, that's the most

0:11powerful user in our

0:13entire account, it can do anything, which is a blessing and a curse sometimes.

0:18But now we are

0:19logged into our console, this is known as the AWS console. And if it's your

0:24first time here,

0:25you're going to get these little pop ups here, it's going to want to take you

0:28through basically a

0:29tour of the console, you can feel free to go through that, I'm just going to

0:33skip through this,

0:34because I'm going to show you all the stuff that it's pointing out and more

0:37anyway. So here are our

0:40parts and pieces. So over here to the far left, we have AWS, you can just click

0:45on this, and it's

0:46going to take you to the AWS console, this is basically the home base for us.

0:52So if you get into the AWS

0:54console and you kind of get disoriented or lost or something like that, you can

0:58always come over

0:59here and click this little picture right here. Let me make this a little bit

1:03bigger here.

1:04Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't because it tries to flow these

1:09little widgets in place,

1:12and sometimes they don't look very good when it's scaled very large. So let's

1:16try it this way. So

1:18if I get lost, I can always click here, and it's going to take me back to this

1:22home. Now for each

1:23one of these little bits here, there's this little info hyperlink here, and I

1:28can click on that, and

1:29it's going to give me some information over here of how to use this. So again,

1:34if you want to figure

1:36out how best to use some of these things here, you can always click on that

1:39info. And it's going

1:41to give you a definition of what may be in there, and what purpose that serves.

1:47Now all these things

1:48right here, all these little boxes are referred to as widgets, and we can

1:52customize this depending

1:54on what we want to see. And we're going to do that in a little bit here. But

1:58continuing right

1:59along the toolbar here, we have services. Now if you remember in one of our

2:04last videos, we said

2:05that way back in 2004 and 2006, AWS released simple queue service, elastic

2:12compute cloud, and

2:14simple storage service as some of the first services. Well, now there are a ton

2:21of services. I don't

2:22know how many services are hundreds at least of services, and you can access

2:27those services

2:29here by clicking on this little icon here. And it gives us a menu, we can

2:34scroll down. And again,

2:36if this is the first time you're seeing this, this is probably pretty

2:39overwhelming, and I can

2:40completely understand that. So if I want to see what are the services that are

2:45for storage.

2:46So I can click on storage here, and it's going to give me links to all the

2:51services that have

2:52anything to do with storage. We have AWS backup, EFS, elastic disaster recovery

2:58, FSX, and we'll get

2:59into all these services later in due time. But here's how you can access the

3:06services of AWS.

3:08And you can click down through here, it might be good to just get some, get

3:12some familiarity

3:13with some of these services. Again, you don't have to know what they all are at

3:17this point in time.

3:18We're going to get into that and subsequent skills. And we're going to step

3:21through some of these

3:22services and explain what they do and what their pros and cons are. But for now

3:28, I just wanted

3:30you to get familiar with how to access that now, if you happen to know the name

3:34of the service,

3:35you can search for it. So for example, here, if I search for simple, there's a

3:40simple queue service

3:42right there. So it helps me just quickly identify a service that I'm looking

3:48for. Now, this little

3:50star here allows me to bookmark that service. So if you saw I clicked on that

3:55star, if I go back

3:57here, you can see it now appears on my little header bar here. So if we want to

4:03access certain

4:04services very frequently, it may make sense to bookmark them like that. I'm

4:08going to uncheck that

4:09there. Now, one of the other things to note here in this search is it's pretty

4:14versatile.

4:15Not only does it show us the services, but it also widens the search to give us

4:20some resources

4:21and some documentation. So if we were looking for a particular article of how

4:26to do something,

4:28we could basically type in how to create an IAM account. And it's going to

4:34search for that.

4:35And it's going to give us what it returns. So how do I create an IAM policy, so

4:41forth, so on.

