Forem: Ganesh Swaminathan

Architecture on a Post-it note: Optimizing AWS Aurora Databases

Ganesh Swaminathan — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 19:56:10 +0000

It all started with a simple post from Pawel Zubkiewicz (AWS Serverless Hero) on our AWS Community Builder slack with this image and an ask for any help in optimizing the Aurora MySql database.

The screengrab is from his https://cloudpouch.dev/ cost optimization application with some details masked and represents a real cluster running on Amazon Web Services.

How much can you really glean from a single image?

I found 8 different items to review from that image :

Let's dive in and do a deep-dive or rather a "mini" Well Architected Review of all these items.

Aurora MySQL Clusters

The image shows an Amazon Aurora MySQL Cluster with 2 database instances. An Aurora cluster can have one primary instance and a number of (optional) replica instances.

Use cases for replicas

Aurora Replicas have two main uses

Horizontal read scaling

Replicas can be used for read only workloads like reporting or Business Intelligence tools. In cases where we have large read heavy workloads, you can have multiple replicas OR replicas sized larger than the primary instance.

This way the primary can continue to handle reads/writes without being bogged down by the heavy read only workloads which are handled by the replicas. This is Aurora's horizontal read scaling model.

Improving Availability

To build a new Aurora instance takes a while (sometimes upto 30 minutes). AWS has to source an appropriate sized compute instance in the right AZ / Region / VPC , bootstrap the correct database engine version, apply all the database configurations / parameter group settings and then attach the storage (with all the data) before the database can even start accepting connections.

Since the replica's have gone through all these steps already and are active on the network, promoting a replica when the primary instance fails is very simple. Aurora can quickly promote the replica to a primary (usually takes 30 seconds) and then create a fresh replica. This is an excellent availability model with a very low RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and the RPO (Recovery Point Objective) is the last commit from the primary. As before we tend to create replicas in another AZ to the primary and this covers us for complete AZ failures too.

For production use cases, the recommendation is to always use a replica but this does mean double the compute cost as the second instance is charged while its running.

Avoiding replicas - compromises

To optimize for cost, we could compromise a little bit of availability on non-critical / Non-Production workloads by not creating Replicas. This does change the availability / RTO as there is no fast recovery if the primary fails. You have to wait the 15-30 minutes it could take to create a fresh instance.
Also the instance is always recovered in the same AZ and if the entire AZ is having issues, the instance may not get recovered without some manual intervention (bringing up the instance in another AZ)

Analysing the DB Cluster

From the screenshot, the second database (using the db.t3.medium sizing) has zero DB connections.

So I am going to assume its the replica and it is is currently idle.

So we have a db.t3.small sized primary database instance and a replica which has double the memory but has zero connections.

This is fairly unusual as we usually size replicas to match primary instances at a minimum (so if it takes over as primary it has same capacity).

Maybe the user created a larger instance but forgot to swap it as the primary. Either way - having an idle instance with double the configuration is a red flag to follow up on.

Cpu / RAM usage Analysis.

Replica CPU / RAM usage

We generally see low CPU / RAM utilization on replicas especially if they have zero DB connections. Aurora replicates data within a cluster using its own native storage level replication.
So the compute instance does next to nothing and all the heavy lifting is done by the storage layer underneath.

So one of the anamolies here is to identify why the replica is showing 44% max usage especially when there are NO db connections.
What is the engine really doing and what is driving the usage?
Maybe its doing some internal optimizations or managing the buffers / caches etc but this does look a bit high and would be another red flag to follow up on.

One reason for high usage on replicas could be where we are not using the native Aurora replication but using MySQL's binlog replication or other logical replication mechanisms where the replica has to ingest the data from primary. This is unlikely to be the case as such replication are usually between clusters and not within a cluster.

Primary instance RAM usage

The RAM utilization is peak 92% / Avg 90% which sounds high but its only a 2GB instance and these days its easy to use that up.
Generally high ram utilization on its own is not a cause for major concern as you gave it all that ram to use and its doing a good job using it!

We have to make sure the performance of workloads is not impacted by RAM shortage and we could check if the system is swapping which could indicate some bottlenecks.

Two metrics we would check in Cloudwatch to start with would be the SwapUsage and Freeable Memory and we would see if there is some sort of correlation. If Freeable memory is dropping while swap is increasing, it could indicate memory pressures on the system and switching to an instance with more memory would be beneficial.

This is an Yellow Flag we would follow up with the owner of the compute instance on.

Opportunity to adopt Graviton 2 based instances.

You may have heard of Amazon's Graviton cpu's which are built and managed by AWS themselves. They run on a different cpu architecture (ARM) but the beauty of managed services like Aurora is that there is no need to worry about this as we leave AWS to figure out how to run MySQL on these CPU's.

I always recommend using Graviton based instances as these perform just as well as other Intel based instances and are 10% cheaper than them. There could be workloads that benefit from intel based instances but for anything running on the "T" series burstable instances, a migration from "t3" to the graviton based "t4g" instance type should be straightforward. The usual caveat almost always exists on testing things out but if there are issues with t4g it is always easy to switch back to t3 instance types.

One note of Caution : Before changing instance types, we have to check if we have locked in any committed spend discounts with AWS (like RDS Reserved Instances) as changing the instance type could have a serious impact. If you move from an instance type with RI coverage to one without, we would be hit with a double whammy of losing the RI discounts and since RI's are committed, we have to still pay for them. You could end up with double the costs!

Engine Versions

There are 2 current versions of MySQL - 5.7 and 8.0 (there was no 5.8 - it just jumped to 8.x) .
MySQL 5.7, the community driven upstream project, released in 2015 and plans to end releases as of October 2023. Amazon take the code from this project to integrate into their Aurora MySQL Compatible engine and will continue to make changes and support it on their own terms.
Aurora MySQL version 5.6 was just deprecated in Feb 2023 and there is no published date for Aurora 5.7.
However it is better to start looking at migrating off 5.7 to 8.0 rather than wait till end of the year.

Also of importance are the minor versions of MySQL Engine.

Assuming minor engine auto updates is enabled, this should not be a problem. If that is disabled, we need to upgrade to later versions manually.

Performance Insights - Optimizing for Observability.

Performance Insights is a tool to obtain insights into the performance (duh!) of Aurora engine identifying the top impactful queries and helping developers fine tune them and/or the design.

