AWS Certified Advanced Networking Official Study Guide: Specialty Exam

Like the review title says: you should check out this book whether or not you'd ever go for the certs. Anyone that's done advanced networking scenarios mentioned in this book can and should admit to themselves that there is some complexity to AWS (no matter how "easy" it is), and this book helps address those focal areas in a concise manner (vs. AWS docs, FAQs, and random web searches). While AWS is changing every few months, this book should remain relevant for years, due to the value in the core principles it covers. Each chapter also has labs that you can do in AWS, as well as practice questions for the test. Let's see what that covers, by chapter: 1. Introduction to AWS Networking: 50k ft. view basics 2. Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) and Networking Fundamentals - everything regarding VPC configuration Anything associated with the VPC configuration panel goes here: subnets, route tables, IP addresses, security groups, network ACLs, gateways, NAT, and VPN. While this might seem like the part you'd "already know", it covers many critical aspects of core VPC fundamentals that should be present in your AWS architecture and design patterns. It also dips into VPC peering and endpoints, which are expanded upon later (when we get to the advanced portion) 3. Advanced Amazon VPC - VPC interconnectivity This is where your experience possibly starts deviating from the book material. This chapter covers VPC endpoints in detail, AWS PrivateLink vs. VPC peering, and VPC resizing. 4. Virtual Private Networks - VPNs into your VPC You will find Site-to-Site and Client VPNs in many scenarios in this chapter. These were helpful for me, because no end user or customer has every scenario, and this will undoubtedly give you some ideas, as well as provide some design patterns. 5. AWS Direct Connect - connecting your on-prem networks to AWS Direct Connect is something that's easy enough to setup, once you get it. There's more of a prevalence of 3rd-party providers like Megaport providing Direct Connect access to AWS in different regions, so the basic Direct Connect documentation resources might not apply to you, and this will give you a better picture of where it fits in either way. 6. Domain Name System and Load Balancing - DNS with Route 53, and load balancing with Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) This chapter starts off by covering DNS within a VPC, and moves to using AWS' Route 53 DNS services. These are included in the same chapter as load balancing, since both can used to dynamically direct traffic to AWS resources. If you've used traditional load balancing, this chapter on ELB is very similar, and if not, it's a good resource anyway. If Amazon was to test on these subjects, you can imagine that they'd have questions as to whether Route 53 or ELB would be a good scenario, and this chapter should help. 7. Amazon CloudFront - AWS' Content Delivery Network (CDN) This relatively short chapter covers the basics of working with CDNs, and the advanced features AWS has that tie into the value of having existing resources on the platform. If you need a primer on CDNs in general, this is not the place. 8. Network Security - securing your AWS resources While reading this chapter won't make you an AWS security expert, it does steer you into some basic principles and design patterns, as well as provides info on security-focused AWS services. It does provide a very comprehensive set of next steps via links to other info. While anyone building AWS environments should read this, the test takers want to focus on the shared responsibility model, which is prevalent in all AWS training I've seen. 9. Network Performance - a small collection of resources This short chapter is a useful hodgepodge of resources, containing everything from performance through a VGW, Direct Connect circuit, etc. to EC2 advanced networking (available from HVM instance of Amazon Linux), including SR-IOV and Intel DPDK. 10. Network Automation - AWS CloudFormation, Network monitoring tools, and logging If you're not experienced with infrastructure as code, this short chapter won't make you an expert. If you're studying, it will provide enough information you'd need for the test, and if you haven't used CloudFormation on Amazon yet, it's a good starting point. 11. Service Requirements - networking requirements for other AWS Services, like Workspaces or Lambda 12. Hybrid Architectures - advanced AWS networking design for on-prem and AWS resources This chapter returns to more advanced networking scenarios between your on-premise resources and AWS, e.g. Direct Connect, using Transitive Routing, and transit VPC scenarios. If you have a hybrid cloud, or even just AWS and on-prem, you'll benefit from this chapter. 13. Network Troubleshooting - summary of troubleshooting with traditional tools and AWS tools Covers AWS Direct Connect, Security Groups, Network ACLs, VPC peering, CloudFront, ELB, DNS, AWS service limits, and VPN / IKE with traditional and AWS-specific tools. 14. Biling - short chapter to help you understand how billing works for all of the AWS networking-centric services covered 15. Risk & Compliance - Risk Management for your AWS enivonment First and foremost, this covers the AWS Services in Scope (compliance for external standards like PCI DSS) for AWS components like VPC, DNS, etc. Other resources, such as audit reports and whitepapers are linked This also covers encryption, and monitoring network activity with CloudWatch et al. Finally, malicious activity detection with AWS Shield and Anti-DDOS measures, VPC flow logs, and CloudWatch alerting. 16. Scenarios and Reference Architectures - a short chapter covering how you'd apply the appropriate hybrid IT architecture connectivity solution based on what you've learned in the book