4:42So again, I would suggest maybe spending a little bit of time out here, just

4:47getting familiar with

4:48what types of stuff you can type in here, and what you're going to have down

4:52here. We can access

4:53blogs, marketplace. Now the marketplace AWS marketplace is a location where

5:00third parties can publish

5:02their AWS creations. And we can purchase those. Sometimes we can purchase it

5:09for free. Sometimes

5:10it's offered for free. Sometimes there's a free trial. Sometimes there's a

5:14subscription,

5:15but we can offer we can purchase those things as a customer. And it comes

5:20through on our AWS bill.

5:22So we don't have to contract with any sort of third party there. It's all

5:27happening through

5:28our AWS billing. We'll go into marketplace a little bit later, but I just

5:32wanted to point it out here

5:33in case you were wondering what in the world is marketplace, we have tutorials,

5:38and then any

5:38events if there's any sort of events like an on demand event or a live stream

5:44that's going to

5:45cover, you know, whatever we asked up here, then this is where those would

5:50appear continuing

5:51right along. This is a pretty nifty feature here that is relatively new. It is

5:57our cloud shell.

5:59And this is creating a little tiny, well, let's see here, let me see if I can

6:04expand it. There we go.

6:06So what this is doing is it's creating a little tiny instance, a little tiny

6:11version of a computer,

6:14a virtual computer, and giving us a command line interface that we can execute

6:19commands on.

6:20So I can do AWS S3 LS. Now that command is the AWS CLI, if you remember from a

6:29few slides ago,

6:30S3 is the service. LS is the command that I sent to that service. And what this

6:37is saying is,

6:37hey, AWS, that's the CLI S3, which is the service, simple storage service. And

6:45then I'm doing LS,

6:46which is the command for list. So basically what I told it to do there is list

6:51on my S3 buckets.

6:52Well, I don't have any S3 buckets in this account just yet. So it didn't really

6:56come back with

6:57anything. But anyway, this is how I can pretty quickly and easily access a

7:02command line interface.

7:03If I wanted to do something, if I knew how to do it via command line interface,

7:07and I didn't want

7:08to fumble around navigating through the console, then this is the way I could

7:12do that. Scale us

7:13back down here, because it's a little bit difficult to see everything. And so

7:18all I do is I just click

7:19on that, it pops up. And it's a little bit persistent, meaning it's going to

7:23stay out there

7:23for a period of time. I can always just go over here to new actions and say

7:28restart my cloud

7:29show, I can delete my cloud show, I can upload a file to it. So in essence,

7:34think about it as

7:35just a little tiny computer that's kind of hanging out there, allowing us to do

7:38some pretty low level

7:39stuff if we prefer to do stuff via the command line interface. So I'm going to

7:46X out of that.

7:47Now we go to the bell icon here, and these are our notifications. Now we can

7:51customize these

7:52notifications, but there are also some default notifications here. So we can

7:57click on see all

7:58health events. And this is going to take us to a screen that is going to give

8:03us any sort of

8:04problems that AWS is currently experiencing that may or may not affect our

8:10resources.

8:12So we can see here under event logs, they had some operational issues in

8:16Northern Virginia,

8:17operational issues globally here. And these issues are closed. Generally

8:22speaking, AWS is

8:24pretty open about their problems and issues. If it's a large issue, they will

8:29do an after

8:30incident report where they do a deep dive into the root cause of those things

8:35and

8:36explain to customers who were impacted why it happened and what they're doing

8:40to prevent it

8:41from happening again. So again, I'm not going to spend too much time here. This

8:46is a little bit

8:46overwhelming, I understand. And if you remember, how do I get back to my main

8:51console? I'm going

8:52to click on that little AWS icon there. Okay, so that's notifications. Oops.

8:58And yes, of course,

9:00they're always interested in the user experience. So occasionally you're going

9:03to get these little

9:04popups here that says, how would you rate your service console experience? Oh,

9:08say, yeah, it's great.

