Chapter 1, Overview of AWS Certified SysOps Administrators and Associated Certification, outlines the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator-Associate exam and highlights the critical aspects, knowledge areas, and services covered in the official Amazon blueprint that elaborates the scope of the aforementioned exam, the prerequisites for attending the exam, and the knowledge required to pass the exam.
Chapter 2, The Fundamentals of Amazon Web Services, begins with an explanation of what the cloud is and takes the reader through a brief journey of familiarizing them with the basic building blocks of Amazon Web Services. It highlights some of the critical aspects of how AWS works and provides an overview of AWS's core infrastructure.
Chapter 3, Managing AWS Security with Identity and Access Management, explains how AWS facilitates the provision of security, as one of the most critical aspects of IT operations and administration activities, through its Identity and Access Management (IAM) service. This service provides a very strong backbone for controlling the security of the user infrastructure. This chapter covers all the critical aspects of the IAM service and provides a proper understanding of the various features and functionalities of the IAM service.
Chapter 4, Networking with the Virtual Private Cloud, describes how you can create a Virtual Private Cloud and start building a secure network using a number of components of AWS Networking Services.
Chapter 5, Managing Servers on AWS with Elastic Compute Cloud, describes what EC2 is and how you can start provisioning servers with various Windows and Linux operating system flavors. It also describes how to connect and work with these servers. By the end of this chapter, readers should be able to work and manage EC2 instances. It also goes into various types of Elastic Block Storage, which is attached as a volume to EC2 instances.
Chapter 6, Handling Server Traffic with Elastic Load Balancing, describes different types of Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) and the step-by-step process for creating different types of ELB. It also elaborates on how ELB works and the critical aspects of the ELB service.
Chapter 7, Understanding Simple Storage Service and Glacier, provides an explanation of the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Glacier, and CloudFront services. After elaborating on S3, this chapter explains the cheaper archival storage option, Glacier.
Chapter 8, Understanding Content Distribution with CloudFront, provides an overview of what CloudFront is and how it works, while also explaining a number of its critical features.
Chapter 9, AWS Storage Options, provides a brief description of various storage options available on AWS and touches on the AWS Storage Gateway service. It also provides an overview of AWS Snowball, which is a service that accelerates the transfer of large amounts of data into and out of AWS using physical storage appliances. It also provides a basic review of AWS Snowmobile, which is an exabyte-scale data transfer service used to move extremely large amounts of data to and from AWS.
Chapter 10, Working with Route 53 Domain Name System, affords an introduction to the Amazon Route 53 service and describes its various components.
Chapter 11, Working with Relational Database Services, provides an explanation of AWS Relational Database Services (AWS RDS). It covers the different types of engines supported by AWS RDS and how to efficiently and effectively create and manage RDS instances on AWS.
Chapter 12, Introduction to ElastiCache, provides an overview of ElastiCache and describes how you can use Redis and Memcached engine types.
Chapter 13, Amazon DynamoDB – A NoSQL Database Service, describes various components of DynamoDB and best practices for managing it.
Chapter 14, Working with Simple Queue Service, provides an overview of SQS (a distributed message queuing service) and describes a step-by-step process on how to create and manage it with the help of relevant examples.
Chapter 15, Handling Messaging with SNS, outlines the Simple Notification Service (SNS), which is a fully managed messaging service that can be used to send messages, alarms, and notifications to and from various AWS services, including Amazon RDS, CloudWatch, and S3, to other AWS services, such as SQS and Lambda.
Chapter 16, Getting Started with Simple Workflow Service, provides a basic understanding of the Simple Workflow Service and its various components, along with a brief description of how to use them.
Chapter 17, Overview of AWS Lambda, provides an overview of Lambda and describes how it runs code in response to events and automatically manages the compute resources required by that code.
Chapter 18, Monitoring Resources with Amazon CloudWatch, describes how you can use Amazon CloudWatch to collect and track a variety of resource metrics, collect and monitor log files, set alarms, and automatically react to changes in your AWS resources.
Chapter 19, Understanding Elastic Beanstalk, provides an introduction to Elastic Beanstalk and describes how to deploy and manage applications using the service.
Chapter 20, Automation with CloudFormation Service, provides an overview of the CloudFormation service, a service that helps you to describe and provision your AWS resources. A CloudFormation template provides a simpler and more efficient way to manage your resources on AWS.
Chapter 21, Cloud Orchestration with OpsWorks, provides an overview of the service and describes some of its critical components.
Chapter 22, Exam Tips and Tricks, provides detailed guidance on how you can prepare for the exam and provides tips and tricks on the topics covered in the book.
Chapter 23, Mock Tests, consists of two mock tests for readers to test their knowledge. It attempts to cover all the topics from the scope of the exam and challenges readers' understanding of the topics. Each mock test contains 60 questions. Readers should try to complete a mock test within 90 minutes.