I am not much into technical books these days. Definitely not so in 2021 to learn cloud technologies and / or prepare for certifications by reading books since obsolescence is fast in this medium. After all this is the era of A Cloud Guru (merged already with PluralSight at the time of this writing) and other online training platforms. Having multiple AWS certifications including passing the AWS Advanced Networking Specialty exam recently, I should point out that this book alone will not give the assurance of passing the exam but it will take you 60 to 75% of the way towards the target. You do have to supplement with whitepapers, blogs, reinvent videos, free AWS digital training videos as well as aforementioned training platforms. Here is a comprehensive guide site on how to prepare for AWS certifications (github.com/jdluther2020/awscert/tree/main/advanced-networking-specialty). This book is a very high quality book however by any measure and it deserves all the five stars. Kudos to all the authors for doing such a thorough and caring job. Having read cover to cover, I can vouch for its superior quality of thinking of the overall subject matter, explanation of concepts and the manner of material presentation. It is well written, comprehensive and organized in terms of chapters, lab exercises, end of chapter questions and the entire online test banks and flash cards. All inclusive this is a very good deal. It teaches holistically, builds your networking foundation strongly and promotes you forward towards the expert level at which point you will be spending all your time on AWS official documentation site after all to stay abreast with the dynamic pace of change of all the cloud technologies and services.

This book is well organized and the scope matches to the Exam questions. Note: This book alone will not allow you to pass the exam, understanding the concept and 'applying' to various scenarios is what is being tested in the exam. This is a tough exam, I had 45 seconds left to complete my last question. My preparation included Linux Academy course and A Cloud Guru (I like Ryan Kroonenburg, he rocks, I owe all my 5 AWS certifications to him). Also checkout Michal Gasek's feedback in linked-in, I concur with him fully - Good Luck guys. Reason I gave 4 star is due to mistakes in the book, poor editing.

The book covers current (2018) exam topic according to AWS exam blueprint, provides a few inside information on how AWS works, although not needed for exam, tests you at the end of each chapter and presents exercises so you can practice around. Having hands on in AWS is the most effective way of learning and fixing concepts for the exam and when working with it. Book guides you in most network technologies for exam and use cases, points to references for more detailed documentation when needed. However it does not provide step by step instructions, it's up to reader to find out more about it as it happens in real life, which I find good, as it e stimulates investigation. One topic I missed is BGP entirely in details. Not that you need in all situations or even in the exam (as I haven't been tested yet) but I assumed some knowledge such as hierarchy of routing decision would be mentioned. This should be fine if it out of exam scope, and it does not harm going a step forward if you can reading more about it as well.

I usually don't write reviews but there is one review that is clearly misleading. I bought the kindle version last week and can't confirm any of the comments in the previous review. I read 2 chapters on both, macbook (macOS, kindle app) and on my iPad (iOS, kindle app) and also checked the Windows kindle version. The table of contents is available, there were no broken graphics and the quiz answers (of the 2 chapters I worked on so far) were complete. Also, the explanation about the voucher and how to get access to the online resources is described in the introduction chapter. ("Interactive Online Learning Environment and Test Bank") I nearly went for the paperback version based on the previous comment but now I'm glad that I didn't. The content itself is also clear, directly to the point and understandable. (Based on the 2 chapters I went through, Direct Connnect and VPN)

This is a great official resource that won't only help you prepare for the exam which is a hard one, but will also improve your Advanced AWS Networking concepts and will be valuable reference afterwards. But a problem though with printed books is that as AWS evolves so fast, things could change and won't be updated on the printed book as it is the AWS online documentation. For example, the reference in the book about Direct Connect only available directly from AWS at 1 gbps or 10 gbps, but is also now available on 100 gbps.

購入者の特典として本の内容をベースのしたAWSネットワーク試験のための無料のテストWEBサイトが利用できるため購入しました。Kindle版だと特典利用のために何ページの最後の単語を回答する問いがあり紙版とページがずれて焦りましたが何回か繰り返したらページ番号に依存しない問いがでてうまく特典を利用できるようになり満足しています。まだ試験には合格はしていませんが。

Ottimo libro. Il migliore tra le tre guide ufficiali disponibili al momento. Ottima referenza per quello che è possibile fare in aws lato networking. Ben spiegato.

The book is assuming you have a decent level of understanding of AWS, which is great because you don't need the painful re-read of the basics but instead you get straight into the gist. Well written and useful.