Stage 2 of 10 · 8 lessons · ~2 weeks

Cloud concepts and billing

Learn how AWS is organised and paid for: service models, shared responsibility, regions and availability zones, accounts and AWS Organizations, the free plan and credits, pricing models and the AWS Budget you set before anything else.

Start: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS

Lessons· one lesson for each topic, in this order

Do this

Read the official free offer page for your cloud and note what is free and for how long.
Create your account and turn on MFA for the owner or root login immediately.
Create a budget with email alerts at small thresholds.
Choose one region near you and use it for everything in this roadmap.
Write your own service map for VMs, storage, databases, networks and identity.
Skim the Well-Architected pillars and note one question from each.

Start with

CourseFree
AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials
Amazon Web Services · Beginner
Free official course: cloud concepts, core services, security and pricing, in the order this stage uses

Keep handy

AWS Documentation
Keep the Billing and Cost Management guide open while you set up your account and budget
AWS Well-Architected Framework
Skim the six pillars now; you will use them to review your capstone

Also worth your time

Shared Responsibility Model (opens in a new tab)Read
Security of the cloud versus security in the cloud, with examples by service type
Learn to CloudGo deeper
A free, open curriculum for the whole path to a cloud role, to see where this stage fits

Before moving on: Your own account on your cloud with a budget and alerts set, your free offer and its end date written down, and a one-page service map of the equivalents you expect to use.

Tauseef's advice

Set the budget alert before you create a single resource. Nearly every horror story about a student cloud bill starts with "I forgot it was running". Then pick one region near you and stick to it, so everything you create is in one place when you clean up.