Category Archives: cloud

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Pro – Study Notes Domain 5

By | November 26, 2016

Domain 5.0: Data Storage for a complex large scale deployment (15% of exam) 5.1 Demonstrate ability to make architectural trade off decisions involving storage options 5.2 Demonstrate ability to make architectural trade off decisions involving database options 5.3 Demonstrate ability to implement the most appropriate data storage architecture 5.4 Determine use of synchronous versus asynchronous… Read More »

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Pro – Study Notes Domain 4

By | November 26, 2016

Domain 4.0: Network Design for a complex large scale deployment (10% of Exam) 4.1 Demonstrate ability to design and implement networking features of AWS 4.2 Demonstrate ability to design and implement connectivity features of AWS When you create a NAT instance, don’t forget to disable source/destination checks! VPC Peering (http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/PeeringGuide/Welcome.html) : Connecting 2 VPCs within… Read More »

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Pro – Study Notes Domain 3

By | November 26, 2016

Domain 3.0: Deployment Management (10% of exam) 3.1 Ability to manage the lifecycle of an application on AWS 3.2 Demonstrate ability to implement the right architecture for development, testing, and staging environments 3.3 Position and select most appropriate AWS deployment mechanism based on scenario CloudFormation https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/faqs/ Services supported http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/cfn-supported-resources.html#d0e194974 : API Gateway Auto scaling CloudFront… Read More »

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Pro – Study Notes Domain 2

By | November 26, 2016

Domain 2.0: Costing (5% of exam) 2.1 Demonstrate ability to make architectural decisions that minimize and optimize infrastructure cost 2.2 Apply the appropriate AWS account and billing set-up options based on scenario 2.3 Ability to compare and contrast the cost implications of different architectures EC2 types https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ On-demand https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/ Highest hourly rate, no commitments Ideal… Read More »

AWS Certified Solutions Architect Pro – Study Notes Domain 1

By | December 4, 2016

Domain 1.0: High Availability and Business Continuity (15% of exam) 1.1 Demonstrate ability to architect the appropriate level of availability based on stakeholder requirements 1.2 Demonstrate ability to implement DR for systems based on RPO and RTO 1.3 Determine appropriate use of multi-Availability Zones vs. multi-Region architectures 1.4 Demonstrate ability to implement self-healing capabilities Recovery… Read More »

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Pro Study Notes

By | January 15, 2017

Here are all of my notes “live” as I’m preparing for the AWS-SA professional exam. I initially was going to post 1 article covering all the domains… but that quickly spiraled out of control as the document became HUGE. Instead I’ll create one article for each of the domains as I go through them. This… Read More »

vBrownBag AWS Certification slides

By | November 26, 2016

Hi All, Giving a presentation on certain sections of the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam tonight.  Here are the slides from that presentation for those who wanted the links. AWS presentation_20160822

AWS – Monitoring the Memory of your Virtual Machine (AMI)

By | July 10, 2016

Out of the box, CloudWatch by default monitors 4 things: CPU Network Disk Status Checks Can you tell which resource CloudWatch doesn’t monitor out of the box? Memory! (update:  According to AWS technical support “Right now, you do not need to deploy anything in you AMI to monitor your instance. Metrics like memory utilization and… Read More »

Category: AWS

AWS – how to create a custom VPC with public & private subnets

By | June 15, 2016

One of the good training exercises that you can do while studying for the AWS-ASA is create from scratch an Internet accessible VPC without using one of the pre-built templates. This gives you the insight into how all of the underlying pieces fit together. That way when you are troubleshooting an existing deployment you can… Read More »

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Study Notes

By | February 15, 2018

I’m currently studying to sit the AWS Solutions Architect Associate certification. To do this I’m (a) going through the exam blueprint, (b) writing blogs on my AWS free-tier lab, (c) watching the excellent http://acloud.guru videos. I bought the “Associate Bundle” so I plan on taking all 3 associate level courses eventually. I’ve decided to consolidate… Read More »