Introduction

AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification

It is aimed at individuals who have the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively demonstrate an overall understanding of the AWS Cloud, independent of specific technical roles addressed by other AWS Certifications. It validates an examinee’s ability to:

Define what the AWS Cloud is and the basic global infrastructure.
Describe basic AWS Cloud architectural principles.
Describe the AWS Cloud value proposition.
Describe key services on the AWS platform and their common use cases (for example, compute and analytics).
Describe basic security and compliance aspects of the AWS platform and the shared security model.
Define the billing, account management, and pricing models.

Read Exam Guide pdf

Models of Cloud Computing

Cloud only.
Hybrid.
On-premises or Private Cloud.

warning

Multi cloud is not Hybrid cloud.

Interact with AWS

Console.
AWS CLI.
AWS SDKs.

Benefits of Cloud Computing

Trade Upfront Expense for Variable Expense.

CapEx vs OpEx

Upfront Expense: Capital Expenditure (CapEx). Large upfront investment in hardware before use.
Variable Expense: Operational Expenditure (OpEx). Pay for your usage. Give back when not using.

Stop Focusing on Underlying Infrastructure.

Focus on Customers

Instead of focusing about Data Centers. Focus on your customers.

Stop Guessing Capacity.

Limited Scalability

limited by hardware limitations and vendor supply limits.
Extreme Scalability: Scale in/out and experiment with load/performance as much as needed.
Pay for what you use.

Benefit from Massive Economies of Scale.

Smaller Scale vs Economies of Scale

Smaller Scale: Pay higher prices based on only your usage, with no price drops per unit.
Economies of Scale: Benefit from customers' aggregated usage, and pay less per unit used.

Increase Provision Speed and Business Agility.
Global Deployment Options.

Economics Model of AWS

"Low consumption" Free Tier.
On Demand.

note

You pay for the size you ask for.

2 Processors 16 GigaBytes RAM 10 Hours.

Reservations.

info

1 Year or 3 Years Commitment.
Deep discount 66%, 72%.
You can sell it to someone else.

Example:

Buy a 16 GB, 2 Processor machine for 1 year.

danger

If you decide to stop using it, you still pay for it.

Volume Discounts.

note

As your per unit usage go up, the price per unit goes down.

The more you use, the lower it costs per unit.

Price Drops.

note

From 2006 till 2023, the price of AWS services has been dropping 129 times.
Usually, the price drops with new versions.

S3 Bucket Price Drop

In 2006, 1 GB costed 15 cents.
In 2023, 1 GB costs 0.023 cents.

Cloud Design Principles

Design for failure and nothing will fail.
Decouple your components.
Implement elasticity.
Think parallel.

AWS well-architected framework

There is a deeper framework for AWS Architecture, but it is not part of the Cloud Practitioner exam.

Design for Failure

What should happen if a component fails?

Increase resiliency and availability "auto recovery".

Decouple your components

What happens if a component is overwhelmed?
What happens if one component went down?
No data loss "Loosely Coupled with Queues" or "Scaling layer".

Implement Elasticity

Limited option for expansion and contraction.

Better cost && Better performance.

Think Parallel

1 server do it in 36 hours.
3 servers do it in 12 hours.
36 servers do it in 1 hour.

Shared Responsibility Model

Security Old Way

Securing data centers to allow entry of only authorized personnel.
Securing the networking and connectivity within the data center.
Securing the servers.
Securing OS and ensuring it is patched and up-to-date.
Securing the applications deployed.
You own the security end-end.

IaaS

EC2.

PaaS

RDS.
Lambda.
S3.

SaaS

AWS Chime.
AWS WorkMail.
AWS WorkDocs.

What is Compliance?

Organizations operating in a specific industry must adhere to the rules and laws specific to that industry:

Finance.
Healthcare.
Government.

e.g. HIPAA / HITECH, PCI DSS, GDPR.

Customer Compliance Center. AWS Audit Manager

AWS Config

Service Control Policies (SCPs)

Control which services and features are available to accounts in a member of an organization.

Resources for Security of AWS

AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF).

note

WAF components.