Performance Insights offers a rolling seven days of performance data history at ZERO cost and there is practically zero impact / performance penalty on the database by turning this on.

So this should ideally be turned on as default for all Aurora databases.

Suggestions for Optimizations

While we would dig further into the actual red flags mentioned earlier, some early suggestions come up for optimizing this environment

Adopt Graviton and size up the primary

The first recommendation I would have is to add a t4g.medium replica.
We would then promote this new t4g.medium replica to primary and make sure all connections are working with this instance.

If this was a production workload, using our recommendation discussed above, we would add another t4gt.medium replica in a different AZ.
We would keep the existing primary around as a replica just in case we need to fall back for any reason but once workloads are confirmed to be working fine then delete the t3.small and t3.medium instances

As a result of these migrations we should see

10% Lower baseline cost per instance
Increasing RAM should drop any swapping / provide some headroom
If we are keeping a replica, fast failover

Applying Well Architected Principles

As an architect, I always try and use the Well Architected Framework for anything I am reviewing.

Here is how I believe we have covered the individual pillars in this review.

Operational Excellence

We would be looking into CloudWatch metrics for some the redflags we noticed
We would be reviewing upgrades to the database engine to ensure we stay upto date on engine upgrades
We looked at turning on Performance Insights for improving queries / performance

Security

we did not cover any security related changes but a deeper dive could include reviews of database encryption (at rest), connection encryption (enforce TLS on incoming connections), review of the security groups, credentials use etc
The move to Graviton Instances does brings some hidden security features (example memory encryption) and latest Nitro enhancements - these are all behind the scenes but good to have

Reliability

Use of Aurora already brings added durability / RPO as any commit of data includes 6 copies across 3 AZ's and the system was designed to withstand a failure of an entire AZ plus another node (see Amazon Aurora paper on this)
We reviewed the RTO advantage and single AZ failure resilience of having replicas

Performance Efficiency

We covered CPU / RAM usage and looked at options for Graviton to boost performance

Cost Optimization

Graviton move drops 10% baseline - deleting larger replicas can save 75%!

Sustainability

We tried to balance removing idle usage (the compute instance sitting there idle) and also graviton cpu's have lower carbon impact (apparently)

Conclusion

That was a lot to cover from a single image and is almost what I call an "Architecture on a Post-it Note".

If you got to the bottom of this article - thank you!
Please let me know if I have missed anything or if you have any other feedback.

New Free AWS "Exam Prep" assessment resource

Ganesh Swaminathan — Sat, 04 Mar 2023 14:58:52 +0000

Did you know AWS have hundreds of free learning videos / courses that you can use to learn about AWS and also prepare for their Certification Exams?

They host it all on their "SkillBuilder" site.

SkillBuilder recently added paid content (requiring an expensive subscription) including additional labs, flashcards and full length practice exams, additional learning pathways and "Quests" with digital badges on completion. The free resources are still awesome and are constantly being updated / added to.

"Exam Prep" courses

Skillbuilder has recently added "Exam Prep" courses. These are NOT training courses to teach you AWS from scratch but are complementary to other preparatory AWS Courses and are focused on assessing your "Exam Readiness".

Here is how I would recommend you use this resource when you have decided to prepare for an AWS Certification exam.

Create a free login on SkillBuilder.
Go to the Course Catalog
Expand the Filters and scroll down to find the "Training Category" and select the "Exam Preparation" category
Then use the Search to find one for your exam code. For example I am getting ready to recertify my AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional course and its short code is SAP-C02. I can just search for "SAP-C02". Some of these courses also have material in languages other than English!
You will find a course marked "Requires Subscription" and one marked Free. Enroll in the Free course!
I would then do the first few modules which cover getting to know the exam, exam-style questions and the topics in scope. There are also links to resources like the official AWS Study Guide (which lists what the exam covers) in these lessons. You can then STOP here and switch over to video courses like those on Udemy, Adrian Cantrill's site , CloudAcademy etc.
Once you have finished the video course and have done some more practice questions (maybe using TutorialsDojo or equivalent), you can COME BACK to this course and then take the remaining modules. This Exam Prep course then will cover what you SHOULD know by know in each domain of the exam and will provide additional links and guidance.

AWS Certification Exams covered

The filters do not make this easy to find but I was able to find "Exam Prep" courses for the following (with links to the FREE version in English Language)

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C01)
All three Associate level exams (SAA-C03, SOA-C02, DVA-C02)
Solutions Architect Professional Level courses (SAP-C02)
Networking - Specialty (ANS-C01)

I could not find the Exam Prep course for

DevOps Engineer - Professional (DOP-C02) (Coming Soon!)
Security - Specialty (SCS-C01)
Database - Specialty (DBHS-C01)
Data Analytics - Specialty (DAS-C01)
Machine Learning - Specialty (MLS-C01)
SAP on AWS - Specialty (PAS-C01)

Either I could not find them in the search OR I would expect them to be added soon. I did find sample practice exams for all exams though.

Paid vs Free Exam Prep Course difference

Paying for a SkillBuilder subscription provides access to the same course but adds two labs and a full length practice exam.

The free course still has some walkthrough and some scenario questions and has a practice exam that has only 20 sample questions.

The SAP-C02 subscription course has these additional material from the table of contents.

Lab assessments
2 TRAINING MATERIAL
Lab assessment 1: Designing for resiliency and cost
Lab assessment 2: Enhance Amazon CloudFront Origin
Module 5: Determine exam readiness
3 TRAINING MATERIAL
Overview: bonus questions and practice exam
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional Bonus Questions (SAP-C02)
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional Official Practice Exam (SAP-C02 - English) (edited)

These additional resources alone do not justify the subscription in my opinion but SkillBuilder has loads of other subscription content that you may want to consider.

Credits

Thanks to Julie Elkins for highlighting this awesome resource that she has helped create.

Use this Free Exam Prep resource to boost your chance of passing the AWS Certification Exams!

Earn (AWS Credits) while you Learn! (Bonus: 75% off AWS exams!)

Ganesh Swaminathan — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 18:00:08 +0000

Did you know that you can earn upto $80 AWS Credits while learning all about AWS Services? AND possibly get some discounts on AWS Certification Exams?

AWS hold FREE Online conferences where you can earn $25 or $50 or even $80 in AWS credits. All you need to do is attend live, enjoy the content and provide feedback! Credits can be useful for those who want to get hands on practice on AWS and are worried about over-shooting the free tier.