9:10Sure. And so that's the notifications. Now, in addition to the health

9:15notification, we can also

9:16configure other notifications that can be sent to either email or mobile device

9:22. Or there are

9:23integrations into chat applications like Slack, for example, if your company

9:27happens to use Slack,

9:29there is a way that you can integrate a Slack channel into AWS. And it works by

9:35using the software

9:36development kit. And it can interface with AWS, you can actually send commands

9:41to do stuff on AWS

9:43via a Slack channel, which is kind of nifty. Now here is support. Now to get

9:48support, you can

9:50click on support center here. And this is kind of reminiscent of a typical

9:55ticketing type support

9:56center. I'm going to X out of this to give us some more space here. So here's

10:02my support plan,

10:03my support plan, let me enlarge that as my support plan is basic. I can also

10:10view different

10:11support plans here if I wanted to compare in contrast and decide maybe, hey, I

10:15want to upgrade.

10:16This gives me a breakdown, a little bit more detailed breakdown than we saw

10:21when we signed up

10:22for our account. Let's go down here. So you can see we have the basic which we

10:29're on right now.

10:30Now the pay versions are developer, business, enterprise on ramp and enterprise

10:35. And they have

10:36different service level agreements, meaning that AWS will try to address your

10:40problem within a certain

10:42amount of time. And there are other benefits and reasons why you might want to

10:48opt for one of these

10:50other support agreements. As I said, I really recommend at a minimum, if you're

10:55a business,

10:55at a minimum, use the business support plan, because that's going to give you a

11:00decent response

11:02level, especially if your business is reliant on AWS resources to earn money or

11:08do transact business

11:09transactions. So here we are back at the support center, we can create a case.

11:15And again, this is

11:16very reminiscent to any sort of help desk, you can create a case here. And I

11:21can specify whether

11:22it's a counter billing or technical. And this is what it says right here,

11:27technical support is

11:28unavailable under the basic support plan. Basically, they're saying, Hey, tough

11:32luck, you need to go

11:34search the documentation and figure it out yourself. So that's the, that's one

11:38of the cons of the

11:39basic support level. Now I can choose a count on billing, and it's going to ask

11:43me which service

11:46I can give it some more detail here. And I can provide details of the problem I

11:51'm trying to

11:52resolve. Now, in my experience on the basic support plan, generally the support

11:59staff will pick up

12:00the ticket within about 24 hours. And that doesn't mean it's going to be

12:04resolved in 24 hours. It

12:06just means that it'll be acknowledged that they received it in 24 hours. So you

12:11can come back out

12:12here and you can see any sort of cases that you've opened. And there are some

12:16other hyperlinks here,

12:17obviously, they're going to want to try to gear you towards self service

12:22resolution so that you

12:23can figure out what your problem is and solve it yourself. But you do have this

12:26as an option. So

12:27again, I'm going to click on our little AWS icon here, that's going to take me

12:32back out. So that is

12:34support. Now we go to this little gear here, and this just provides us with

12:38some options here on

12:40this console, we can choose a different default language if we want to. And we

12:45can choose whether

12:47or not we want dark mode light mode or browser default, there are some more

12:51settings in here.

12:52These are basically just more of the same that we saw in that little drop down

12:56here. And we can

12:58also decide if we want AWS to remember the services that we recently visited.

13:05And I'll show you where

13:06that happens. So right here in this widget right here, we can we can move it

13:11around if we wanted

13:12to, we can move it over here. But it is displaying the services that we

13:16recently visited, which is

13:18kind of handy because if you recently visited someplace and you want to go back

13:21there pretty quickly,

13:22it's going to be listed up under here. Now you saw that I just kind of had the

13:26ability to move

13:27these little widgets around that's one of the benefits of this console home. In

13:32fact, we can add

13:33widgets, and we can decide what we want, we can do with op summary patch

13:39compliance,

13:40managed instances, that sort of thing, we have other options down here. This is

13:45a widget that I

13:46keep a close eye on in my own personal accounts. Now, because we just created

13:51this account, we're

13:52not incurring any cost. And that's something important to realize is that just

13:56by creating

13:56account, we're not going to incur any cost. So it's not going to cost us

14:00anything. So there's no data

14:02in here. Plus, we also have to turn on something called cost explore that's

14:06going to help us

14:07analyze what our costs are. But what you'll get here is a month by month bar

14:12chart here. You can

14:13customize it a little bit and tell it to show you different information. Now,

