CLOUD LABS
Understanding Networking Services in AWS—From Zero to Hero
In this Cloud Lab, you’ll become proficient in network services by creating a VPC, security groups, and load balancers.
beginner
Certificate of Completion
Learning Objectives
AWS offers a comprehensive suite of networking services to facilitate secure and efficient communication between resources. These network services, like Amazon VPC, enable users to create isolated network environments, allowing fine-grained control over IP address ranges and subnets. Security groups act as virtual firewalls, controlling inbound and outbound traffic to AWS resources. Load balancers evenly distribute incoming network traffic across multiple targets, such as Amazon EC2 instances, enhancing availability and fault tolerance.
In this Cloud Lab, you will thoroughly explore the core network services provided by AWS, focusing on VPCs, security groups, and load balancers. You’ll create a VPC with public and private subnets in multiple Availability Zones. Then, you’ll launch an application on EC2 instances in the created VPC such that its backend is not accessible from the internet. Then, you will duplicate the application in a different Availability Zone to improve the resistance of the application. After that, you’ll create an application load balancer to distribute the back-end load and manage back-end resources in case of failure. Similarly, you’ll create the load balancer for the frontend of the application to manage requests and applications in case of failure. After that, you’ll learn about Auto Scaling and how it can improve the resistance of an application.
By the end of this Cloud Lab, you’ll have gained practical experience in creating a VPC, security group, and application load balancer, as well as launching an application on EC2 instances in the created VPC such that its backend isn’t accessible from the internet. These skills are essential for anyone working with AWS and will help you ensure the smooth deployment of your applications in a VPC with high scalability and reliability of your applications. The following is the high-level architecture diagram of the infrastructure that you’ll create in this Cloud Lab:
Relevant Courses
Use the following content to review prerequisites or explore specific concepts in detail.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does networking mean in AWS?
In AWS, networking refers to the services and infrastructure used to enable communication between AWS resources, users, and the internet. This includes virtual networks (Amazon VPC), traffic routing (Route 53, Transit Gateway), secure connectivity (AWS VPN, Direct Connect), and traffic management (Elastic Load Balancing, Global Accelerator). These services help ensure secure, scalable, and efficient communication in the cloud.
Which networking services are used in AWS?
AWS has a bunch of network services that help in the creation and management of networks in a cloud environment. A few important ones are:
- Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud): This allows you to create a private network environment in AWS to deploy resources like EC2 instances and databases.
- AWS Direct Connect: It provides a private, low-latency connection directly from your data center to AWS without going through the public internet.
- Amazon Route 53: This DNS-based service assists in routing traffic to your AWS resources, such as EC2 or load balancer instances.
- Elastic Load Balancing (ELB): This distributes incoming traffic to EC2 instances or other resources, ensuring scalability and availability.
- AWS VPN: This service lets you securely connect your on-premise network to AWS through an IPsec VPN tunnel.
- AWS Global Accelerator: This is useful for enhancing the performance of your international apps since your traffic gets routed to the nearest AWS edge location.
- AWS Transit Gateway: This service is a central hub connecting your VPCs, on-premises networks, and other AWS resources.
What are the 4 foundational services in AWS?
The four foundational services in AWS are:
- Compute: These services allow users to run applications and workloads on AWS. Key offerings include Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) for scalable compute capacity and AWS Lambda for serverless computing.
- Storage: AWS offers scalable data storage, backup, and archiving options. Popular services include Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store), and Amazon Glacier.
- Networking: AWS provides a range of networking services, including Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud), Elastic Load Balancing, and AWS Direct Connect, which help in setting up and managing cloud infrastructure networks.
- Database: AWS offers managed database services like Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service), Amazon DynamoDB (NoSQL), and Amazon Redshift (data warehousing), making it easier to store, manage, and query data.
What are the main types of network protocols in AWS?
AWS uses the following network protocols to ensure secure and efficient communication between the resources: The main network protocols include:
- TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol): Originally employed for creating links and sharing data between two points or more via the internet or a closed network.
- HTTP/HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol / Secure): This protocol is used in interactions between a web server and clients. HTTPS is also used when using the SSL/TLS protocol for encryption.
- DNS (Domain Name System): The resource type used by Amazon Route 53 to resolve domain names to IP addresses to allow applications to reach their target destinations.
- BGP (Border Gateway Protocol): Implemented in AWS Direct Connect and AWS Transit Gateway to direct traffic between an organization’s on-premises networks and AWS.
- IPsec (Internet Protocol Security): Applied when communicating over VPNs so that the data is transmitted in an encoded way.
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I prefer Educative courses because they have a nice mix of text & images. I find that with full video courses, it can often be too easy to go into passive learning mode.
Your method is simple, straight to the point and I can practice with it everywhere, even from my phone, that's something I have never had in other learning platforms.
I highly recommend Educative. The courses are well organized and easy to understand.
I prefer Educative courses because they have a nice mix of text & images. I find that with full video courses, it can often be too easy to go into passive learning mode.
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