🆕 Bonus Opportunity!

The EMEA event on 9th March added ways to obtain 75% off the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, Associate or Professional exams. This looks to have been an EMEA event special but its great news anyway.

Past events : AWS Innovate - Data & AI/ML Edition

March 14,2023 (Americas Timezone friendly : Example : 12pm-4pm eastern) : https://aws.amazon.com/events/innovate-online-conference/americas/

This event offered 50% off Associate exams.

March 9, 2023 (EMEA Timezone friendly : Example: 9am London to 2pm London) :

https://aws.amazon.com/events/innovate-online-conference/emea/aiml-data/

EMEA offers

FAQ

Notes / frequently asked questions everytime I mention this topic:

The actual event is free and is held online. There are no costs to join and you only need your time / energy and a device on the internet
The Online conference is focused on AI / ML / Data but there are multiple tracks and over 50 sessions to choose from with content aimed at beginners to experts
Caveat : the Americas event does not have the same FAQ entry confirming the Credits offer like the EMEA one.
There is an event feedback form which you can fill it anytime through the conference timings - this should usually earn you $25. You need to do this while the conference is LIVE - not before / after.
You need to actively participate in the conference as at the end of each video session, there is a feedback form asking feedback on content and the presenter. You need to do this while the conference is LIVE - not before / after. You need to watch 4 video sessions at minimum and provide feedback.
Credits will take time to come through (June / July)
The credit is typically a simple code that can be applied to your account. That means you need to have an AWS account in the first place to add credits to. If you have issues creating an account, this may not help you or act like a replacement for a credit/debit card.
AWS Credits only work for some services - you cannot buy domain names with them for example.
AWS Credits also cannot be exchanged for Exam Vouchers or pay for exam fees or anything else that Amazon sells or AWS offers
The conference has plenty of other benefits beyond just Credits like almost a hundred sessions, slides with details, links to online and other resources, ebooks, Q&A with AWS SME's etc.
After the day of the event, all content becomes available on-demand till the next conference - so if you liked something you can share it out
READ the FAQ please - lots of detail there on limits for number of people who will get vouchers, the activities you need to perform to be eligible etc.

So - what are you waiting for? Go register!

Holiday Wishes to our Community (Managers)!

Ganesh Swaminathan — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 16:43:21 +0000

As 2022 draws to a close, I wanted to reflect upon the AWS Community Builder program that I am part of and specifically thank our Community Managers for building and sustaining this awesome initiative.

Meeting other Community Builders at re:Invent 2022 was one of the recent highlights and we wanted to do something special for our community managers and we came up with some questions we would all answer about the program as a way to help others get a perspective.

What surprises you most about the community builders program?

The sheer diversity of the community is just awesome. We have representatives from so many different countries, so many different cultures, education and socio-economic backgrounds, languages spoken etc that it is refreshing to see them all collaborate over our community slack and in other forums.

We also have a huge diversity in experience with Cloud / AWS from students who are learning / building out in the open to others who get selected as "Heroes" and even get hired into Amazon.

What’s your background and your experience with AWS?

I have been in the Tech Industry 25 years working mainly for financial services organizations. I have almost a decade of experience working with AWS in various forms but have been deeply involved in the last 5+ years. My role is primarily as an Enterprise Cloud Architect.

What’s the biggest benefit you see from the program?

I recently renewed for year 3 of the AWS Community Builder program and as part of the renewal process we were asked "Why do you want to continue". The biggest benefit for me has been meeting and helping people (who are relatively new to Tech / AWS) and learning from that process. Giving back on my years of experience to new starters and also learning from others who have deeper / wider experience is the single most important thing I get from this program (beyond all the benefits like certification vouchers, AWS Credits for experiementation, webinars, early access under NDA, training offers and I could keep going on!).

What’s the next swag item that you would like to get?

I am told the year 3 renewal has a "Surprise" in offer. I am all for anything that is sustainable and isn't novelty and this is one theme we share with our Community Managers who are constantly looking for feedback and improving the quality of SWAG we get.

One "Benefit" above the swag I am really looking forward to in 2023 is access to the full "Skills Builder" platform that AWS is now pushing. There is now a paid tier with lots more labs, skills to learn, courses and ofcourse achievement "Badges".

2023 goal : enjoy the learning / get ALL the Badges!

What are you eating for dinner today? Share the recipe!

I was born and spent my first two decades in South India. One of the famous dishes there is called "Ven Pongal" (Rice & Lentils). I am not sharing my Grandmothers secret recipe as she adds some special ingredients (that you normally only get back in South India) - but here is an internet recipe. This is the savoury version and there is a sweet version of this too! Both dishes are normally cooked to celebrate "Harvest Festival" in January and that is one way of "Giving Thanks" which seems apt for today's post.

Is there anything else you would like to share about the community builders program in 2022?

The program has grown from strength to strength this year and this is mainly due to the Community Managers and bringing in a thriving cohort every year. I am really thankful to them and I am happy to continue in this program and here's to a great 2023 after a (hopefully) refreshing Holiday Break.

Thank you Community Managers!

Neptune Serverless - "is it really Serverless?"

Ganesh Swaminathan — Sun, 30 Oct 2022 16:34:17 +0000

This is my longform article from a recent tweet thread covering some initial thoughts on "Amazon Neptune Serverless".

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1. Neptune Serverless
2. Serverless means "Scale to Zero"
       2.1. Neptune Serverless does not Scale to Zero.
3. Comparison to other AWS Serverless Databases
       3.2. DynamoDB
       3.3. Aurora Serverless
4. Operational Concerns for a Serverless database?
5. Working around the (lack of) Scale to Zero
6. Serverless or "Auto Scaling"?
7. Neptune Serverless Use-cases

Neptune Serverless

Amazon recently introduced "Neptune Serverless".

You can see the full details on the launch blog.

In a nutshell - Neptune is a managed Graph Database from AWS and this "Serverless" offering autoscales based on demand so you are not stuck with the initial provisioned capacity.

BUT... the very first thought on reading the announcmeent was "Is it REALLY Serverless"?

