Md. Mostafa Al Mahmud for AWS Community Builders

Posted on Feb 27

What I Learned from AWS Cloud Quest: Recertify Cloud Practitioner

#aws #awscertification #cloudskills #cloudcomputing

When I set out to renew my AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification, I wasn’t expecting a dry recertification course. Instead, I immersed myself in AWS Cloud Quest—a gamified, a hands-on adventure where I solved real-world challenges. From migrating a city's website to setting up secret tunnels between networks, here’s how this quest reshaped my view of cloud computing, with some juicy technical details along the way.

1. Cloud Computing Isn’t Magic—It’s Just Smarter Infrastructure

Assignment: Host a static website for a beach wave prediction page using Amazon S3.

Remember the frustration of hosting a website on an old laptop? The city’s beach wave prediction page had similar issues with reliability. In this challenge, I leveraged Amazon S3—a highly durable and scalable object storage service.

Technical Learnings:

Static Website Hosting: Easily serve content without managing servers.
Bucket Policies & ACLs: Secure your data by controlling who can access your resources. To get more info about managing access with ACLs, read this doc.
Time-Limited URLs: Provide temporary, secure access to your content.
S3 Integration: Seamlessly connect with CloudFront for faster content delivery, or utilize S3 lifecycle policies to automatically archive and restore data.

Lesson: The cloud simplifies infrastructure. Instead of maintaining hardware, you tap into AWS’s feature-rich services that offer cost-effective, scalable, and secure solutions.

2. Availability Zones Are Like Backup Generators

Assignment: Deploy EC2 instances across Availability Zones for an island’s failing stabilization system.

Imagine hosting a party where one power outage could plunge you into darkness. That’s why AWS offers multiple Availability Zones (AZs)—physically isolated data centers within a region.

Technical Learnings:

EC2 Deployment: Launch instances in different AZs to ensure continuity.
Load Balancing: Use Application Load Balancers (ALBs) to distribute traffic evenly, ensuring no single AZ becomes a bottleneck.
Failover Mechanisms: Automatically reroute traffic if an AZ goes down. Read this doc to know about hosting architecture with failover mechanism on AWS.

Lesson: Redundancy is not wasteful—it’s essential. Distributing your workload across AZs ensures that your application remains available, even in the event of localized failures.

3. Scaling Up vs. Scaling Out: The “Lift Weights or Hire Friends” Dilemma

Assignment: Scale a school’s EC2 instance to fix memory issues.

When the school’s scheduling server ran out of memory, I had two options:

Vertical Scaling: Upgrade to a larger instance (think moving from a small laptop to a powerful workstation).
Horizontal Scaling: Add more instances behind a load balancer (like hiring more team members to share the workload).

Technical Learnings:

Vertical Scaling: Change instance types (e.g., from t2.micro to t3.medium) to get more CPU and RAM quickly.
Horizontal Scaling: Configure Auto Scaling groups to add or remove instances based on CloudWatch metrics.

Lesson: Scaling is about choosing the right approach for your workload. Sometimes, a beefier instance is enough; other times, distributing the load is the smarter, long-term strategy.

To know the comparison between vertical and horizontal scaling, go through this blog.

4. Networking: The Cloud’s Secret Architecture

Assignment: Set up a secure Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) for a bank’s resources.

Networking in AWS can seem daunting, but it’s like building with Lego—each piece fits into a larger, secure structure.

Technical Learnings:

VPC Setup: Create subnets (your “rooms”), route tables (your “maps”), and attach an Internet Gateway for external access.
Security Groups & NACLs: Act as digital bouncers to control who enters your network. A useful difference is shown here between security groups and NACLs.
CIDR Blocks: Define your network size and IP ranges clearly to avoid overlap. All about CIDR info is here.

Lesson: Networking isn’t just about memorizing technical terms—it’s about designing a secure fortress where only the right traffic is allowed.

5. Databases Need Backups (Just Like Life)

Assignment: Improve an insurance company’s RDS database with read replicas and Multi-AZ deployments.

Imagine editing a critical spreadsheet only for it to crash—nightmare, right? In the cloud, Amazon RDS offers a way to safeguard your data.

