New Course: AWS: Technical Essentials

CBT Nuggets trainer Ben Finkel provides an overview of the suite of tools and technologies that make up Amazon Web Services (AWS). This course covers a wide range of topics inside of AWS' cloud service including EC2, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, Route53, VPC, and more. The goal the course is to familiarize you with AWS and provide a solid foundation before you dive deeper into any one feature or product.

AWS: Technical Essentials is an entry-level course designed to help new IT pros or those just starting to explore cloud products and services.

We asked Ben about his new course and how learners can get more out of the training experience.

Q: Why should companies train their IT professionals in AWS? What value does it bring?

Cloud computing continues to grow more prominent in IT year after year. AWS represents the largest and most popular cloud platform on the market. It's a mature product that can offer immediate benefits to your IT infrastructure, including your bottom line.

Q: From a learner perspective, what did you keep in mind when creating this course?

As an essentials course, I always kept in mind the fact that the learners may well be new not just to cloud computing but to IT in general. While some background knowledge is required, I go to great lengths to explain and demonstrate concepts that I discuss so that the learners can get that fundamental understanding of the technology.

Q: Any out-of-the-box tips for learners on how to get the most out of your AWS: Technical Essentials course?

The same tip I always provide: follow along! AWS makes it easy to setup a new account and start using the suite right away. You can replicate everything I demonstrate from your own PC, Laptop, or even tablet. The best way to learn is to do.

Q: What's one real-world application someone can expect to use, thanks to this course?

At the end of this course, you should be ready to plan an implementation on or migration to the AWS platform for any upcoming project you have. You'll understand the role of each of the products in the AWS suite and how they interact, as well as develop a sense of which products will work for your implementation.

Q: What was your favorite Nugget to create in this course?

I really enjoy the Nuggets on Relational Database Service (RDS) and NoSQL. I spent much of my career deploying and maintaining databases and I find the simplicity that AWS provides for these technologies really appealing. There is a lot of value to be added to just about any project by leveraging AWS' database technologies.

Q: What's the one thing you hope learners take away from this training?

I hope learners can appreciate just how fast and easy you can get started using AWS. It's an enormous product suite with many ways to engage, but it also has an easy "on-ramp" to get up and running quickly.

Start exploring AWS: Technical Essentials to launch your career into the Cloud(s)! (See what we did there?)