Getting Started with AWS on the Cheap

I have been skimming the surface of AWS and Azure for various work projects and as part of my new role as a vBrownBag crew member. I feel it is safe to say that public cloud has arrived for the enterprise. It is a very scary transition for Operations. Cloud reminds/infers layoffs and reorgs. If we don’t manage hardware why have a hardware team. I think education is the easiest way to cut through fear. This is the body of an email I created to send when someone asked about AWS or how they could get started.

AWS offers a free tier with completely free resources. There are too many resources to list but the best is 750 free hours of instance time (virtual machines to us VMware folk). Details here https://aws.amazon.com/free/

Vbrownbag has a series of videos for training on the first cert for AWS. It introduces the applications and maybe shows some demos. Overall the quality is top notch and they get awesome presenters. Playlist here

Alex Galbraith is considered an expert on AWS and writes a lot of blogs on it. Here is his landing page:

The best AWS training resource online is A Cloud Guru. They recently added a subscription model if you really want to get into AWS and it’s likely the best bang for your buck. The courses are very affordable individually as well. Their AWS SA:A course is a great place to start.

Microsoft Visual Studio Dev Essentials has a lot of extended trials for education. They have a 3 month trial of Pluralsight and of Linux Academy, both of which have plenty of in depth AWS courses.

Finally here is the AWS documentation page. It is the ultimate source of truth for all services. They have a tab called getting started half way down that has a lot of getting started resources.