Serverless means "Scale to Zero"

One of the key benefits of Serverless for me is "Scale to Zero" where the service is only running when there is actual load or the service is performing some workload. Lambda for example is a serverless compute platform. After the workload is completed (or the timeout of 15 minutes has passed), that specific Lambda execution is complete. You are no longer billed after that and there is nothing to do in terms of shutting down etc. It's upto the Cloud provider to manage the compute environment - whether they keep it around for reuse or delete it and assign the underlying hardware capacity elsewhere.

Neptune Serverless does not Scale to Zero.

As of now there is a minimum capacity of 2.5 NCU (Neptune Capacity Units - a combination of some amount of Compute CPU's and Memory).

The immediate impact is that there is a minimum charge of about USD 290 a month even if you did not perform a single query on the database.

Comparison to other AWS Serverless Databases

DynamoDB

A classic example of a serverless database is Amazon DynamoDB with the "Pay Per Use" mode where you only pay for active API Calls / Queries. You do not pay for anything when there is no usage of the database. But this is a key design advantage of a system like DynamoDB where you do not manage anything related to the database instances and only specify tables that you want to use. All the heavy lifting of managing capacity is AWS's responsibility and they can optimize the usage to allow the system to seeming appear that its shutdown by moving workloads around their servers.

Aurora Serverless

There are two other "serverless" databases from AWS which use more "traditional" database engines - Aurora Serverless v1 and Aurora Serverless v2 which are a lot more similar to Neptune than DynamoDB would be.

Aurora serverless v1 has a "Pause and Resume" feature where you can set a timeout after which the database would automatically shutdown. One of the more common use cases that I see for such databases are dev / testing systems. Once the development team has finished their active testing, the database shuts itself down and spins back up whenever testing resumes. This can save costs for the consumer and for the cloud provider, they can re-use or optimize the capacity elsewhere. This also helps avoid wastage from a sustainability perspective.

While Aurora Serverless v1 had this key feature, it struggled in other areas like scaling points and Aurora Serverless v2 improves on these limitations a LOT.

BUT... Aurora Serverless v2 removed this "Pause and Resume" feature. The smallest Aurora Serverless v2 capacity that you can define is 0.5 ACUs (Aurora Compute Units - a combination of some amount of Compute CPU's and Memory).

Keeping a minimum amount of compute around has a key benefit - there is no latency incurred in starting up the database back from its paused state. With Aurora Serverless v1, this used to be a few minutes. No "Pause feature" means databases like Aurora Serverless v2 and Neptune Serverless do not have this latency as they are ready to go anytime they are running.

Operational Concerns for a Serverless database?

There are other operational concerns with these type of Serverless databases too. For example, I tried to spin up a Neptune Serverless database in my test account and immediately hit an issue.

Before I could create the database, I needed to first setup a VPC with 2 subnets.

One of the other things you need to specify when you build the database is the Neptune engine version. This means in the future, you have to deal with upgrading engines.

Serverless systems need to abstract you away from networking concerns and operational concerns like managing software versions. One could argue that managing engine versions comes with having to deal with new features / breaking changes etc but I do not remember a time when I had to upgrade DynamoDB to take into account a new feature. Where Amazon is tracking compatibility to PostgreSQL / MYSQL features - version management may be envitable. But with a proprietary engine like Neptune - maybe this is something that should not require user level management.

Working around the (lack of) Scale to Zero

There is a dirty workaround to this scale to zero problem.
You build it yourself!

The Neptune database allows you to shutdown and startup the database programmatically. I tested this via the AWS CLI.

So you could schedule the database to shutdown automatically using a simple CloudWatch Trigger and a Lambda that calls this API.

AWS themselves offer a prebuilt "solution" called the Instance Scheduler

Using a combination of CloudWatch, DynamoDB and Lambda - the system can stop / start databases on a schedule. You can use resource tags to control schedules, exclude resources etc.

Now this prebuilt solution was built for fixed schedules and not really handle "Dynamic" setup like "Shutdown after 10 minutes of no activity". Checking the documentation, CloudWatch has CPUUtilization metrics for Neptune Databases and we could build this ourselves.

Shutting down on a schedule or when idle seem easy enough but starting up when there is a request looks a lot harder.

How do we even know that there is a database request pending?
One way is to encode intelligence into the Application as part of the connection handling logic. Use the API again to obtain the DBInstanceStatus and if database is shutdown, issue the command to start it up. It does take a few minutes for the database to fully start up - so the latency has to also be handled where the application waits till the database is fully up.

Serverless or "Auto Scaling"?

Aurora Serverless v2 and Neptune Serverless are answers to a totally different problem than scaling to zero. They are addresssing "provisioning for peak volume".

With traditional Aurora Or Neptune databases - you are setting a predefined instance type with a fixed vCPU Compute and Memory limit. Scaling beyond the limits of the instance type needs thinking differently and making the system scale in terms of "Compute Unit bundles" between a minimum and maximum threshold is what these serverless offerings bring.

In my mind this is basically "Autoscaling".

Autoscaling is used more when referring to "horizontal scaling" (adding more units of databases) rather than in "vertical scaling" (adding more cpu and memory to the existing database instance) and maybe that is one of the reasons why this is not called that.

Neptune Serverless Use-cases

Usecases for me for Neptune Serverless would be

Consistent usage through the entire day with infrequent "Bursty" workloads. Classic Example : "we need X amount of cpu /memory during the day for normal queries and then 4X that amount for batch based workloads in the evening".
Latency / wait to start database back up is not acceptable
Dev / Test databases for these usecases in combination with my "poor man's scale to zero" workaround.

I think AWS should stop calling these systems "Serverless" and I look forward to the day when we can have true scale to zero / fast scale up /out systems like DynamoDB.

Will we see a "DynamoDB - Graph edition" at re:Invent sometime soon?

Major version upgrades to Aurora PostgreSQL - some gotcha's

Ganesh Swaminathan — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 19:04:38 +0000

Background

Major version upgrades for Aurora PostgreSQL used to be painful if you were behind on versions.

For example - lets assume you were on Aurora PostgreSQL 9.6 and AWS notified users that they are no longer supporting this version.
You then decided to take the opportunity to upgrade all the way to the latest version (version 13).
You had to upgrade one major version at a time.
i.e., follow this upgrade path

9.x to 10.x first
10.x to 11.x next
11.x to 12.x after that
12.x to 13.x finally!

OR you resorted to dumping out the entire database and importing it back into a new database with the latest version.

