Preface

Although the Amazon cloud is well-documented, the Internet includes all types of information. This means you can spend a great deal of time reading AWS technical documentation, only to find that what seems interesting might be five years old or more. There’s too much documentation to expect to spend just a couple of evenings researching and getting right up to speed.

My opportunity to create this technical book for understanding AWS began in April 2018 after Mark Taber, an acquisitions editor for Pearson Education, pinged me on LinkedIn. I had written technical books before, and Mark asked if I was interested in writing one on the topic of Amazon Web Services. I asked, “Do people actually buy paper books?” and he replied quickly, “They sure do.”

So, I thought about it and realized that most of the customers I had consulted with over the past few years regarding the AWS cloud were smart technical people, but they had been thrown into a bit of a panic because they had to get ready for moving to the cloud—specifically, the Amazon cloud. And they were looking for a starting point to ramp up their technical cloud knowledge and become technically proficient in what was happening in AWS cloud technologies.

I had spent a few years quite involved with AWS cloud services with various clients—including a major Canadian bank, a major American bank, and several small-to-midsize companies working in AWS—because their developers had developed applications they were using quite successfully. The only problem was, they weren’t in the AWS cloud.

I thought about all my customers and realized that what was missing was a foundational book on AWS that explained how the core AWS services of compute, storage, networking, scale, security, and automation fit together. I decided to combine a book with a number of videos that would walk through how to set up each service. This approach would allow my customers, and hopefully many others, to visualize how AWS could work for their company or their project.

Writing a technical book is ultimately an abundance of research and rounds of testing, breaking, and fixing until the project comes together. To create a detailed technical overview of Amazon Web Services and how its cloud services fit together, I decided to review all the relevant AWS documentation of the compute, storage, networking, and managed services by following the pattern of reading and testing; then even more reading and testing. I then added some tips and tricks, and finally summarized this last year’s work into the technical content found in the chapters of this book. I learned a lot about AWS that I didn’t know—that’s the great thing about researching and writing a book!

Companion Training Videos

Learning Amazon Web Services (AWS) also has a useful learning companion—several hours of training videos are bundled with the book that will show you how easy it is to set up the core services at AWS and grasp the concepts of what the AWS cloud can offer.

Throughout the chapters, you’ll be invited to watch the companion video that relates to the topic that is being covered in a particular section.

Watching the videos will help you get in technical shape to start deploying your company’s applications and resources at AWS. The videos take the place of page after page of step-by-step instructions. This reason for no detailed steps is that in the AWS cloud, the steps to perform any task are constantly changing, so up-to date videos as a means of teaching makes more sense. Videos can also be updated easily as changes occur.

The videos can be accessed by registering your copy of this book at www.informit.com/register. The videos can be watched on most any device as they are formatted in a standard MP4 video format. And, don’t forget popcorn!