Getting Started with AWS: A Practical Guide
With over 200 AWS services available, it can be overwhelming when you’re just starting out—or even if you have some experience in the cloud. I understand this because I faced the same challenges when I began my journey. I’d watch one tutorial recommending a specific approach, only to find another expert suggesting something completely different. It was confusing and frustrating.
Now, after over a decade of working in tech—across roles like Cloud Architect, Cloud Engineer, Software Developer, and DevOps—I run my own cloud security consultancy. This has given me a unique perspective on how AWS services actually fit together in real-world applications. What matters most is practical experience and understanding how to make architectural decisions.
Here’s what I’ve noticed: whether I’m answering questions from my students, former colleagues, or people interested in the cloud, they’re not only confused about what they need to learn—they want to understand how these services work together to build actual solutions that solve real business problems. That’s why this guide is different. Instead of just telling you to learn AWS S3 or SageMaker, I’m going to explain how these services fit into the bigger picture.
Core IT Fundamentals Every Engineer Needs to Know
Let’s start with the absolute basics of how the internet works with core AWS services to give you a big-picture understanding. Every device connected to the internet needs an IP address. This is fundamental to everything. When we talk about IP addresses, we’re dealing with two types: IPv4 and IPv6. IPv6 was created because we started running out of IPv4 addresses as the internet grew.
Since IP addresses are just numbers and humans aren’t great at remembering them, we use domain names instead. This is where DNS (Domain Name System) comes in. In AWS, this is what the Route 53 service does—it converts friendly domain names into the IP addresses that computers understand.
When you’re using the internet—whether you’re loading a website or sending an email—everything starts with packets. Data isn’t moved as one big chunk; instead, it’s broken down into small pieces called packets. Each packet carries both your actual data and crucial information like the destination IP and source IP. The system that manages all of this is called TCP/IP. TCP handles breaking down your data and ensuring it arrives correctly, while IP makes sure it gets to the right destination.
Building Secure Applications with AWS Networking
In AWS, networks have both public and private spaces, and understanding this is key for building secure applications. When you create your network in AWS—what we call a VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)—you’ll divide it into different sections called subnets. The way you configure these subnets determines what can talk to what and, more importantly, what can access the internet.
For example, your web servers need to accept traffic from users on the internet, so they go in the public subnets. These public subnets have a direct connection to the internet through something called an Internet Gateway. This means users can reach your website, but it also means you need to be extra careful about security.
On the other hand, sensitive resources like your databases should never be directly exposed to the internet. That’s why you put them into a private subnet. These private subnets have no direct path to the internet, meaning no one from the outside can directly access your resources. However, resources in private subnets can still reach the internet when they need to—like for updates—through something called a NAT Gateway.
Controlling Traffic with Security Groups and Network ACLs
To control traffic within these networks, AWS gives us two powerful tools: Security Groups and Network ACLs (NACLs). Security Groups control traffic for individual resources, like your EC2 server. When you set up a Security Group, you specify exactly what kind of traffic can reach that server. For a web server, you typically allow HTTP traffic on Port 80, HTTPS on Port 443, and maybe even SSH on Port 22 for server management.
Network ACLs, on the other hand, work at the subnet level. They control traffic for entire sections of your network. The key difference is that NACLs can explicitly block traffic, while Security Groups can only allow traffic. Together, they help you build multiple layers of security, ensuring only the right traffic gets to the right places.
How AWS Services Work Together
Let’s see how all of this works together. When someone types in your website address, the first thing that happens is the Route 53 service converts that web address into an actual IP address. Your static content—things like images, JavaScript files, and CSS—is stored in S3 buckets. These files get served through CloudFront, AWS’s content delivery network, which keeps copies of your content in data centers around the world, making everything load faster for your users.
Dynamic requests go to something called an Elastic Load Balancer (ELB). The ELB’s job is to distribute incoming traffic across multiple servers. This is crucial because if one server gets overloaded or has problems, the ELB can send traffic to other healthy servers instead. AWS also handles growing traffic with services like Auto Scaling, which automatically creates new servers when you need more capacity and removes them when you don’t.
Your actual application servers might be sitting in a private subnet for security, but they can still reach out to the internet when they need to—like for updates or to talk to other services—through a NAT Gateway. These servers can pull additional content from S3 as needed while staying secure behind your private network.
Understanding Core AWS Services
Each AWS service solves a specific piece of the puzzle. S3 handles file storage, CloudFront delivers content quickly, VPC provides network isolation, and the ELB distributes traffic. This is why understanding these core networking concepts is so important. Whether you’re building a simple website or a complex application, you’re always working with the same fundamental building blocks.
Static Content Hosting and Delivery
When someone types your website address into the browser, where does all of that content actually come from? It’s stored in S3 (Simple Storage Service). This is where all of your website files live—every image, HTML file, JavaScript code, and CSS styles. S3 organizes these files into what we call buckets, which are like the root folders of your website.
What makes S3 powerful for web hosting is its versioning feature. When you’re working on your website and uploading new files, S3 can keep track of all the previous versions. This means if you accidentally upload the wrong file or need to go back to an older version, you can do that easily. It’s like having an unlimited undo button for your website files.
But having your files stored somewhere isn’t enough. We need to make sure users can access them quickly, and this is where CloudFront comes in. CloudFront is AWS’s content delivery network (CDN), and it’s a game-changer for website performance. Instead of serving all of your content from one location, CloudFront copies your files in data centers around the world. AWS has over 450 Edge Locations across six continents, ensuring your content loads quickly no matter where your users are.
Running Backend Services with AWS Compute
Every application has two main parts: the frontend and the backend. The frontend is what users see and interact with—your buttons, images, and text. This is what we store in S3 and deliver through CloudFront. But when a user clicks a button or submits a form, something needs to process that information, and this is where the backend comes in.
AWS provides three main ways to handle backend operations:
- Serverless with API Gateway and Lambda: Perfect for unpredictable workloads and specific tasks like image processing.
- EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud): Ideal for applications that need specific configurations or software.
- ECS (Elastic Container Service): A middle ground between serverless and traditional EC2 servers, great for microservices.
Storing and Managing Data with AWS Databases
AWS offers different types of storage for different needs. S3 is perfect for storing files like images and website content, while databases are designed for storing data that needs to be queried and updated frequently. AWS offers two main types of databases:
- Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service): Ideal for structured data that fits neatly into tables.
- DynamoDB: Built for speed and scale, perfect for data that doesn’t fit neatly into tables or when you need extremely fast access.
Integrating AI and Machine Learning with AWS
AI is transforming how applications work, and AWS makes it easier than ever to integrate AI into your projects with services like Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker. Bedrock gives you access to pre-built AI models, while SageMaker allows you to build, train, and deploy your own machine learning models.
Securing Your AWS Environment
Security is fundamental to everything you build in the cloud. AWS provides tools like VPC for network isolation, IAM (Identity and Access Management) for controlling permissions, and CloudWatch and CloudTrail for monitoring and auditing your environment.
By implementing these services effectively, you create a secure foundation that lets you build with confidence. Remember, cloud security isn’t something you add at the end—it needs to be part of your architecture from the very beginning.
Comments