Neither option was elegant and has many considerations (like time taken, outages required or even data integrity)

Recent Change

AWS recently announced that Amazon Aurora supports Multi Major Version Upgrade to Aurora PostgreSQL 11 and higher.

In that they mention that you could upgrade from

Upgrade from PostgreSQL 9.6.X to PostgreSQL 12.X OR
Upgrade from PostgreSQL 10.X to PostgreSQL 13.X

Gotcha!

Not so fast though! The devil is in the detail of the source and target version - see this from the linked documentation

In my opinion that documentation is not very clear. What happens if you have version 10.16? It is not in the list and you have to either assume that it is treated the same as version 10.7 OR 10.18 and assumptions are bad.

For example - upgrading to 10.16 to 13.3 fails with

error message = Cannot upgrade aurora-postgresql from 10.16 to 13.4 (Service: AmazonRDS; Status Code: 400; Error Code: InvalidParameterCombination)

Recommendations / Workaround

Fortunately there is a way to figure out which major versions are supported using the aws cli and this is in the same documentation linked above

Using the cli - we figure out that 10.16 is only upgradable to 11.x

$ aws rds describe-db-engine-versions --engine aurora-postgresql --engine-version 10.16 --query 'DBEngineVersions[].ValidUpgradeTarget[?IsMajorVersionUpgrade ==true].{EngineVersion:EngineVersion}' --output text 11.11 11.12 11.13 11.14

Rather than do this major version upgrade, I would suggest doing a minor version upgrade to 10.18 first and THAT supports the giant leap all the way to 13.4

$ aws rds describe-db-engine-versions --engine aurora-postgresql --engine-version 10.18 --query 'DBEngineVersions[].ValidUpgradeTarget[?IsMajorVersionUpgrade ==true].{EngineVersion:EngineVersion}' --output text 11.13 11.14 12.8 13.4

Conclusion

Announcement blog posts tend to provide just high level detail and in order to understand gotcha's and workarounds its essential to read the documentation. In this case the table of source, target could be clearer to say something like "Versions from 9.7 and to 10.17 allow to 11.x". Using the awscli provides a good way to clarify the exact upgrades allowed.

Free AWS Certification Official Practice Question Sets

Ganesh Swaminathan — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 11:08:08 +0000

tl;dr

AWS has released their Practice Questions for AWS Certifications for free (was $20 before)
There are 20 sample questions available per AWS Certification Exam
Questions look to be available in 11 different languages
Rather than just a static pdf of 20 questions & answers, AWS seem to have created a separate site with an interactive Quiz UI
You have to jump through a couple of hoops to get to these (detailed instructions below)
Personally - I think all this for a static list of 20 questions is a bit too much. My recommendation is to find a larger question bank on Udemy or use sites like TutorialsDojo. They do cost approx USD 15 per exam prep which may be out of bounds for people, but they have hundreds of sample questions, detailed answers and links back to documentation and are really worth those aiming to take AWS Certifications.

PLEASE AVOID "DUMPS"!

Dumps really devalue the certification and ultimately you are cheating on your own learning.

Accessing these free Practice Questions

Access the courses via AWS SkillsBuilder. The search did not work well for me - so I chose to use the filters to select the Language (I chose English) and then "Training Category" as "Exam Preparation". You should then see the Official Practice Questions Set

You have to sign up to AWS Skills Builder and access the course which gives you a Access Code and redirects you to a different site called AWS BenchPrep.
You then have to create a login and redeem the code at AWS BenchPrep site to access these questions

You can then choose which exam you want to practice questions for..

I would be interested in your feedback on using these practice exams.

10 Benefits to joining AWS Community Builders

Ganesh Swaminathan — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 18:23:33 +0000

Have you heard about the AWS Community Builders program?

Don't worry if you haven't. I would like to share what being part of this lovely community gets you and also to provide you some information how you can become one!

🔥 The 2022 AWS Community Builder application window is now OPEN!

You can apply using the form here to become an AWS Community Builder. The application window stays open January 10th through January 24th end of day Pacific Time.

I joined the AWS Community Builder program back in September 2020 and my membership has just been renewed for another year. So it's time to reflect back on the benefits of joining. In no particular order here are 10 benefits to joining the AWS Community Builders program.

1. You could get invited to present at re:Invent Developer Lounge!

Starting with something very recent and top of mind for me.

I got invited to present at AWS re:Invent 2021. Cue goofy picture of me mid-sentence!

As you may know, re:Invent is AWS's premier annual conference and is attended by tens of thousands (usually in person but also part hosted virtually in these trying times).

I have been fortunate enough to attend re:Invent since 2018 and last year I got to present on areas of my interest. I was so enthusiastic about this invitation that I signed up for not one but three sessions and worked alongside with some amazing builders and our Community Manager Jason Dunn. The groups I joined presented on Databases, Containers and Serverless technologies. There were plenty of other groups presenting through the week.

We had been allocated a dedicated area within the Expo to present from. It was an awesome experience for me being in front of a large public audience at this premier event and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of prep and presentation and learnt a ton.

Feedback from those who attended was fantastic and really encouraging. I hope this becomes an yearly event at re:Invent.

2. You could get discounted entry to AWS Events (like re:Invent)

As above, had I not gone in person, I would not be able to say "I presented at AWS re:Invent!" but these events can be expensive.

There were a limited number of exclusive discounted tickets to re:Invent made available to Community Builders. This was a SIGNIFICANT discount on the conference price and really prompted me to justify going (I had not yet convinced myself due to other pandemic related reasons).

3. Network, Network, Network

You get to meet and be part of an online community of over 1,500 people from over 90 countries! Our slack channel is buzzing with people asking, sharing & generally helping. There group has significant diverse backgrounds, interest areas, experience levels (junior to senior) and from very different industries and even includes students, researchers etc.

Ignore all the swag, discounts, opportunities - the primary thing you get from this community is the awesome participants.

Need a question answered? Post on slack and someone is usually there to answer (even if just to give pointers).
Need to show off something you have built? Post on slack and you get plenty of feedback, folks boost it via their social channels and some even become users / contributors to your project!
Have an idea or area of interest and want to get started with presenting these at events? Community Builders are constantly hosting events and are always looking for new presenters. There have been many virtual guest presentations from builders and a few in person talks too.
Need to reach out to someone in AWS to talk about something? well you got the idea - just use the community!

Even this post is the result of having put an outline of benefits on slack and having affirmation / feedback!

