AWS Cloud Architecting — Study Notes

AWS Academy · Module 1

Introducing
Cloud Architecting

A complete study reference covering cloud architecture concepts, AWS origin story, key services, team roles, and exam takeaways.

5 Core Topics Exam Ready AWS Academy 2024

01 — AWS Origin Story

The Evolution of Cloud at Amazon

How Amazon's internal infrastructure scaling crises led to standardizing inter-service communication and ultimately launching the public cloud.

AWS Academy Slide 7 — Cloud Computing and AWS timeline

Slide 7 · Cloud Computing and AWS — Timeline Overview

2000 — Monolithic Architecture

Merchant.com eCommerce Platform

Amazon was challenged with building an ecommerce service (Merchant.com) to allow third-party sellers to build their own shopping sites. The existing platform was highly coupled and monolithic, making updates slow and tedious.

Tightly coupled monolithic design prevented rapid development
No clean boundaries between software components
Code deployments required coordinate updates across massive database dependencies
Every new feature required months of custom coding and custom configurations

Early 2000s — First Solution

Well-Documented APIs

Amazon introduced well-documented APIs to standardize communication between services and improve the development environment across teams.

Organized the overall development environment
Standardized inter-service communication
Reduced tight coupling between software components
Improved collaboration across engineering teams

⚠️ Remaining issue: Projects still took months to complete — provisioning itself was the bottleneck.

Scaling Crisis — Provisioning Problem

Infrastructure as the Bottleneck

As Amazon hired more engineers, a new blocker emerged: provisioning infrastructure (databases, compute, storage) consumed the entire scheduled project duration before a single line of product code was written.

Infrastructure setup alone required approximately 3 months
Every team independently created its own infrastructure stack
No shared platform → massive duplication of effort
Scalability was not considered during initial design
Resources could not be reused or shared between teams

Solution — Internal Cloud Services

Amazon Builds Its Own Cloud Infrastructure

Amazon developed internal services that automatically provisioned shared infrastructure on demand — the direct precursor to AWS.

High availability — designed to remain operational at all times
Automatic scalability — grows with demand without manual intervention
Reusable infrastructure — shared platform across all engineering teams
Faster delivery — drastically reduced project completion time

2006 — AWS Launches Publicly

Birth of Amazon Web Services

Amazon transformed its internal infrastructure tooling into a commercial cloud platform. Businesses worldwide could now rent computing capacity instead of buying and managing physical servers.

AWS officially launched as a public cloud platform in 2006
First three services: Amazon SQS, Amazon S3, Amazon EC2
Shifted the industry from capital expenditure (CapEx) to operational expenditure (OpEx)

Pre-Cloud Pain Points

Problems Before Cloud Architecting

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No Proper Architecture

Applications built without structured planning
Services were tightly coupled — not modular
No centralized development platform
Components could not be isolated into reusable services

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Development Challenges

Software projects were extremely complex
Development cycles were very long
Teams worked without standardized infrastructure
Reusing existing components was difficult

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Poor Resource Management

Every team created its own infrastructure from scratch
No shared platform across the organization
Resources were not reusable or transferable
Scalability not considered during design
Massive duplication of engineering effort

02 — First AWS Services

The Three Founding Services of AWS (2006)

These three services formed the foundation of the world's largest cloud platform and directly addressed the bottlenecks Amazon had experienced internally.

First Released

Amazon SQS

Simple Queue Service

The very first AWS service ever released
Provides message queuing between distributed applications
Enables asynchronous communication — decouples producers from consumers
Improves reliability of distributed systems by buffering messages

Storage

Amazon S3

Simple Storage Service

Object storage — files, images, videos, backups, documents
Highly durable and scalable by design
Accessible from anywhere via the internet
Industry standard for cloud object storage

Compute

Amazon EC2

Elastic Compute Cloud

Provides virtual servers (instances) on demand
Launch and manage computing resources programmatically
Supports automatic scaling based on load
Eliminates the need to purchase and maintain physical servers

Why Cloud Architecting Became Essential

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Speed & Efficiency

Reduces infrastructure provisioning time from months to minutes
Enables rapid deployment of applications
Simplifies the software development lifecycle

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Scalability & Reliability

Supports automatic scaling based on real-time demand
Provides reliable, fault-tolerant systems
Enables high availability of applications globally

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Cost & Reuse

Reduces operational costs significantly
Encourages reusable and standardized services
Improves overall resource utilization across the organization

03 — Cloud Architecture

What is Cloud Architecture?

Cloud architecture is the practice of designing cloud-based solutions using cloud services and features to meet an organization's business goals and technical requirements — acting as a blueprint for scalable, reliable, and efficient systems.

AWS Academy Slide 8 — Cloud Architecture

Slide 8 · Cloud Architecture — Requirements → Design → Implementation

The Cloud Architecting Process

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1. Requirements

Collect business needs, budgets, performance targets, and constraints to define the scope and goals.

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2. Structure Design

Design a robust blueprint, mapping logical connections between databases, virtual servers, storage, APIs, and networks.

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3. Completed Structure

Deploy the designed architecture, orchestrating AWS resources, configuring monitoring, security policies, and automation.

AWS Service	Type	Primary Purpose	Physical Analogy
Amazon SQS	Message Queue	Decoupling services and buffering tasks	Like a physical post office sorting and holding mail
Amazon S3	Object Storage	Storing static files, media, and backups	Like renting a secure storage locker or deposit vault
Amazon EC2	Virtual Server	Running application logic and databases	Like renting a physical server machine in a data center

04 — Team Roles

The Cloud Architecture Team

Building successful cloud infrastructure requires close collaboration between the business side (customer) and the technical delivery teams.

AWS Academy Slide 9 — Role of a Cloud Architect

Slide 9 · Role of a Cloud Architect — Plan, Research, Build

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Customer

Decision Maker

Defines business goals, budgets, and deadlines
Provides the technical and business requirements
Approves the final design and budget allocations
Monitors the business value of the cloud solution

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Cloud Architect

Designer

Designs the complete cloud architecture
Creates the implementation blueprint
Ensures solution meets business and technical needs
Applies the AWS Well-Architected Framework

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Delivery Team

Building Crew

Implements the designed cloud architecture
Configures and provisions cloud services
Deploys and maintains the production system

Cloud Architect — Key Responsibilities

A Cloud Architect designs, plans, and manages an organization's cloud infrastructure — ensuring alignment with business goals at every phase.

Plan

Set technical cloud strategy with business leads
Analyze solutions for business needs and requirements
Align technology deliverables with business goals

Research

Investigate cloud services specifications and workload requirements
Review existing workload architectures
Design prototype solutions

Build

Design the transformation roadmap with milestones, work streams, and owners
Manage the adoption and migration process

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Key Exam Points — Cloud Architect Role

Cloud Architect bridges business needs and technology solutions
Three main phases: Plan → Research → Build
Ensures solutions are scalable, reliable, secure, and aligned with business objectives
Responsible for the transformation roadmap including milestones, workstreams, and owners

Module 1 · Takeaways

Key Takeaways:
What is Cloud Architecting?

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Cloud architecture is the practice of applying cloud characteristics to a solution that uses cloud services and features to meet an organization's technical needs and business use cases.
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You can use AWS services to create highly available, scalable, and reliable architectures.
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Cloud architects are responsible for managing an organization's cloud computing architecture.

IntroducingCloud Architecting