AWS Cloud Foundations
From CLI setup to CloudFormation and Terraform infrastructure
Build real AWS skills by running actual CLI commands. Learn IAM access control, S3 storage, EC2 instances, Lambda serverless functions, and infrastructure as code with CloudFormation and Terraform — all from your terminal.
Before You Start
- ✔Terminal access (macOS or Linux; WSL works on Windows)
- ✔AWS free-tier account (Lesson 101 walks you through CLI setup)
- ✔AWS CLI v2 installed — no prior AWS experience required
- ✔Basic Linux command-line familiarity (see the Linux & Bash track)
5 modules • 1 open
101 — AWS Account Setup and CLI Configuration
Create an AWS account, secure root with MFA, set up an IAM admin user and AWS CLI v2, verify credentials, and add a budget alert — all following AWS best practices.
102 — IAM Users and Groups
Create an IAM user with programmatic access, build a group with a managed policy, add the user to the group, verify permissions with policy simulation, and clean up — all from the CLI.
103 — IAM Roles and Custom Policies
Write a custom IAM policy in JSON, create an EC2 service role with a trust policy, attach the policy to a user and the role, and simulate permissions — all from the CLI.
201 — S3 Buckets and Objects
Create an S3 bucket, upload and download objects using the AWS CLI, generate a presigned URL for temporary access, and clean up — all from the terminal.
202 — S3 Permissions and Bucket Policies
Write an S3 bucket policy for a specific IAM principal, inspect Block Public Access settings, apply and verify the policy, and simulate permissions — all from the CLI.
203 — S3 Versioning and Lifecycle Rules
Enable S3 versioning, upload multiple object versions, restore a previous version by ID, and configure a lifecycle rule to expire non-current versions — all from the CLI.
301 — Launch an EC2 Instance
Find the Amazon Linux 2023 AMI for your region, launch a t2.micro instance with run-instances, wait for running state, and terminate — all from the CLI.
302 — Security Groups
Create an EC2 security group, add IP-scoped SSH and open HTTP rules, launch a t2.micro, modify rules on a live instance, and clean up — all from the CLI.
303 — SSH and Key Pairs
Create an EC2 key pair, chmod 400 the .pem file, launch a t2.micro with an SSH-only security group, SSH in, query IMDSv2 metadata, and clean up — all from the CLI.
401 — Create and Invoke a Lambda Function
Create an IAM execution role, write a minimal Python handler, zip and deploy it with aws lambda create-function, invoke synchronously, and clean up — all from the CLI.
402 — Lambda Logs and Async Invocation
Capture Lambda logs inline with --log-type Tail, decode the base64 LogResult, read the REPORT billing line, and invoke the function asynchronously — all from the CLI.
403 — Lambda Environment Variables and Function Updates
Update Lambda environment variables without redeploying code, deploy code changes with update-function-code, and publish an immutable function version — all from the CLI.
501 — Deploy and Manage Infrastructure with CloudFormation
Deploy an IAM role, S3 bucket, and Lambda function as a CloudFormation stack, preview updates safely with a change set, and clean up with delete-stack — from the CLI.
502 — Provision AWS Infrastructure with Terraform
Use Terraform to provision an IAM role, S3 bucket, Lambda function, and CloudWatch log group on AWS, inspect the plan, apply the configuration, verify outputs, update safely, and destroy everything cleanly.