Technical Learnings:

Read Replicas: Offload read traffic to replicas, ensuring the primary database isn’t overwhelmed.
Multi-AZ Deployments: Automatically synchronize your database to a standby replica in another AZ for high availability.
Automated Backups & Snapshots: Schedule backups to recover data quickly if something goes wrong.

This doc shows how to back up, restore, and export data from an Amazon RDS DB instance or Multi-AZ DB cluster.

Lesson: Redundancy isn’t just for servers—it’s for your data too. Proper database architecture ensures your data remains safe, accessible, and highly performant.

6. VPC Peering: The Cloud’s Hidden Tunnels

Assignment: Connect marketing team VPCs while keeping them isolated.

When the city’s marketing teams needed separate environments yet required seamless connectivity, VPC peering came to the rescue.

Technical Learnings:

Private Connectivity: Establish a secure peering connection between two VPCs without exposing them to the public internet.
Routing: Update route tables to direct traffic through the peering connection.
Security Considerations: Maintain strict control with security groups to protect data during transit.

Lesson: VPC peering is like constructing hidden tunnels—allowing controlled collaboration while preserving the isolation and security of each environment.

7. NoSQL Databases Aren’t Just Trendy—They’re Powerful

Assignment: Build a NoSQL database with Amazon DynamoDB for a streaming service.

Stepping out of my comfort zone with SQL databases, I tackled Amazon DynamoDB—a fully managed NoSQL database designed for rapid, scalable performance.

Technical Learnings:

Scalability: DynamoDB automatically scales to handle high traffic and massive amounts of data.
Low Latency: Designed for sub-millisecond response times, perfect for real-time applications.
Global Secondary Indexes: Enhance query flexibility without compromising performance.
Integration: Easily connects with AWS Lambda and other services for serverless architectures.

Lesson: NoSQL isn’t about complexity but flexibility and speed. DynamoDB taught me that sometimes, abandoning the rigid schema is the smartest move for dynamic applications.

8. Auto-Scaling: Smart Cost Optimization

Assignment: Configure Auto Scaling for a gaming cafe.

The gaming cafe needed servers that could automatically scale with demand—ramping up during peak gaming hours and scaling down when things quieted.

Technical Learnings:

Auto Scaling Groups: Dynamically adjust the number of EC2 instances based on CloudWatch alarms and thresholds.
Cost Efficiency: Only pay for what you use, avoiding the expense of running high-capacity servers 24/7.
Scaling Policies: Use time-based and metric-based policies to finely tune your resource allocation.

There are several scaling policies for increasing or decreasing the computing capacity of your application.

Lesson: Auto Scaling is like having a smart thermostat for your cloud infrastructure—keeping your system efficient and cost-effective without sacrificing performance.

Final Takeaways: More Than Just a Certification
AWS Cloud Quest wasn’t just a pathway to recertification—it was an immersive experience that reshaped my approach to cloud computing.

Practical Application: Each assignment provided hands-on experience, reinforcing AWS concepts in a real-world context.
Comprehensive Learning: From S3 and EC2 to VPC peering and DynamoDB, the quest covered a wide array of services, ensuring a well-rounded understanding of AWS.
Problem-Solving Mindset: Tackling diverse scenarios prepared me to design resilient, cost-effective solutions that are ready for the challenges of today’s digital world.

Next time someone talks about “the cloud,” I’ll remember the pet modeling agency’s file-sharing needs, the island’s rescue mission, and the secret tunnels of VPC peering. The cloud isn’t just about servers—it’s about innovative solutions and real stories.

I am super excited to share my Cloud Quest certification badge here.

What’s your most interesting cloud learning experience? Drop a comment—I’d love to hear about your journey!

Useful Resources:

DEV Community

What I Learned from AWS Cloud Quest: Recertify Cloud Practitioner

1. Cloud Computing Isn’t Magic—It’s Just Smarter Infrastructure

2. Availability Zones Are Like Backup Generators

3. Scaling Up vs. Scaling Out: The “Lift Weights or Hire Friends” Dilemma

4. Networking: The Cloud’s Secret Architecture

5. Databases Need Backups (Just Like Life)

6. VPC Peering: The Cloud’s Hidden Tunnels

7. NoSQL Databases Aren’t Just Trendy—They’re Powerful

8. Auto-Scaling: Smart Cost Optimization

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