In a nutshell - this exclusive access to a community is just AMAZING.

4. Certification / Other Benefits

Swag!

Who doesn't love some carefully thought through swag, welcoming us into the community.

AWS Promotional Credits

Included in that swag bag are AWS Promotional Credits to do hands on work with AWS Technologies and to try out or show case new features. Comes in handy when preparing for Certifications too!
Credits are offered every year you recertify to be in the program and we have a way to request for more credits to cover specific projects that may benefit the community.

Online training provider

AWS partnered with an online training provider to provide all Community Builders access to their entire online training platform. (The cohort I am part of got access to CloudAcademy for free).

Certification Exam Vouchers

AWS provide every Community Builder a voucher to take a certification exam of their choice (Foundational, Associate, Professional or Specialty).

I used my voucher to pass the AWS Certified Data Analytics Specialty exam (Such specialty Exams normally cost $300).

I don't have an official count of the number of people who have got their first (or twelfth!) using this voucher but the first two groups got a LOT of certs!

Study Groups / Community help

Informal study groups have started forming with those interested in Certification and those who have taken and passed exams sharing their study guides, tips & tricks to help. We also have a number of trainers, Exam experts and boot camp providers within the community who provide guidance and assistance.

5. Mentoring / Coaching / Career Opportunities

Another benefit of a large enough community! A few people have reached out, found mentors and then used the guidance to achieve their Cloud Goals.

One Community Builder just posted today that they pivoted to a full time Cloud Engineer role! They started this cloud journey last year alongside joining the Community Builder program. They studied for Certs (Passing the tough AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional exam) and show-cased a lot of their learning in public. All of these plus hard work had helped them reach their target of working fulltime in Cloud based Tech.

Some of the community members went on to become AWS Heroes.

Other builders joined AWS! (Yay - though that meant they drop off the community or switched to stay on as AWS employees now).

The opportunities are endless.

6. Event Exclusives

Community Builders get access to exclusive virtual events and webinars. We have had exclusive sessions with AWS Open Source leads, AWS Chief Evangelist (the one and only Jeff Barr), Developer Advocates and many many others. Topics range from deep dives into new features to presentation techniques and how to ace working in today's virtual world. There are approximately 5 such events every single month and across a few different time zones.

7. AWS Service Previews

Community Builders sign a personal NDA with AWS when they join the program. This allows AWS to share early previews and any private roadmaps with us. Our feedback can help shape some of these services.

Did you know AWS is planning this cool new feature to ~~REDACTED~~!

8. Community Builder Dev.to Organization

Community builders are sharing content across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Blog Post and we also now have a dedicated area as part of the Dev Organization dedicated to AWS Community Builders.

9. 3rd Party Benefits

A number of community builders work for organizations that build and/or sell platforms. Access to such third party tools, engineers and experts comes with being part of this community.

10. You learn and make friends along the way.

I want to go back to the name "Community Builders". There is a real sense of helping each other out and a feeling of safe space where constructive feedback is heard. That for me is a great community. And we are all learning to build up on our skills in the AWS space. I have made some good friends and learnt a lot (about myself and AWS) through this community process.

If all of that peaked your interest in being part of this community, you will want to read this post below by a fellow Community Builder on how to become one of us.

How to become an AWS Community Builder

Stephen Sennett for AWS Community Builders ・ Aug 17 '21

#aws #career #cloud

I hope to see you soon on our AWS Community Builders Slack introducing yourself!

AWS Certification Exam Guides have been updated...

Ganesh Swaminathan — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 15:59:00 +0000

Before you panic - the exams have not been changed - just the guides!

As of early September 2021, all the AWS Certification Exam Guides (pdf) seem to have been updated to a new template and include a lot more useful information. Scroll below for high level changes and links to these guides.

Key changes

Lets review the very popular AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
(SAA-C02) to pickup on two new sections of importance.

"Out of scope" section

Yay - this sets the tone for where you draw the line on studying and is useful to avoid "over studying" or panicking that you need to know coding when the course does not test you on that.

In-scope Services listed

There is also a comprehensive list of what is considered within scope - previously these were just fairly high level domains but this is a lot more comprehensive list of services you are required to know! (Its not exhaustive but is more than enough to ensure sufficient coverage when studying).

Links to the Exam Guides!

Here is a handy list of all the 11 Certification Exam Guides.
Saves you (and me!) searching through the AWS Certification Website for them.

Practitioner Level

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C01) Exam Guide

Associate level AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) Exam Guide

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) Exam Guide - This exam is being retired as of 30-Aug-2022

AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate (SOA-C02) Exam Guide

AWS Certified Developer – Associate (DVA-C01) Exam Guide

Professional Level

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C02) Exam Guide - New Exam from 15-Nov-2022

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C01) Exam Guide - This exam is being retired 14-Nov-2022

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional (DOP-C01) Exam Guide

Specialty Exams

AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty (ANS-C01) Exam Guide

AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty (DAS-C01) Exam Guide

AWS Certified Database – Specialty (DBS-C01) Exam Guide

AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty (MLS-C01) Exam Guide

AWS Certified Security – Specialty (SCS-C01) Exam Guide

Good Luck with your studies!

AWS App Runner - initial thoughts

Ganesh Swaminathan — Wed, 19 May 2021 11:02:54 +0000

AWS just introduced a new service called AWS App Runner.

There is a simple "Whats New" service announcement here.
Ignore that as there is a lot more details here in the AWS Containers blog from Martin Beeby here.

These are my first few thoughts after reading the announcement (and not yet having tried the service) - some of these may need refining over time as I could be wrong!

