Deploying and Operating in AWS

Deploying and Operating in AWS opens the Cloud Technology and Services domain, the largest domain on the exam. Before you meet the individual compute, storage, and database services, you need to know how you actually reach AWS, how you provision resources without clicking through screens by hand, and where your application can run. This topic answers those 3 questions.

The 3 lessons build on each other. The first covers the ways to access AWS, the second covers provisioning infrastructure from code, and the third covers the deployment models that decide where workloads live.

What This Topic Covers

• the 4 ways to access AWS: the Management Console, the CLI, the SDKs, and the API they all call
• when each access method fits, plus AWS CloudShell as a pre-authenticated browser shell
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and why it replaces manual, error-prone setup
• the declarative vs imperative split, with AWS CloudFormation templates and stacks
• how the AWS CDK lets you write infrastructure in a programming language on top of CloudFormation
• the 3 cloud deployment models: cloud-based, on-premises (private cloud), and hybrid
• the AWS services that support hybrid setups: AWS Outposts, AWS Direct Connect, and AWS DataSync

Why It Matters

The exam leans on this topic for scenario questions. It might describe a nightly script that provisions resources, a team that wants repeatable deployments across Regions, or a company keeping some systems in its own data center. Each one points to a specific answer here: the CLI, CloudFormation, or a hybrid deployment. Sorting these choices by their job lets you handle that whole family of questions quickly.

This topic also sets the stage for the rest of the domain. Once you know how to reach AWS and how to provision and place resources, the compute, storage, database, and networking services that follow are just things you deploy and operate with these same tools.