Day-01: AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate

Whats AWS?

• AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a Cloud Provider

• They Provide you with Servers that you can use on Demand and scale easily

• AWS has revolutionized IT over time

• AWS Powers some of the biggest websites in the world

  • Amazon.com

  • Netflix

What we'll learn in this course (and More!)?

we gonna have a walkthrough on all the services which shown in the above screenshot.

AWS Global Infrastructure

• AWS Regions

• AWS Availability Zones

• AWS Data Centers

• AWS Edge Locations / Points of Presence

AWS Regions

• AWS has Regions all around the world

• Names can be us-east-1, eu-west-3....

• A region is a cluster of data centers

• Most AWS services are region-scoped

How to choose an AWS Region?

if you need to launch an new application , where should you do it?

• Compliance: With data governance and legal requirements: data never leaves a region without your explicit permission

• Proximity: to customer: reduced latency

• Available Services: Within a Region: new services and new features aren't available in every Region.

• Pricing: Pricing varies region to region and is transparent in the service pricing page.

AWS Availability Zones

Each region has many availability Zones ( usually 3, mi s 3 and max is 6) .

Example:
- ap-southeast-2a
- ap-southeast-2b
- ap-southeast-2c

Each availability zone (AZ) is one or more discreet data centers with redundant power, networking and connectivity.

They're separate from each other, so that they're isolated from distaters.

They're connected with high bandwidth, ultra-low latency networking.

AWS Points of Presence (Edge Locations)

• Amazon has 400+ points of presence(400+ Edge Locations & 10+ Regional caches) in 90+ cities across 40+ countries.

• Content is delivered to end users with lower latency

Tour of the AWS Console

• AWS has Global Services:

  • Identity and Access Management (IAM)

  • Route53 (DNS service)

  • Cloudfront (content Delivery Network)

  • WAF (web application firewall)

• Most AWS services are Region-Scoped:

  • Amazon EC2 (infrastructure as service)

  • Elastic Beanstalk (platform as a service)

  • Lambda (Function as a service)

  • Rekognition (software as a service)

IAM Section

IAM: Users & Groups

• IAM = Identity and Access Management, Global service

• Root account created by default, shouldn't be used or shared.

• Users are people within your Organisation, and can be grouped

• Groups only contain users, not other groups

• Users don't have to belong to a group, and user can belong to multiple groups.

IAM: Permissions

• Users or Groups can be assigned JSON documents called policies

• These policies define the permissions of the users

• In AWS you apply the least privilege principle; don't give more permissions than a user needs.

IAM Policies inheritence

IAM Policies Structure

• Consists of

  • Version: Policy language version, always include 2012-10-17"

  • ID: an identifier for the policy (optional)

  • Statement: one or more individual statements (required)

• Statements Consists of

  • Sid: an identifier for the statement (optional)

  • effect: whether the statement allows or denies access (allow, Deny)

  • Principal: Account/user/role to which this policy applied to

  • Action: List of actions this policy allows or denies

  • Resources: List of resources to which the actions applied to

  • Condition: Conditions for when this policy is in effect (optional)

IAM - Password Policy

• Strong passwords = higher security for your account

• In AWS, you can setup a password policy;

  • set a minimum password length

  • Required specific character types;

    • including uppercase letters

    • lowercase letters

    • numbers

    • non-alphanumeric characters

  • Allow all IAM users to change their own passwords

  • Require Users to change their passwords after some time (password expiration)

  • prevent password re-use

Multi Factor Authentication - MFA

• Users have access to your account and can possibly change configurations or delete resources in your AWS account.

• You want to protect your root Accounts and IAM users

• MFA = Password you know + Security device you own

• Main benefits of MFA:
  if a password is stolen or hacked, the account is not compromised

How can Users access AWS?

• To access AWS, you have three options:

  • AWS Management Console (protected by password + MFA)

  • AWS Command Line Interface (CLI): protected by access keys

  • AWS Software Developer kit (SDK) - for code: protected by access keys

• Access keys are generated through the AWS console

• Users manage their own access keys

• Access keys are secret, just like a password. Dont share them

• Access Key ID = Username

• Secret Access Key = Password

Example (fake) Access Keys

• Access key ID: AKIASK4E37PV4983d6C

• Secret Access Key: AZPN3zojWozWCndIjhB0Unh8239a1bzbzO5fqqkZq

What's the AWS CLI?

• A tool that enables you to interact with AWS Services using commands in your command-line shell

• Direct access to the public APIs of AWS services.

• You can develop scripts to manage your resources.

• Its open-source github.com/aws/aws-cli

• Alternative to using AWS Management Console

What's the AWS SDK?

• AWS Software Development kit (AWS SDK)

• Language-specific APIs (set of libraries)

• Enables you to access and manage AWS services programmatically.

• Embedded within your application

• Supports

  • SDKs (javascript, python, PHP, NET, Ruby, JAVA, Go, Node.js, c++ )

  • Mobile SDKs (Android, iOS,...)

  • IoT Device SDKs (Embedded C, Arduino..)

  • Example: AWS CLI is built on AWS SDK for python

IAM Roles for Services

• Some AWS Service will need to perform actions on your behalf

• To do so, we will assign permissions to AWS services with IAM Roles

• Common roles:

  • EC2 Instance Roles

  • Lambda Function Roles

  • Roles for CloudFormation

*AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)* roles are entities you create and assign specific permissions to that allow trusted identities such as workforce identities and applications to perform actions in AWS. When your trusted identities assume IAM roles, they are granted only the permissions scoped by those IAM roles. Using IAM roles is a security best practice because roles provide temporary credentials that do not need to be rotated.

IAM Security Tools

• IAM Credentials Report (account-level)

  • a report that lists all your account's users and the status of their various credentials

• IAM Access Advisor (user-level)

  • Access Advisor shows the service permissions granted to a user and when those services were last accessed

  • You can use this information to revise your policies

IAM Guidelines & Best Practices

• Don't use the root account except for aws account setup

• One physical user = One AWS user

• Assign Users to groups and assign permissions to groups

• Create a strong password policy

• Use and enforce the use of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

• Create and Use Roles for giving permissions to AWS services

• User Access keys for programmatic Access (CLI/ SDK)

• Audit permissions of your account using the IAM Credentials Report & IAM Access Advisor

• Never share IAM Users & Access Keys

IAM Section - Summary

• Users: Mapped to a physical user, has password for AWS Console

• Groups: Contains Users only

• Policies: JSON document that outlines permissions for users or groups

• Roles: for EC2 instances or AWS services

• Security: MFA + Password Policy

• AWS CLI: manage your AWS services using the command-line

• AWS SDK: manage your AWS services using a programming language

• Access Keys: access AWS using the CLI or SDK

• Audit: IAM Credentials Reports & IAM Access Advisor