The Good

This looks very close to Google's Cloud Run - Something I personally have commented at several forums as something AWS needed to replicate
This service abstracts away creating an ECS Cluster, Fargate Services, ELB's, TLS Certificates and setting some basic monitoring and auto scaling rules - so really trying it to make it as simple as a docker run (but with added advantage that it runs directly on AWS and provides a nice endpoint)
Unlike Lambda, a container / service handles services (upto 80 concurrent connections) and THEN it scales into multiple services - it looks to be purely connection rather than vCPU or Memory driven . Developers may need to make sure their containers can handle 80 connections within the base vCPU /Memory allocated or else higher load may crash the container before autoscaling kicks in? (something to test out)
Re-using the same running container reduces cold starts for new connections coming in
No Cold Starts on scale out! Wow - this is a huge advantage over Fargate in my opinion. I am going to wait for one of the AWS heroes to scale test this and report the latency seen etc (they always beat me to these things!)
Being able to set a ceiling for the maximum limit of connections can avoid runaway load and keep a check on the costs
Support for Customer Managed CMK (not sure this extends to the instance running the actual container or the ephemeral storage used)

The bad

Private container registries are not yet supported (may have to raise a request on the container roadmap) - this has been a challenge with Lambda support for containers as well. There are some reasons to not using ECR for some teams.
Pricing looks about 50% higher than Fargate on its own. It is definitely not a fair comparison as this includes a few other services but an ELB is like $0.0225 per hour on its own. I will try to add up the services it abstracts to see if the pricing is justified on its own OR if there is a small premium for such a fully managed service / ease of use
Actually scratch that above statement! Pricing is convoluted / misleading. I was mistaken when reading the post that there is a $0.064 per hour compute charge (Fargate pricing is about $0.04048 per hour in comparison and that was behind my 50% more expensive comment).

There is a "provisioned" capacity fee (just memory at $0.007 per hour/GB which in Fargate is $0.004445 per hour/GB - approx 60% cheaper in Fargate ) and then a higher active utilization fee!

You need to really dig into the pricing examples for details. A test instance will cost $5 a month but that is if you PAUSE the service for 22 hours a day!!. The $25 a month example is for a single 1 vcpu / 2GB container busy for upto 8 hours a day.

Combined with the fact you can set a ceiling of tasks, I would think most developers can be managed around $10/month which is a bit more expensive than say running a Lightsail instance but the added ease of use could be worth it.

The (not so) Ugly?

This looks to be for services that are open on the public internet only? A "private" service for those who can run within VPC / restrict the endpoint to use (say within your organization / Enterprise) would be awesome. I wonder if you can customize the endpoint with some kind of an IP / ACL / WAF rule...
The BIGGEST issue I see of concern is there was no call out / mention of Scale to Zero. After reading through the pricing example and realizing there is just a small memory charge for idle instances, its not that "Ugly" but Google's Cloud Run billing is "Only pay when your code is running, billed to the nearest 100 milliseconds.".

A true zero cost when idle can be really advantageous. I guess that's the premium you pay for having zero latency for the very first request (There are cold starts for Google Cloud Run when the service has scaled to zero).

Looking forward

🆕 Just noticed that there is a App Runner workshop available!

This could be an awesome new service and a great starting point for all new AWS developers wanting to deploy containers and even some smaller projects in Enterprises. I am hoping to learn more and experiment with this (and will update this post if any of my initial learnings are incorrect).

Stealing a comment from a colleague - this could become the "App Ruiner" for every other complex service in AWS!

Preparing for AWS Certification Exams - some tips and tricks

Ganesh Swaminathan — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 18:42:58 +0000

During the first lockdown in 2020, I managed to pass 3 AWS Certification Exams (AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate and Professional).

The main idea for me wasn't the actual paper certificate at the end, but the journey of learning as I went through services I don't normally use day to day. I learnt a TON and it also prepared me to coach others through their own AWS journey.

There are literally thousands of articles online on how to prepare for these exams and even more on "how do I get started" or "which resources you would use". So I am going to start a small series covering my own experience and linking to some of the best articles I have bookmarked on these topics.

I plan to cover tips on selecting the right exam (based on your personal profile and goals), coming up with a training plan, getting exam ready and then actually passing the exam.

The first post in this series is live!

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - Resources / Guide

Ganesh Swaminathan for AWS Community Builders ・ Jan 18 '21

#aws #certification #cloudpractitioner

I would appreciate any constructive feedback or retweets!

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AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner - Resources / Guide

Ganesh Swaminathan — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 18:32:04 +0000

AWS Cloud Practitioner is the entry level certification covering foundations of "Cloud" and introducing some of the major benefits of running in AWS and some key services like EC2, S3...

There are a number of resources online for studying for this exam and below is an aggregated list of some of the resources I have either personally used or have found highly recommended from trusted sources.

List of Learning Resources

AWS Certification Site
AWS Exam Guide
AWS Sample Questions
AWS Online Free Training
AWS "Power Hour" Resources
AWS Exam Readiness Webinars
AWS Whitepapers
AWS Practice Exams
Other Free / Online Resources
Paid-for Resources
Book
Got Feedback?

AWS provided resources

Resources provided by AWS themselves for this certification exams are given below (there are similar resources for almost ALL certification exams).

AWS Certification Site

You will find all the details related to the course here.

Exam Guide For the Certification (PDF)

Must read document covering all the details about the exam.
The content outline in the above Exam Guide is extremely useful as it outlines the scope of what you really expected to know

Sample Questions

I recommend you keep this for later for when you have finished one or two of the courses listed below. There are 20 sample questions with answers to serve as a taster for the actual exam.

AWS Online Free Training - Cloud Practitioner Essentials course

AWS have a free training course covering the "essentials" you need to know to pass this exam.

The exact same course is available on multiple platforms - you can choose one based on your preference if you already use any of them

Cloud Practitioner "Power Hour"

AWS ran a series on Twitch called "AWS Power Hour : Cloud Practitioner" covering a lot of the Cloud Practitioner material over 6 weeks. This was run in combination with a "challenge" to get certified by their "re:Invent" conference that ran through December 2020.
While this actual series is finished - most of the content (except some labs) are still available online via this Resources page

Sample contents from just one episode is below :

Exam Readiness Live / Webinar sessions

AWS host many "live" events and these include "Cloud Practitioner Essentials Day" and "Exam Readiness - Live - Cloud Practitioner".
These are usually free / live events spread across different time zones and sometimes in languages other than English.

Whitepapers

There are 3 whitepapers recommended for Cloud Practitioner Exam

Overview of Amazon Web Services - PDF
How AWS Pricing Works - PDF
Technically not a "whitepaper" but listed in the whitepapers list and a very important resource - Compare AWS Support Plans

Practice Exams

There is an AWS practice exam you can purchase for USD 20 but I recommend you skip this one. I have not used this myself or know of anyone who used this for this exam. This maybe due to the fact that for USD 20 you do not get a full length exam set of questions and there is very limited feedback on the usefulness of these. There are many online providers offering a lot more practice exams for under USD 20 that are recommended instead of this one.

