can be a valuable addition to your toolbox. The vocabulary itself has changed, with new terms such as containers, microservices, serverless computing, infrastructure as code, and so forth now commonplace.
You now face many choices when you set out to design and implement a new system. This book is designed to provide you with detailed information on many aspects of AWS, coupled with the practical knowledge needed to put your new knowledge to use and to earn your AWS certification. Within its chapters, you will find service overviews, sample scenarios, test-taking tips, and exercises. After setting up your AWS tools, you will learn about security, compute services, storage services, networking, databases, and more. Towards the end of the book, you will wrap up by learning about monitoring, metrics, and high availability. As you will soon see, the authors have packed it with the insights that they have gained while putting AWS to use in a wide variety of customer environments. There are no better teachers than those who have actually put their theory into practice.
You can choose to study the chapters individually, or you can digest the entire book as-written. Either way, I know that you will be well-prepared to build great systems and to pass your certification exams. I strongly encourage you to get hands-on experience with each service by working through the scenarios and the exercises.
I believe in the principle of life-long learning, especially when it comes to technology. The half-life of knowledge is shorter than ever before, and keeping up is far better than catching up. So dive deep and keep on learning!
– Jeff Barr, Chief Evangelist, AWS
Introduction
Preparing to take and pass any certification is a studious process. The AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Official Study Guide – Associate Exam was written to align with the exam blueprint to enable you to study for the exam, perform exercises, and answer review questions to enable you to become a skilled systems operator on the AWS cloud and to take and pass the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate exam with confidence.
This study guide presents the set of topics needed to round out a systems operator/systems administrator’s hands-on experiences with AWS by covering the relevant AWS cloud services and concepts within the scope of the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate exam. This study guide begins with an introduction to Systems Operations on AWS, which is then followed by chapters on specific domains covered in the exam. In addition to the material covered on the exam, the chapters go deep into the actual technology. The authors go deep on topics that will serve you in preparing for the exam and the book should make a good desktop reference on AWS systems operations.
Each chapter includes specific information on the service or topic covered, followed by an Exam Essentials section that contains key information needed in your exam preparation. The Exam Essentials section is followed by a Test Taking Tip to help you prepare for what you will experience on the exam or at the testing center.
Next, each chapter includes an Exercise section with activities designed to help reinforce the topic of the chapter with hands-on learning. Each chapter then contains sample Review Questions to get you accustomed to answering questions about how to use and administer AWS cloud services.
Following this up-front section, the book contains a self-assessment exam with 25 questions. Two practice exams with 50 questions each are also available to help you gauge your readiness to take the exam, and flashcards are provided to help you learn and retain key facts needed to prepare for the exam.
If you are looking for a targeted book, created by technical trainers and solutions architects who wrote, reviewed, and developed the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate exam, then this is the book for you.
What Does this Book Cover?
This book covers topics that you need to know to prepare for the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate exam:
Chapter 1: Introduction to Systems Operations on AWS This chapter provides an introduction to System Operations on AWS. It provides an overview of the AWS cloud services covered on the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate exam.
Chapter 2: Working with AWS Cloud Services This chapter shows you how to configure your workstation to work with AWS cloud services. You will install the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). Topics include AWS CLI, jmespath (a query language for JSON, http://jmespath.org), and the Boto software development kit (SDK).
Chapter 3: Security and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) In this chapter, you will learn about the Shared Responsibility Model and the different layers of security. You will learn how to secure your systems with services such as AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS), AWS Hard Security Module (AWS HSM), Security Groups, and Network Access Control Lists (nACLs). Furthermore, the chapter covers AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Security Best Practices.
Chapter 4: Compute This chapter describes how to use the compute stack on AWS. The topics covered are Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (Amazon EC2), AWS Lambda, AWS Beanstalk, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), Amazon Lightsail, and AWS Batch. You will provision an Amazon EC2 instance, assign an Amazon EC2 Role, and work with instance metadata.
Chapter 5: Networking In this chapter, you will learn how to deploy Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) and the various methods to connect to your Amazon VPC. Additionally. you will learn how to use the Elastic Load Balancing service, Amazon Route 53. and Amazon CloudFront.
Chapter 6: Storage Systems This chapter covers deploying and using the various storage options on AWS. The services covered include: Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Elastic File Service (Amazon EFS), Amazon Elastic Block Service (Amazon EBS), the Amazon EC2 instance store Volumes, Amazon Glacier, AWS Snowball, and AWS Snowmobile.
Chapter 7: Databases This chapter covers the use of AWS managed database services: Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon ElastiCache. You will learn how these managed services simplify the setup and operation of relational databases, NoSQL databases, data warehouses, and in-memory caches.
Chapter 8: Application Deployment and Management This chapter focuses on the various methods of deployment of applications and infrastructure; for example, blue/green and rolling deployments. You will learn about AWS OpsWorks, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Amazon EC2 Container Service, and AWS CloudFormation.
Chapter 9: Monitoring and Metrics In this chapter, you will learn about how to monitor your environment with Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, AWS Config, AWS Trusted Advisor, and AWS Service Health Dashboard.
Chapter 10: High Availability This chapter covers high availability on AWS. You will be introduced to decoupling strategies using Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) and Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS). The chapter covers deploying your application to multiple Availability Zones and Multiple AWS Regions. Other high availability topics include Auto Scaling, failover with Amazon Route 53, and redundant VPN and AWS Direct Connect connections.
Interactive Online Learning Environment and Test Bank
The authors have worked hard to provide you with some really great tools to help you with your certification process. The interactive online learning environment that accompanies the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Official Study Guide: Associate Exam provides a test bank with study tools to help you prepare for the certification exam. This will help you increase your chances of passing it the first time! The test bank includes the following:
Sample
