AWS Cloud Economics: Why the Money Works Differently
Fixed versus variable costs, the hidden expenses of owning servers, licensing choices, and right-sizing — the cost concepts the Cloud Practitioner exam actually tests.
Cloud concepts
Archive
Blog
Deep dives into AWS architecture and infrastructure — plus the study notes I took getting there.
Studying for the Cloud Practitioner exam?
Follow the 14-part study path, in order, grouped by exam domain.
2026(18)
Designing Better Cloud Systems with the AWS Well-Architected Framework
A plain-English walkthrough of the six Well-Architected pillars, the Well-Architected Tool, and how they connect to real design decisions.
Moving to AWS: Migration Strategies for Beginners
The seven common strategies for moving an application to AWS, and the AWS services that support planning, moving, and validating a migration.
Migration
Understanding Your AWS Bill and Support Options
How AWS pay-as-you-go pricing works, the tools that help you estimate and track spending, and what each AWS Support plan actually offers.
Keeping AWS Accountable: Monitoring and Governance Tools
How CloudWatch, CloudTrail, AWS Config, and Organizations work together to keep AWS accounts visible, compliant, and under control.
How AWS Helps Protect Networks, Data, and Accounts
A plain-English guide to the Shared Responsibility Model, IAM, encryption, and threat-detection tools like GuardDuty, built around a neighborhood-watch analogy.
A Beginner's Guide to AI and Data Services on AWS
A plain-English introduction to SageMaker, Bedrock, ready-made AI services, and ETL tools like Glue and Athena, for readers new to AI and data pipelines.
AWS Databases: Picking the Right Tool for the Data
A plain-English walkthrough of RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, and database migration tools, using a filing-cabinet-versus-sticky-notes analogy to explain when each fits.
Choosing the Right AWS Storage Service
A beginner-friendly guide to Amazon S3 storage classes, EBS, EFS, FSx, and lifecycle rules, using a closet-versus-warehouse analogy to make the choices click.
Hosting a Static Site on S3 + CloudFront with the AWS CDK
A complete CDK stack for a static site with HTTPS, a custom domain, and clean URLs — plus the three things that break on first deploy.
CDK
IAM Users, Groups, and Roles: Who Can Do What on AWS
How AWS decides who is allowed to do what — users, groups, roles, policies, least privilege, and the user-versus-role distinction the exam keeps testing.
IAM
The AWS Root User: What It Can Do and Why You Lock It Away
The one identity with unlimited power over your AWS account — the short list of tasks only it can perform, and how to protect it.
IAM
Understanding AWS Networking Without Getting Lost
A plain-English tour of VPCs, subnets, gateways, and load balancers, using an apartment building as the map for how AWS networking actually works.
Five CDK Mistakes I Made on My First Real Project
Stateful resources destroyed on deploy, context caching bugs, and the IAM grant pattern I should have used from day one.
CDK
How AWS Delivers Applications Around the World
A beginner-friendly guide to AWS Regions, Availability Zones, and edge locations, and why they matter for reliability and speed.
Building Without Managing Servers: AWS Serverless Computing
An introduction to serverless computing on AWS, including AWS Lambda, containers, and how services like Fargate remove server management from your plate.
Amazon EC2: Renting a Computer in the AWS Cloud
A beginner-friendly explanation of Amazon EC2, virtual servers, and the different ways you can pay for compute power on AWS.
Why Companies Use AWS: The Cloud Explained Simply
A plain-English look at what cloud computing actually means, and why businesses choose AWS over running their own servers.
