My Intro to AWS
” Turning complexity into automation: my journey with AWS began when I needed systems to speak to each other, but magic wasn’t an option.
My AWS journey started in 2020 when I needed to integrate a few different systems used for my business at the time. All the services had open APIs and I wanted to connect them together to automate several tasks. The automation would increase efficiency and reduce transcription errors. The only problem was I couldn’t just tell the services to magically talk to each other. I am not a programmer, and back then I couldn’t just put what little I knew into something like ChatGPT or Copilot and get answers. I knew AWS could provide the services I needed, but I would need to get some coding done. Off to a freelance worker website I went, hiring a developer who could write all the code necessary to make the project work.
The developer was able to help me pick which services we needed to use, and he wrote all the code to take advantage of serverless architecture to keep running costs low. All the integration translation runs in a lambda function that is triggered by API Gateway. Any data that needs to be stored is put into a DynamoDB table, and transaction logs are stored in CloudWatch. It’s a simple system, but very effective. No longer did my staff have to spend hours per shift dealing with transcription between systems. It was all automated for them, which freed them to work on other projects and serve customers better.
Expanding on AWS for VOIP
Nobody likes having to pay massive phone bills, especially when the only functionality is voice and voicemail. Constant spam calls, ghost calls, missed calls, and so many more issues all for the high price of hundreds of dollars per month. Oh, and this was only for one physical location with two phone lines. When expanding locations, I knew the time had come to switch from the terrible phone company system. Back to Google to figure out how to decrease my phone bill, increase functionality, and make everything operate within the cloud. I discovered 3CX which is a cloud-based PBX system, as well as Twilio for cloud-based trunking. Combining those services formed a working VOIP system that is fully in the cloud. With 3CX you can pay for hosting or get advanced functionality for free if self-hosted.
The lightbulb went off! I could use AWS once again and use EC2 this time to host the 3CX server. Slap the software into EC2 with an autoscaling group behind a load balancer, purchase a savings plan for the instance that is always running, and I had a PBX for less than $30/month. If the 3CX service became overwhelmed with phone calls it could auto scale out based on CPU usage to accommodate our needs. Off to Twilio to register some new phone numbers, connect them to 3CX, and then set up some billing to pay-as-you-go voice. With our little phone usage, we would spend around $10-20 per month on voice, which was substantially less than what we had been paying to Comcast.
To give some perspective, before we were paying Comcast $200/month for 2 phone lines with 2 voicemails for our single location. Automated assistants, phone tree extensions, and many advanced features would cost at least another $200 per month per location if I wanted to add it from Comcast. After implementing the cloud solution, we pay AWS and Twilio less than $50/month for 5 phone lines, unlimited voicemails, automated assistants, unlimited phone tree extensions, and so many features I can’t possibly list them here. I was able to fully control our phone system from the cloud, and for a fraction of the price. The best part is if we need to add locations, it’s as simple as ordering the hard phones, buying a phone number, and adding some extensions to our 3CX PBX.
Making AWS A Career?
I am now at a chapter in my life where it’s time to find something new and interesting. Having spent the past decade developing, operating, and scaling my business, I learned several business skills, but now want to challenge myself with a new sector. I have always enjoyed tech, the cloud, but didn’t want to get into programming. I’d already learned basic tech skills to be able to setup and optimize my business’s website, enable cloud services, and a few other projects. After speaking with a former AWS executive, it was clear that the cloud was a promising field.
In August 2023 I registered an A Cloud Guru account to begin learning AWS by starting with the Certified Cloud Practitioner. This would let me get better understanding and clarity on whether I would find AWS interesting. I went on to pass the Certified Cloud Practitioner test in early September. A couple of weeks later I exited my business and took some time off for the first time in over 10 years. After a few months off to decompress, it was time to restart the grind. I am relentless once I set my mind to something. The cloud became my singular focus, and it was time to focus on learning AWS architecture.
I went back on A Cloud Guru for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate course. The issue I quickly found was that a lot of their material was highly out of date. I find it unacceptable to not stay up to date, so once again off to Google to find a new course that would be up to date. I found that with Adrian Cantrill, who was conveniently a former A Cloud Guru instructor. He launched his own AWS certification courses, offering lifetime access with a one-time fee and ensuring all content is kept current.
Time to Learn!
In mid-March 2024 I began the first lessons of Adrian’s wonderful courses. They were very hands on with labs you performed in your own AWS accounts, being very mindful to stick to free tier as much as possible. This allowed me to get hands on features of AWS that generally aren’t available in the traditional ‘lab’ or ‘sandbox’ environments. The Solutions Architect Associate course contains over 60 hours of content, including hands on demos that are all high quality. Lots of additional learning resources are provided, and all key slides are included in a separate download. This isn’t meant to be a sales pitch, but seriously Adrian’s courses were EXACTLY what I was looking for. I spent over 10 hours per day working through the Associate course, finishing it in just under a week. Then it was time to start practice tests, which he suggested a service for. The practice tests were great for benchmarking and enabled me to determine my deficiencies and to expand my knowledge as needed. Another 60–70-hour week of studying and it was test time. I passed the SAA-C03 test on my first attempt. It was rewarding to put in the time and receive the certification in such a short period of time.
Next to level up the challenge and go for the professional architecture certificate! What makes AWS a challenge is that it has a broad range of services, and each service can be quite deep. To earn the architecture certificates requires understanding the wide range of services beyond just surface level for many of them. The professional certificate would expand that breadth of knowledge, but drastically increase the depth of understanding. Here I go bragging about Adrian again, but his courses are so amazing; he focuses on making sure you aren’t repeating things from prior courses. All his lessons are tagged if they are shared with another course. The architect professional course shared several videos with the associate course, and because they were labeled, I was able to focus on the new content. After about 5 days I was through the 40 hour course, and ready to start on practice tests once again.
The AWS Architect Professional test is substantially harder than the associate test. It levels up the difficulty of questions in many ways, you must have a lot more knowledge. It took about 100 hours’ worth of studying on top of taking the class before I felt comfortable taking the test. I re-watched content, focused on some labs, reread my notes, and continued taking practice tests to get comfortable. I found when I scheduled my test that AWS was providing a free retake for all tests taken in the month of April. This was generous considering the AWS Professional level tests are $300 per attempt. I scheduled my test, and I felt confident going in. Turns out I didn’t need the free retake.
Now What?
Having a total of three AWS certificates is nice and all, but how could I demonstrate some more knowledge? As you probably guessed, it was time to Google again. I discovered the Cloud Resume Challenge by Forrest Brazeal, an interesting project that is designed to test you and showcase basic DevOps capabilities. I had planned on creating a personal website anyway, so this was perfect for me. I won’t get into it any more in this post, but don’t you worry, you can read more by clicking here. Trust me, the Cloud Resume Challenge post is worth the read.