What You Should Know About Deployment, Migration, and AI to Pass Your AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification

Preparing for your AWS Cloud Practitioner certification? This guide simplifies complex topics by exploring key AWS services for deployment, migration, and AI. Let’s dive in!

Development, Messaging, and Deployment Services

CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment)

CI/CD automates the entire software delivery process—from integrating code to building, testing, and deployment. AWS tools include:

• CodeCommit: A secure, private Git repository.
• CodeBuild: Fully managed service for compiling code, running tests, and creating artifacts.
• CodeDeploy: Automates deployment to EC2 instances, on-premises systems, or AWS Lambda.
• CodeArtifact: Securely stores and shares code packages like Maven or npm.
• CodePipeline: Automates the entire CI/CD workflow triggered by code changes.

CLI (Command Line Interface)

• AWS CloudShell: Browser-based shell with pre-installed AWS CLI.
• AWS CLI: Command-line tool to manage AWS services from your terminal.

AWS Cloud9

An integrated development environment (IDE) for coding, debugging, and running applications in languages such as Java, Python, and C++.

Messaging and Notifications

AWS supports scalable messaging through:

• Amazon SNS: Publish/subscribe service for sending notifications via SMS, emails, etc.
• Amazon SQS: Decouples application components through message queuing.
  • Standard Queue: Ensures at-least-once delivery with potential duplicates.
  • FIFO Queue: Guarantees exactly-once processing and ordered delivery.
  • Polling Methods: Long polling (efficient, cost-effective), Short polling (immediate but less efficient).
• Amazon SES: Sends richly formatted emails.
• Amazon EventBridge: Routes events based on rules to services like SNS, Lambda, or Step Functions.
• Amazon Step Functions: Coordinates tasks across AWS services with visual workflow management.

Infrastructure Management

• Amazon CloudFormation: Deploys AWS resources using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) via JSON or YAML templates.
• Amazon Elastic Beanstalk: Simplifies deploying and managing web applications without manual infrastructure setup.
• Amazon X-Ray: Provides end-to-end visibility for tracing and debugging application performance.

Migration and Transfer Services

AWS simplifies migrating data and applications to the cloud with:

• AWS Snow Family: Physical devices for offline data transfer.
  • Snowcone: Portable device for up to 14 TB.
  • Snowball: Transfers 10+ TB of data.
  • Snowball Edge: Transfers and processes data onsite.
  • Snowmobile: Massive data transfers (10+ PB).
• Database Migration Tools:
  • AWS Database Migration Service (DMS): Simplifies database migration to AWS.
  • AWS Schema Conversion Tool (SCT): Converts database schemas between types.
• AWS Transfer Family: Secure file transfer using protocols like SFTP, FTPS, FTP, and AS2.
• AWS DataSync: Rapidly moves large datasets between on-premises and AWS storage.
• AWS Application Discovery Service: Analyzes on-premises infrastructure before migration.
• AWS Application Migration Service (MGN): Automates lift-and-shift application migrations.
• AWS Migration Hub: Centralizes migration tracking and management across AWS services.

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Analytics

AWS provides robust tools for AI, ML, and analytics:

• Amazon Redshift/Redshift Serverless: Fully managed data warehousing for analytics.
• Amazon Kinesis: Real-time data streaming and processing.
  • Kinesis Data Streams: Real-time data stream processing.
  • Kinesis Video Streams: Handles streaming video data.
  • Kinesis Data Firehose: Captures and loads streaming data into AWS storage.
• Amazon Athena: Interactive, serverless SQL querying directly from Amazon S3.
• AWS Glue: Serverless ETL service for data integration, transformation, and cataloging.
• AWS Data Exchange: Marketplace for subscribing, sharing, and accessing third-party datasets.
• Amazon EMR: Managed big data processing platform using Apache Spark, Hadoop, etc.
• Amazon OpenSearch: Managed search and analytics based on Elasticsearch.
• Amazon MSK: Managed streaming with Apache Kafka.
• Amazon QuickSight: Serverless business analytics and data visualization tool.

AI and Machine Learning

• Amazon SageMaker: Simplifies the full ML lifecycle from data preparation to deployment.
• Amazon Kendra: Intelligent search service powered by NLP.
• Amazon Lex: Builds conversational chatbots and voice assistants.
• Amazon Polly: Text-to-speech service providing natural-sounding audio.
• Amazon Comprehend: NLP for extracting insights from text.
• Amazon Textract/Transcribe/Translate:
  • Textract: Extracts data from documents.
  • Transcribe: Converts audio to text.
  • Translate: Translates text across languages.
• Amazon Rekognition: Image and video analysis for facial recognition, object detection, content moderation, and text extraction.

Conclusion

By understanding these essential AWS services, you will be well-equipped to tackle your AWS Cloud Practitioner certification exam. Mastering deployment, migration, and AI services provides a solid foundation for navigating real-world cloud challenges, boosting your career in cloud computing. Good luck on your certification journey!