The AWS Courses to Take for a New Career

Myles Brown | Wednesday, September 9, 2020

The AWS Courses to Take for a New Career

If you want to become an expert in the leading cloud computing technology, then completing Amazon Web Services (AWS) courses online and earning certifications provide the best path to building a long career in cloud. AWS training and certification courses help you gain the knowledge and skills required to be an invaluable member of an organization's IT department, and they provide a roadmap to becoming an AWS architecture or engineering lead. Ultimately, an AWS certification is the highlight your résumé needs to prove to hiring managers that you are proficient in cloud technology at a given level.

AWS reported a revenue of $10.8 billion for Q2 in 2020, compared to $8.3 billion for Q2 in 2019. With AWS controlling the majority of the cloud market share and continuing to disrupt the IT industry with cutting-edge services every year, there is no better time to learn AWS.

If you want to build up your IT skills in designing applications and systems, then an AWS architect training course can help you get started. For those more comfortable with developing software on the cloud, AWS developer courses will cover the skills you need to succeed. And AWS DevOps training courses teach you how to build automated solutions on the AWS platform.

Top AWS Training Courses

Cloud computing has seen tremendous growth over the years, with 90 percent of companies reporting they are on the cloud. And the global cloud computing market is expected to reach $623.3 billion by 2023, which means companies must boost their hiring efforts to meet the growing needs in managing and building cloud architecture, especially on the AWS platform.

As you prepare to begin or advance your career and enhance your AWS skills to appeal to hiring managers, how do you know you're picking the right training provider for AWS courses? AWS features and services are updated every year, so it’s vital to ensure you learn the latest material — and that the content is vendor-approved and aligned to what’s on the exam. It’s also important to consider the level of experience your course instructor has.

The award-winning IT training provider ExitCertified updates its IT training courses regularly to provide the highest quality training for IT professionals and businesses at every level. ExitCertified instructors are highly experienced in many AWS disciplines, and they go beyond merely providing access to recorded online courses. With virtual and interactive options, ExitCertified students can engage with expert instructors in real time.  Lastly, an AWS certification requires passing an exam. ExitCertified’s AWS training courses are 100% created by the vendor who also create the exams.

The following AWS courses from ExitCertified can help you take the next step in your career path:

Foundational AWS Courses

Introductory AWS courses help you gain an overall understanding of the platform as well as general knowledge of IT techniques, and assist you in preparing for the practitioner exam.

AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials

The concepts in this full-day course give you an overall understanding of the AWS cloud platform and introduce essential AWS services and functions, which can help you decide the best AWS training path for your career goals.

The concepts and AWS features covered include:

  • Introduction to the AWS platform and its history — including how Amazon's global cloud infrastructure operates — and navigating through the AWS Management Console
  • Introduction to Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) and Amazon DynamoDB
  • AWS foundational services such as Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Amazon S3, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)
  • AWS management tools, such as Auto Scaling, CloudWatch and Elastic Load Balancing
  • Introduction to AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and access control features
  • AWS security such as EC2 security and networking, using encryption in S3, signing AWS SPI requests, logging, security in VPC, AWS security credentials, and using multi-factor authentication.

IT Skills Taught:

By the end of the course, you will have the right skills to maneuver through the AWS Management Console, as well as an understanding of the platform’s essential security concepts. Therefore, it's the ideal course for any beginner in AWS and those who want to learn how to articulate the cloud platform’s technical advantages.

Once you have completed this course, you can take the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam and then continue your AWS training path by enrolling in associate and professional AWS certification courses.

Associate AWS Courses

There are three AWS courses at the associate level that are ideal for taking the next step in your cloud training journey. The AWS associate courses and exams are intended for IT professionals who have at least one year of hands-on experience in solving common AWS cloud platform issues.

Systems Operations on AWS — Associate

This course teaches best practices for becoming an invaluable system administrator for a company's AWS platform. By taking the SysOps course at the associate level, you will learn the tools, features and methods used in deploying applications.

It's best to take the associate AWS SysOps course and exam if you have one to two years of experience in software development and setting network protocols. Experience in operating systems at a command line — such as in Windows or Linux — is also recommended.

IT Skills Taught:

This course prepares you to more quickly troubleshoot common problems in AWS and to deploy Amazon EC2 by utilizing command line calls. You will also learn how to monitor the health of Amazon EC2 instances and other services on the platform. Plus, you’ll gain the knowledge to seamlessly configure EC2 instances and core concepts of editing programming language on AWS CloudFormation.