14:17if we have some

14:18applications that we have created, we can create an application here, and it's

14:22going to show us

14:23what that application is and how it's performing and so forth and so on. But

14:27again, we can customize

14:28these things. I think by default, they kind of throw a bunch of stuff up here

14:32that's a little

14:32bit overwhelming. But something that is a little bit useful here is build a

14:37solution. So these are

14:39basically little tutorials that will take you through it during doing certain

14:43things. For example,

14:44if you're an SAP shop, if you run SAP as your enterprise resource planning

14:48software,

14:49they have a little tutorial here that will help you deploy SAP on AWS. Now,

14:55granted,

14:55this is not going to be a production ready deployment of SAP, but it's just a

15:00pretty nifty little

15:01exercise that you can step through to learn more about AWS. So if we go up here

15:07, again,

15:08progressing to the right, we have this thing that says Ohio. Well, this

15:13represents this drop down

15:14represents all the different regions that AWS has data centers in. And we'll

15:21get into how AWS is

15:23structured physically in a later skill. But for now, if we wanted to, for

15:28instance, teleport

15:29ourselves to Northern Virginia, we can click on that little drop down there.

15:34And now we are in

15:35Northern Virginia. Now, granted, this console home is the same across all

15:40regions, we're going to

15:41see the same view. But you can see here, we're now in the US East Northern

15:47Virginia region. And

15:49that's a different set of data centers than Ohio, which is a different set of

15:53data centers than

15:54Northern California and Oregon and so forth and so on. And the fact that AWS

15:58has so many data centers

15:59scattered around the globe is one of the real benefits of cloud computing,

16:04because we can

16:05establish points of presence in many different geographies that might be closer

16:11to our customers

16:12that we want to interact with. So I'm going to just leave that as Northern

16:17Virginia. And now we come

16:18over here to this little dropdown. And if you remember, we gave this account,

16:23this name, this

16:24alias, and it's basically just an easy to remember name that we gave it. Here's

16:29our account number.

16:31And we can go into our account, we can go into our organization, and we'll

16:35cover that in a later

16:36skill service quotas. Now AWS isn't necessarily an all you can eat buffet with

16:42regard to how many

16:44services and how many instances of those services that you can use up. They

16:49have certain quotas

16:50that they have placed on accounts to make sure that somebody just can't use up

16:54hundreds of

16:55thousands of things. Now, if you need to go beyond that service quota, if you

17:01need instead of,

17:02let's say for example, let's see if we can go out here to the dashboard, here

17:06we go, Amazon,

17:07we'll do DynamoDB. And again, we'll talk about what DynamoDB is in a future

17:12skill.

17:13But here we go, if we wanted global secondary indexes per table, we're allowed

17:2020. And the

17:21default value we're given is 20. And we can request if we wanted to implement a

17:2821st global

17:30secondary index per table, we would have to request a quota increase. So we can

17:36click on that and we

17:37can scroll down here and scroll up here and request an increase at the account

17:43level. And so

17:44you can see here, not everything is metered, not everything has a quota. But

17:49there are a lot of

17:50things in AWS that do have quotas. And if you're a large organization,

17:55sometimes you're going to

17:55run into those quota limits, and you may have to request a quota increase. And

18:01again, it's not a

18:02very big deal. They're usually more than happy to do that. It just makes sure

18:06that customers

18:07don't use up all the resources in a particular region, leaving none for

18:11everybody else. Then we

18:13have billing and cost management. And again, we're going to go into that in a

18:16different skill.

18:18Then we have security credentials. And this is what I want to dive into in the

18:22very next video,

18:24because we're going to do something very important. We're going to put multi

18:27factor

18:28authentication onto our root account.

0:00So one of the things that I do want to share with you right now is for our root

0:06account user,

0:08we most definitely want to turn it on something called multi-factor

0:13authentication.

0:14And you probably use this in your own personal accounts with maybe your bank or

0:19your employer,

0:20where you have to enter your username and password, and then maybe they

0:24challenge you to enter another code

0:27that an app provides for you, or maybe they text you an SMS message and you

0:33have to enter that code,

0:34that is multi-factor authentication. And so we most definitely want to add that

0:40to our root user,

0:41because again, that root user is the most powerful user in our entire account.