You can also find 30 practice questions from the AWS "Power Hour" Resources covered above available at this link for free. I don't know how long this will stay hosted but it worked when tested in July 2021.

Please do NOT seek out free or paid for "exam dumps" as they are not worth it at all.

Other Free / Online Resources

The best free resource (i.e., not from AWS) is the course by Andrew Brown of ExamPro hosted by FreeCodeCamp.org on their YouTube channel. The 4 hour course is fairly comprehensive and I have recommended this before to anyone new to AWS and some have gone on to take the exam and pass it.

Paid-for Resources

I have personally used Stephane Maarek's courses and Jon Bonso's (Tutorial Dojo) practice exams for my Associate / Professional Exams. These courses cost me about £12 each from Udemy.
I did not use these resources for Cloud Practitioner but they both provide such high quality AWS exam preparation resources - so there is no reason why these would be lacking in any way...

Stephane Maarek's Course

Note for anyone buying from Udemy is that there are always voucher codes and/or SALE every few weeks - so never pay more than say USD 15 or equivalent for these courses. Stephane also makes some offers regularly and you could get back the cost of your exam or get the course for next to nothing. Subscribe to newsletters or follow them on social media to get these offers.

Tutorials Dojo Practice Exams

I used to buy these courses from Udemy but there are some added benefits from buying these direct (listed in the linked page).
With these practice exams, you get a very good flavour of the actual exam questions and the platform also allow you to find out what areas you are weak on and focus on them. Tutorialsdojo also have some free practice exams and other Tutorials they are starting to host - checkout their main site for all details as this changes rapidly.

A Cloud Guru

A Cloud Guru is a very well known training service with lots of Cloud related courses and they acquired another famous training service, Linux Academy, in 2019. The combined platform is really powerful but a bit expensive for those who just want to take the cloud practitioner exam.
If you are planning to get a few certificates in the Cloud domain - then these are working investing in. Many employers often offer these to their staff for training or reimburse training costs.
Their new Cloud Practitioner course is also free through July 2021 (limited time offer and may have expired when you read this but do checkout the link above).

Book

If you are the type who learns from electronic / paper books - then there is just one main recommendation

AWS Cloud Practitioner Study Guide

The only concern I have with recommending this book is that it was published in June 2019 and since then there have been a lot of changes to AWS services. This is not a huge worry for the Cloud Practitioner exam but something to keep in mind (typically any changes older than 6 months are included in the exam).
Registering the book also provides a couple of practice exams and some flash cards (I have not used these features to comment further)

I had access to this book via O'Reilly online learning platform and found the exam questions in each chapter useful.

Hot Tip! If you are planning to get online O'Reilly access - do note that ACM membership costs about $99/year (or cheaper if you are in a country where they offer discounted membership) and that gets you full access to all books and learning material on O'Reilly. This is compared to the typically $499/year access to O'Reilly directly. There are some features that you don't get access to via this method (Live training, Katacoda, Sandboxes etc) but you get pretty much ALL books, recorded videos and all learning paths.

Got any Feedback

This post is part of an ongoing series I started and more certifications resource guides will be available shortly! Follow this main post for updates.

Preparing for AWS Certification Exams - some tips and tricks

Ganesh Swaminathan for AWS Community Builders ・ Jan 18 '21

#aws #certification

I would appreciate any constructive feedback or retweets!

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Forem: Ganesh Swaminathan

Architecture on a Post-it note: Optimizing AWS Aurora Databases

Aurora MySQL Clusters

Use cases for replicas

Horizontal read scaling

Improving Availability

Avoiding replicas - compromises

Analysing the DB Cluster

Cpu / RAM usage Analysis.

Replica CPU / RAM usage

Primary instance RAM usage

Opportunity to adopt Graviton 2 based instances.

Engine Versions

Performance Insights - Optimizing for Observability.

Suggestions for Optimizations

Applying Well Architected Principles

Conclusion

New Free AWS "Exam Prep" assessment resource

Did you know AWS have hundreds of free learning videos / courses that you can use to learn about AWS and also prepare for their Certification Exams?

"Exam Prep" courses

AWS Certification Exams covered

Paid vs Free Exam Prep Course difference

Credits

Use this Free Exam Prep resource to boost your chance of passing the AWS Certification Exams!

Earn (AWS Credits) while you Learn! (Bonus: 75% off AWS exams!)

Did you know that you can earn upto $80 AWS Credits while learning all about AWS Services? AND possibly get some discounts on AWS Certification Exams?

🆕 Bonus Opportunity!

Past events : AWS Innovate - Data & AI/ML Edition

EMEA offers

FAQ

So - what are you waiting for? Go register!

Holiday Wishes to our Community (Managers)!

What surprises you most about the community builders program?

What’s your background and your experience with AWS?

What’s the biggest benefit you see from the program?

What’s the next swag item that you would like to get?

What are you eating for dinner today? Share the recipe!

Is there anything else you would like to share about the community builders program in 2022?

Neptune Serverless - "is it really Serverless?"

Table of Contents

Neptune Serverless

Serverless means "Scale to Zero"

Neptune Serverless does not Scale to Zero.

Comparison to other AWS Serverless Databases

DynamoDB

Aurora Serverless

Operational Concerns for a Serverless database?

Working around the (lack of) Scale to Zero

Serverless or "Auto Scaling"?

Neptune Serverless Use-cases

Major version upgrades to Aurora PostgreSQL - some gotcha's

Background

Recent Change

Gotcha!

Recommendations / Workaround

Conclusion

Free AWS Certification Official Practice Question Sets

tl;dr

PLEASE AVOID "DUMPS"!

Accessing these free Practice Questions

10 Benefits to joining AWS Community Builders

🔥 The 2022 AWS Community Builder application window is now OPEN!

1. You could get invited to present at re:Invent Developer Lounge!

2. You could get discounted entry to AWS Events (like re:Invent)

3. Network, Network, Network

4. Certification / Other Benefits

Swag!

AWS Promotional Credits

Online training provider

Certification Exam Vouchers

Study Groups / Community help

5. Mentoring / Coaching / Career Opportunities

6. Event Exclusives

7. AWS Service Previews

8. Community Builder Dev.to Organization

9. 3rd Party Benefits

10. You learn and make friends along the way.

How to become an AWS Community Builder

Stephen Sennett for AWS Community Builders ・ Aug 17 '21

AWS Certification Exam Guides have been updated...