AWS Practicesheet for Beginners by Ravi K

EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)

Purpose: Virtual servers in the cloud

Use Cases: Running applications, hosting websites, computing workloads

Key Commands:

• Create instance: aws ec2 run-instances --image-id ami-xxxx --count 1 --instance-type t2.micro
• List instances: aws ec2 describe-instances
• Terminate instance: aws ec2 terminate-instances --instance-ids i-xxxxxxxxx

S3 (Simple Storage Service)

Purpose: Object storage for data and files

Use Cases: Backup, website hosting, data archiving

Key Commands:

• Create bucket: aws s3 mb s3://my-bucket-name
• Upload file: aws s3 cp local-file.txt s3://bucket-name/
• List files: aws s3 ls s3://bucket-name/
• Remove file: aws s3 rm s3://bucket-name/file.txt

RDS (Relational Database Service)

Purpose: Managed relational databases

Use Cases: Hosting MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server databases

Key Features: Automated backups, patching, scaling, failover

VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)

Purpose: Isolated network in AWS

Use Cases: Network control, security, custom networking

Key Concepts: Subnets, route tables, internet gateways, security groups

Configuration

• Configure: aws configure
• Check config: aws configure list
• Get account info: aws sts get-caller-identity

General Commands

• List services: aws services list
• Get help: aws s3 help or aws s3 cp help
• Specify region: aws s3 ls --region us-west-2

AWS offers a Free Tier to help you learn and experiment:

• 12 Months Free: Includes 750 hours of EC2 t2.micro instances, 5GB S3 storage
• Always Free: Includes 1GB of CloudFront data transfer, 1 million Lambda requests
• Eligibility: Only for new AWS accounts or within 12 months of signup
• Monitor usage: Use AWS Billing Dashboard to avoid unexpected charges

• Security First: Always follow IAM best practices, use IAM roles instead of access keys when possible
• Region Matters: Choose regions close to your users for better performance
• Terminate Resources: Always terminate unused resources to avoid charges
• Use Tags: Tag resources to organize and track costs
• Start Small: Begin with free tier resources to learn without significant cost
• Learn CloudFormation: Infrastructure as Code is essential for production environments

• Always specify the correct region for your resources
• Check IAM permissions if you get "Access Denied" errors
• Verify resource names follow AWS naming conventions
• Ensure VPC security groups allow necessary traffic
• Validate IAM policies for resource access