0:48So it's given us this

0:49warning here, how I got here is I went to this little dropdown, clicked on

0:52security credentials,

0:54it took me to this screen, and I went to assign an MFA. Now we have an option

1:01of several different

1:02types of MFA's, we can use an authenticator app that's something like, I don't

1:06know, LastPass,

1:07Bitwarden duo, I think also does this to where you can specify that you want to

1:14store your code

1:16generator, your one time password code generator, in some sort of

1:19authentication app. We also have

1:22a security key, which is a hardware key, and examples of this are UB keys or

1:28other FIDO security keys.

1:30I'm partial to UB keys, I use UB keys for as many accounts as I can, and as

1:37many places as I can,

1:38because I just like the ease of use, and they're extremely secure. And we also

1:43have a hardware

1:44token down here. Now this is a bit old school, but you may still have these,

1:50you can buy these

1:50little tokens that have this little LCD screen, and you press a button, and it

1:54shows you a code

1:56here, and you can enter that code into the AWS login process here when we're

2:01logging in,

2:02and it will allow you through. Now for our purposes, I'm going to use an

2:05authenticator app,

2:06just because I think that's probably the most common way that you're probably

2:10going to have to

2:11create a multi-factor authentication. Now if you don't have an application to

2:15do this,

2:16you can download one pretty easily. I think Microsoft has one, Google I know

2:21has one,

2:22basically any sort of password manager will probably have the ability here,

2:26like I said, last,

2:27past bitwarden those things. So I am going to say, let's see, bitwarden,

2:33because that's the

2:34password manager that I use, and I'm going to choose authenticator app. And so

2:39I'm going to click next.

2:41Now it offers me the option here to show a QR code, and if I have this

2:47application on my mobile device,

2:50then I can just easily scan this QR code here. And if I don't have that ability

2:54, I can show my

2:56secret key. And this secret key right here, I would copy and paste and put into

3:00my password

3:01manager. And then it's going to challenge me to enter these two consecutive

3:06codes to MFA device

3:07codes. And this just synchronizes my device, the codes that my device is

3:13generating with what AWS

3:16is keeping up with my device. And it uses the secret code, plus there's a time

3:20function as well.

3:22So I'm going to scan this QR code with my bitwarden mobile account here. And it

3:28is providing me with

3:30a one time password. So I'm going to enter that. And then I'm going to wait

3:37until it generates a new

3:38one, and then enter that as well. And just in case you're on the security side

3:42of things, and you're

3:43saying, how dare he show his MFA code? Isn't that dangerous? Well, as soon as I

3:49record this video,

3:50I'm going to delete this particular MFA code and change it to something else.

3:55So in addition,

3:57probably by the time this course gets published, this account is going to be

4:01long gone anyway,

4:02because I cycle through accounts very readily. So I'm going to enter my second

4:08one time password

4:09there, add MFA. Okay, so I can register up to eight MFA's. And I would really

4:14recommend if you

4:15have the opportunity to enter multiple MFA's, especially if you're using a

4:19hardware MFA,

4:20they could potentially get lost. Then it's always good to have a backup. So

4:25here, my multi factor

4:26authentication is enabled. And next time when I log in, well, after I enter my

4:33password, it's

4:33going to prompt me for this one time password. So that is something that you

4:38must do. Again,

4:40you know, it is optional. But these are some of the best practices that people

4:45do. And we have to do

4:46the best practices, we have to follow those best practices. So now we go back

4:52out to AWS console.

4:53And this is where I'm going to wrap up the video. This was just kind of a quick

4:57tour of that console.

4:59In subsequent skills and subsequent videos, we're going to dive a little bit

5:03deeper into

5:04AWS and how do we do stuff. And eventually, you're going to become pretty

5:10familiar with this console

5:11and learn how to navigate it pretty well. So I hope this has been informative

5:15for you. And I'd

5:17like to thank you for viewing.