AWS Shield.
AWS Network Firewall.

Security Resources Detection

AWS Inspector.
AWS GuardDuty.
AWS Detective.
AWS Config.
AWS Security Hub.
AWS CloudTrail.
AWS Security Lake.
AWS Macie.

Security Resources Management

Firewall Manager.
Resource Access Manager.
AWS Cognito.
AWS IAM.

Private Ip addresses

Private IP Addresses

Prefix	First Ip Address	Last Ip Address	Number of Addresses
10.0.0.0/8	10.0.0.0	10.255.255.255	16,777,216
172.16.0.0/12	172.16.0.0	172.31.255.255	1,048,576
192.168.0.0/16	192.168.0.0	192.168.255.255	65,536

CIDR block size must be between /16 and /28.

AWS VPC require that the CIDR block size must be between /16 and /28.

main.py
from ipaddress import ip_network

# Define the network
network = ip_network('172.31.0.0/16')

# Determine if the network is private
is_private = network.is_private

# Calculate the total number of addresses
total_addresses = network.num_addresses

# Get the first and last IP address in the network
first_ip = network.network_address
last_ip = network.broadcast_address


print(f'The network {network} is {"private" if is_private else "public"}:')
print(f'Mask: {network.netmask}')
print(f'Total addresses: {total_addresses:,}')
print(f'IP ranges: {first_ip} -> {last_ip}')

Example Output
ziadh@Ziads-MacBook-Air code % python3 main.py
The network 172.31.0.0/16 is private:
Mask: 255.255.0.0
Binary mask: 11111111.11111111.00000000.00000000
Total addresses: 65,536
IP ranges: 172.31.0.0 -> 172.31.255.255
ziadh@Ziads-MacBook-Air code % python3 main.py
The network 172.31.0.0/20 is private:
Mask: 255.255.240.0
Binary mask: 11111111.11111111.11110000.00000000
Total addresses: 4,096
IP ranges: 172.31.0.0 -> 172.31.15.255
ziadh@Ziads-MacBook-Air code % python3 main.py
The network 172.31.16.0/20 is private:
Mask: 255.255.240.0
Binary mask: 11111111.11111111.11110000.00000000
Total addresses: 4,096
IP ranges: 172.31.16.0 -> 172.31.31.255

Enhanced Code Version

See code

enhanced_main.py
from ipaddress import ip_network
import sys
from rich.console import Console
from rich.table import Table

# Initialize rich console
console = Console()

def print_network_info(network):
    console.print(f'The network [bold cyan]{network}[/bold cyan] is {"private" if network.is_private else "public"}:', style="bold green")
    console.print(f'Mask: [bold yellow]{network.netmask}[/bold yellow]')
    console.print(f'Total addresses: [bold]{network.num_addresses:,}[/bold]')
    console.print(f'IP ranges: [bold]{network.network_address}[/bold] -> [bold]{network.broadcast_address}[/bold]')

    binary_mask_with_dots = '.'.join([
        f'{int(octet):08b}' 
        for octet in network.netmask.packed
    ])

    # Create a table for binary mask representation
    binary_mask_table = Table(show_header=True, header_style="bold magenta")
    binary_mask_table.add_column("System", style="dim", width=12)
    binary_mask_table.add_column("First", justify="center")
    binary_mask_table.add_column("Second", justify="center")
    binary_mask_table.add_column("Third", justify="center")
    binary_mask_table.add_column("Fourth", justify="center")

    binary_mask_table.add_row(
        "Decimal", 
        str(network.netmask).split('.')[0], 
        str(network.netmask).split('.')[1], 
        str(network.netmask).split('.')[2],
        str(network.netmask).split('.')[3]
    )

    binary_mask_table.add_row(
        "Binary", 
        binary_mask_with_dots.split('.')[0], 
        binary_mask_with_dots.split('.')[1], 
        binary_mask_with_dots.split('.')[2],
        binary_mask_with_dots.split('.')[3]
    )

    console.print(binary_mask_table)
    # Print colored footer to separate the outputs
    console.print("─" * 60, style="bold Red")

