AWS Learn In Public Week 1, the EC2 basics
Tags: aws, learninpublic, 100daysofaws
Published: 2021-02-28 16:36:58

---
title: AWS Learn In Public Week 1, the EC2 basics
published: true
description: The start of a challenge to motivate me to learn AWS and how did the first week go
tags: 
- aws
- LearnInPublic
- 100DaysOfAWS
cover_image: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/630705/109425152-e49b0f80-79de-11eb-82bf-29314ae76f32.jpg
canonical_url: https://www.harrisgeo.me/blogs/aws-learn-in-public-week-1-the-ec2-basics
series: AWS Learn in public
---

Hello there,

Last weekend due to a gaffe at work, I decided to invest and improve my AWS skills. It has been a desire of mine for a few months now to go for the [AWS developer associate certification](https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-developer-associate/).

I really like the bite size blogging experience in Twitter and felt like that this method could motivate me to do it consistently and also others can learn along with me. I "signed up" to the 100 days of AWS challenge and also to learn in public hashtags.

I got some really positive feedback when I made [this announcement](https://twitter.com/harrisgeo88/status/1363201771229892610) on Twitter. My goal was to post at least one fact about what I was studying that day every single day.

My learning usually happens early in the morning before work and my tweet has been at around the time I take my lunch break. Let's see how did the first week go. I started with the AWS EC2 basics.

## [21/02](https://twitter.com/harrisgeo88/status/1363473813636329475)

What is an AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)?

- An Amazon VPC enables you to launch AWS resources into a virtual network that you've defined.
- Think of it as a traditional network within your data centre that uses AWS infrastructure.

## [22/02](https://twitter.com/harrisgeo88/status/1363836453822763012)

What is an AWS Availability Zone (AZ)?

- AZs are AWS data centres that can be found within AWS regions. Each region has multiple AZs.
- As a best practice to ensure high availability for your system, a VPC can span multiple AZs.

 

## [23/02](https://twitter.com/harrisgeo88/status/1364200098704494599)

What is an AWS subnet?

A range of IP addresses in your VPC.

✅ you can launch AWS resources into a subnet that you select

❌ you cannot launch any instances without subnets

- A subnet is always mapped to a single AZ
- As a best practice subnets should be spread amongst AZs for redundancy and failover purposes.

## [24/02](https://twitter.com/harrisgeo88/status/1364561732924973056)

Types of AWS subnets

- Public subnets for things that are connected to the internet. e.g. web servers
- Private subnets for things that are not connected to the internet e.g. Databases

## [25/02](https://twitter.com/harrisgeo88/status/1364923867341328384)

Time for Networking in AWS.
What is an AWS internet gateway?
A horizontally scaled, redundant and highly available VPC component that allows communication between instances in our VPC and the internet.

❗ Each VPC can only have 1 internet gateway

## [26/02](https://twitter.com/harrisgeo88/status/1365287768142667776)

What is an AWS AMI (Amazon Machine Image)?
The software and operating system that will be used in our system when launching EC2 instances.

## [27/02](https://twitter.com/harrisgeo88/status/1365647636213035010)

AWS Tip 💡

Every time you get timeout errors it's very likely to be related to your security group settings.
Start by investigating your inbound / outbound rules.

## Week 1 Summary

The experience has totally been positive! Still trying to figure out what is the best way to share that information but come on, the purpose of such challenge apart from learning a new skill, is to see how much you can improve during time.

If you want to follow my journey, feel free to [follow me on Twitter](https://twitter.com/harrisgeo88) and please reach out :). Next week I will be looking at AWS ELB (Elastic Load Balancer).