Another key lesson from this course focuses on giving insights on the command line while using standard infrastructure in AWS, such as Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancing, EC2 and VPC. You can also control and implement the flow of data within the platform, and estimate the operational and usage costs control mechanism in AWS.

In addition to teaching you how to design stacks of the platform's resources using CloudFormation and other automation technologies, the SysOps on AWS course contains a step-by-step guide on building virtual private networks with Amazon VPC by utilizing the AWS Management Console.

Other disciplines covered in the associate-level Systems Operations on AWS course include:

  • Networking
  • Databases
  • Management of resource consumption

Developing on AWS — Associate

This course is ideal for IT professionals who want to elevate their software engineering skills in the cloud, as it teaches hands-on skills using an AWS Software Development Kit (SDK) to design scalable and secure cloud applications.

It's best to have one to two years of experience in developing AWS-based applications before enrolling in the associate exam. Further, expertise in at least one programming language and knowledge of essential AWS services is an asset.

IT Skills Taught:

The Developing on AWS course provides instruction on how to help create an organization's AWS cloud platform and design with Java, Python or C#.

The course also teaches best practices for deploying applications on AWS while leveraging on the continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) pipeline. In addition to learning how to use Amazon Cognito and web identity framework for access control, you will learn how to make improvements to the scalability of the various applications using Amazon ElastiCache.

Overall, students gain the cloud skills necessary to become proficient in deploying, debugging and developing cloud-based applications on AWS.

Other disciplines covered in the associate-level Developing on AWS course include:

  • Designing storage solutions using Amazon S3
  • Coming up with flexible NoSQL solutions
  • Developing solutions with Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), API gateway, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) and AWS Lambda

Architecting on AWS — Associate

This course is designed for IT professionals who want to learn how to assist in building solutions on the AWS platform. You will learn more in-depth processes about the AWS platform's infrastructure, such as building complex cloud architecture that incorporates governance, security and data services. The course also teaches the skills required to design fault-tolerant, cost-effective and scalable systems on AWS.

IT Skills Taught:

Completing the Architecting on AWS course and related certification provides you with a deeper understanding of essential architectural principles to assist in building cloud. This course also gives you hands-on experience in running databases on the AWS cloud as well as a better understanding of AWS security tools and features and their relationship with the platform's services.

Some of the disciplines outlined in the associate-level Architecting on AWS course include:

  • Design for performance
  • Deployment management
  • Account strategies
  • Building resiliency for AWS architecture

Professional AWS Courses

AWS professional-level courses require you to have at least two years of experience in the IT field. Specifically, you should have some skills in operating, troubleshooting and designing various AWS cloud platforms.

DevOps Engineering on AWS — Professional

If you are already a software developer or system administrator, this course equips you with the skills needed to lead DevOps engineering projects on AWS. Having experience in using the AWS Management Console and Command Line Interface (CLI) will make it easier to grasp most concepts.

IT Skills Taught:

The DevOps Engineering on AWS course teaches you how to automate governance procedures, compliance validations and security controls. You will also learn how to better maintain, manage and design the applications that automate AWS's operational processes. Most importantly, this course and its related certification teach you how to distinguish various application deployment technologies and decide which is best suited for any scenario.

Advanced Architecting on AWS — Professional

This course and related exam are for IT professionals who aspire to be a lead cloud solutions architect. The course teaches complex solutions that incorporate governance, security and data services on AWS.

It's recommended to have a background in AWS APIs, CLI, Billing and Cost Management, CloudFormation templates and Management Console. Additionally, you need to be familiar with coding languages as well as Linux and Windows environments.

IT Skills Taught:

The Advanced Architecting on AWS course will teach you the concepts to manage many AWS accounts in your organization that are necessary to become a lead AWS architect. Moving massive data from on-premises to AWS and designing data stores will become easy tasks. Plus, you will be able to easily choose the right services to deploy and create a scalable system based on organizational requirements.

If you are in the IT industry, an AWS certification is one of the best paths toward growing your career. The AWS courses listed above show the in-demand IT skills you can learn to broaden your cloud computing knowledge no matter your skill level or cloud career aspirations — from foundational to associate to professional.  

Since 2001, ExitCertified has been a leading provider of vendor-approved IT training programs. Learn more about the top skills IT professionals need to advance their career in cloud computing.