# Assuming the first argument is the network CIDR
cider = sys.argv[1]  
network = ip_network(cider)

print_network_info(network)

# Example for a second network, if provided
if len(sys.argv) > 2:
    cider_two = sys.argv[2]
    network_two = ip_network(cider_two)
    print_network_info(network_two)

    # Print "Summary:" in Red as header for summary section
    console.print("[bold red]Summary:[/bold red]")

    # Check if network_two is a subnet of network
    if network_two.subnet_of(network):
        console.print(f"The network [bold cyan]{network_two}[/bold cyan] is a subnet of [bold cyan]{network}[/bold cyan].", style="bold green")
        # Calculate and print the percentage
        percentage_network2_in_network1 = (network_two.num_addresses / network.num_addresses) * 100
        console.print(f"- [bold cyan]{network_two}[/bold cyan] represents [bold magenta]{percentage_network2_in_network1:.4f}%[/bold magenta] of the network [bold cyan]{network}[/bold cyan].", style="bold green")

        # How many of network_two can fit in network
        console.print(f"- You can fit [bold]{int(network.num_addresses / network_two.num_addresses)}[/bold] networks like [bold cyan]{network_two}[/bold cyan] in [bold cyan]{network}[/bold cyan].", style="bold green")
    else:
        console.print(f"The network [bold cyan]{network_two}[/bold cyan] is not a subnet of [bold cyan]{network}[/bold cyan].", style="bold green")

Bash
Screenshot

Example Output
(.venv) ziadh@Ziads-MacBook-Air code % python3 enhanced.py "10.0.0.0/8" "10.0.0.0/16"
The network 10.0.0.0/8 is private:
Mask: 255.0.0.0
Total addresses: 16,777,216
IP ranges: 10.0.0.0 -> 10.255.255.255
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ System       ┃  First   ┃  Second  ┃  Third   ┃  Fourth  ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Decimal      │   255    │    0     │    0     │    0     │
│ Binary       │ 11111111 │ 00000000 │ 00000000 │ 00000000 │
└──────────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┘
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
The network 10.0.0.0/16 is private:
Mask: 255.255.0.0
Total addresses: 65,536
IP ranges: 10.0.0.0 -> 10.0.255.255
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ System       ┃  First   ┃  Second  ┃  Third   ┃  Fourth  ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Decimal      │   255    │   255    │    0     │    0     │
│ Binary       │ 11111111 │ 11111111 │ 00000000 │ 00000000 │
└──────────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┘
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Summary:
The network 10.0.0.0/16 represents 0.3906% of the network 10.0.0.0/8.
You can fit 256 networks like 10.0.0.0/16 in 10.0.0.0/8.
(.venv) ziadh@Ziads-MacBook-Air code % 

Storage Classes Map

s3-classes-map

Databases

unstructured-dbs-v1

unstructured-dbs-v2

Billing

billing

AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification​

Read Exam Guide pdf​

Models of Cloud Computing​

Interact with AWS​

Benefits of Cloud Computing​

Economics Model of AWS​

Example:​

Cloud Design Principles​

Design for Failure​

Decouple your components​

Implement Elasticity​

Think Parallel​

Shared Responsibility Model​

Security Old Way​

IaaS​

PaaS​

SaaS​

What is Compliance?​

AWS Config​

Service Control Policies (SCPs)​

Resources for Security of AWS​

Security Resources Detection​

Security Resources Management​

Private Ip addresses​

Storage Classes Map​

Databases​

Billing​

AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification

Read Exam Guide pdf

Models of Cloud Computing

Interact with AWS

Benefits of Cloud Computing

Economics Model of AWS

Example:

Cloud Design Principles

Design for Failure

Decouple your components

Implement Elasticity

Think Parallel

Shared Responsibility Model

Security Old Way

IaaS

PaaS

SaaS

What is Compliance?

AWS Config

Service Control Policies (SCPs)

Resources for Security of AWS

Security Resources Detection

Security Resources Management

Private Ip addresses

Storage Classes Map

Databases

Billing