Day 7: Week 1 Recap – How IAM, EC2, S3, VPC, and RDS Fit Together
Day 7 of my 90-day AWS challenge: a recap of everything from week one and how the core services connect in a simple three-part application, plus my biggest lessons and what's coming in week two.
One week down, 83 to go
Seven days ago I created my AWS account. This week I went from "what is the cloud?" to understanding how the core services work together. Here's a recap.
Week 1 at a glance
| Day | Topic | One-line summary |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cloud basics and security | Regions, Availability Zones, shared responsibility, MFA, and billing alerts |
| 2 | IAM | Users, groups, roles, and policies with least privilege |
| 3 | EC2 | Virtual servers, AMIs, key pairs, and security groups |
| 4 | S3 | Object storage, buckets, storage classes, and versioning |
| 5 | VPC | Private networks, subnets, route tables, and gateways |
| 6 | RDS | Managed databases, Multi-AZ, and backups |
How these services fit together
Imagine a simple web application:
- VPC: the private network that holds everything
- EC2 in a public subnet: the web or application server
- RDS in a private subnet: the database, not reachable from the internet
- S3: storage for images, uploads, and backups
- IAM: controls who and what can access each piece, for example a role that lets the EC2 instance read from S3 without stored passwords
My biggest lessons from week one
- Security first: MFA, an IAM user for daily work, and least privilege
- Cost awareness: set budget alerts, and stop or delete practice resources
- Private by default: keep databases and buckets private unless there is a real reason not to
- Think in Availability Zones: spreading resources improves resilience
- Practice beats reading: each concept made sense only after I built it
Quick self-check
Try answering these without looking back:
- What is the difference between a security group and a NACL?
- Why should a database sit in a private subnet?
- What is the difference between Multi-AZ and a read replica?
- Why use an IAM role instead of access keys on an EC2 instance?
Coming in week two
Serverless and monitoring: AWS Lambda, CloudWatch, and load balancing and Auto Scaling.
Learning AWS too? Follow along and share what you're building. #90DaysOfAWS
Enjoyed reading this content? Let the author know!
Your likes, comments, shares, and saves help creators reach more builders.
Loading recommendations
Loading article