AWS Cloud Practitioner Guide: Domain 1 - Cloud Concepts (Part 1)

Introduction

Let’s begin with Domain 1: Cloud Concepts. If you haven’t checked the AWS CP exam guide yet, you can find it here.

According to the exam guide, Domain 1 accounts for approximately 24% of the exam content. This domain focuses on:

• The benefits of the AWS Cloud

• Design principles of the AWS Cloud

• Benefits and strategies for migrating to AWS

• Cloud economics and cost considerations

There won’t be much hands-on work in this section, but I’ll still explore relevant AWS services and upload guides on how to navigate them.

Topics Covered Today

• Understanding the benefits of AWS Cloud

• AWS Cloud design principles

The benefits of the AWS Cloud

Before jumping into the benefits, I want to understand what AWS actually is.

What is AWS?

In 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) started offering IT infrastructure services to businesses as web services—now commonly known as cloud computing.

To keep it simple, AWS provides IT infrastructure services over the internet, making it easier for businesses to scale and manage resources without maintaining physical hardware.

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources such as compute power (CPUs), databases, storage, applications, and more over the internet, with a pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Let’s break it down:

• IT resources – Compute power (CPUs), databases, storage, applications, and networking.

• Cloud service platforms – Providers like AWS, Google Cloud (GCP), and Microsoft Azure that offer these resources.

• Pay-as-you-go – You only pay for what you use, eliminating the need for upfront hardware investments.

Benefits

I’d rather not change this since it's very simple to understand, and I’ve also come across questions that use this exact content.

Six advantages of cloud computing

1. Trade fixed expense for variable expense – pay only when consume computing resources, and pay only for how much you consume.

2. Benefit from massive economies of scale – By using cloud computing, you can achieve a lower variable cost than you can get on your own. Because usage from hundreds of thousands of customers is aggregated in the cloud, providers such as AWS can achieve higher economies of scale, which translates into lower pay as-you-go prices.

3. Stop guessing capacity – Eliminate guessing on your infrastructure capacity needs. When you make a capacity decision prior to deploying an application, you often end up either sitting on expensive idle resources or dealing with limited capacity. With cloud computing, these problems go away. You can access as much or as little capacity as you need, and scale up and down as required with only a few minutes’ notice.

4. Increase speed and agility – In a cloud computing environment, new IT resources are only a click away, which means that you reduce the time to make those resources available to your developers from weeks to just minutes. This results in a dramatic increase in agility for the organization, since the cost and time it takes to experiment and develop is significantly lower.

5. Stop spending money running and maintaining data centers – Focus on projects that differentiate your business, not the infrastructure. Cloud computing lets you focus on your own customers, rather than on the heavy lifting of racking, stacking, and powering servers.

6. Go global in minutes – Easily deploy your application in multiple regions around the world with just a few clicks. This means you can provide lower latency and a better experience for your customers at minimal cost.

Global infrastructure of AWS cloud

The AWS Cloud infrastructure is built around AWS Regions and Availability Zones.

An AWS Region is a physical location in the world where we have multiple Availability Zones.

Availability Zones consist of one or more discrete data centers, each with redundant power, networking, and connectivity, housed in separate facilities.

Currently, AWS spans 114 Availability Zones across 36 Regions, with plans to expand in New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

Click here to learn more about AWS Global Infrastructure.

Design principles of the AWS Cloud

Here, we’ll explore how the AWS Cloud is designed based on the AWS Well-Architected Framework principles.

What is the AWS Well-Architected Framework?

The AWS Well-Architected Framework provides best practices and guidelines to help build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient cloud architectures. It is based on six key principles that ensure a strong cloud foundation.

1. The Operational excellence pillar - Focuses on building and running applications efficiently while improving user experience.

2. The Security pillar - encompasses the ability to protect data, systems, and assets to take advantage of cloud technologies to improve your security.

3. The Reliability pillar - encompasses the ability of a workload to perform its intended function correctly and consistently when it’s expected to. This includes the ability to operate and test the workload through its total lifecycle.

4. The performance efficiency pillar - includes the ability to use cloud resources efficiently to meet performance requirements, and to maintain that efficiency as demand changes and technologies evolve.

5. The Cost Optimization pillar - includes the ability to run systems to deliver business value at the lowest price point.

6. The Sustainability pillar - focuses on environmental impacts, especially energy consumption and efficiency, since they are important levers for architects to inform direct action to reduce resource usage.

Resources:

• YouTube playlist - key principles breakdown ( Sustainability pillar not in playlist ).

• AWS Whitepaper - Read in-depth explanations of key principles.

• AWS Educate: Getting Started with Cloud Operations, A beginner-friendly resource that also offers a certification badge.

Key Takeaways

AWS Overview – AWS provides IT infrastructure services over the internet, allowing businesses to scale without physical hardware.

Cloud Computing Basics – Delivers computing resources (CPU, storage, databases, etc.) via cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure) with a pay-as-you-go model.

Six Advantages of Cloud Computing:

• Cost Efficiency – Pay only for what you use.

• Economies of Scale – Lower costs due to shared resources.

• Scalability – Adjust resources as needed.

• Speed & Agility – Faster resource deployment.

• Reduced Maintenance – No need to manage data centers.

• Global Reach – Deploy worldwide with minimal effort.

AWS Global Infrastructure – AWS operates in Regions and Availability Zones (AZs) to ensure high availability and reliability.

AWS Well-Architected Framework Principles:

• Operational Excellence – Deliver high-quality software efficiently.

• Security – Protect data and systems.

• Reliability – Ensure workloads function as expected.

• Performance Efficiency – Use resources optimally.

• Cost Optimization – Reduce unnecessary spending.

• Sustainability – Minimize environmental impact.

Challenges:

AWS Global Infrastructure includes much more than just Regions and Availability Zones. Instead of covering everything now, I’ve decided to learn about additional components as they come up in different services. Later, I’ll dedicate a separate blog post to dive deeper into this topic.

The same approach applies to the AWS Well-Architected Framework—I’ll leave it for when I prepare for an AWS Associate-level certification.

What’s Next?

I initially thought I might post both Part 1 and Part 2 today, but I’ll keep it spaced out. See you in the next blog: AWS Cloud Practitioner Guide: Domain 1 - Cloud Concepts (Part 2).

In the meantime, have you started learning AWS Cloud Concepts? Feel free to share your thoughts or questions in the comments! Also, follow my journey on Twitter/X or Linkedin for updates. Excited to keep going—stay tuned!