**New Course Release** AWS Certified Developer Associate Level

We have just released our latest course AWS Certified Developer Associate Level!

With a focus on not only answering questions correctly, but on learning how to build the next generation of Cloud connected apps using the JavaScript SDK in the browser and NodeJS SDK on the server.

Advanced hands-on video labs include:

• Setting up a NodeJS Development Environment on AWS EC2
• Creating a Low Cost Sync Database for JavaScript Applications with AWS
• Programming and Deployment using AWS CloudFormation
• Programming Amazon SQS and SNS using the AWS NodeJS SDK
• Programming AWS DynamoDB using the AWS NodeJS SDK
• Programming AWS ElastiCache Redis using the AWS NodeJS SDK
• Programming AWS Lambda

Professionally created lab notes for all labs.

Expert system based exam engine with a question pool of over 800 questions!

Full coverage and testing of all knowledge required for certification.

Check it out now at backspace.academy !

New S3 Storage Class

AWS has just announced another storage class type for S3.

Amazon S3 Standard - Infrequent Access (Standard - IA) is an Amazon S3 storage class for data that is accessed less frequently, but requires rapid access when needed. Standard - IA offers the high durability, throughput, and low latency of Amazon S3 Standard, with a low per GB storage price and per GB retrieval fee. This combination of low cost and high performance make Standard - IA ideal for long-term storage, backups, and as a data store for disaster recovery. The Standard - IA storage class is set at the object level and can exist in the same bucket as Standard, allowing you to use lifecycle policies to automatically transition objects between storage classes without any application changes.

The following table summarizes the durability and availability offered by each of the storage classes.

Storage Class	Durability (designed for)	Availability (designed for)	Other Considerations
STANDARD	99.999999999%	99.99%	None
STANDARD_IA	99.999999999%	99.9%	There is a retrieval fee associated with STANDARD_IA objects which makes it most suitable for infrequently accessed data. For pricing information, see Amazon S3 Pricing.
GLACIER	99.999999999%	99.99% (after you restore objects)	GLACIER objects are not available for real-time access. You must first restore archived objects before you can access them and restoring objects can take 3-4 hours. For more information, see Restoring Archived Objects.
RRS	99.99%	99.99%	None

Our certification courses will be updated this week with the changes.

Important changes by AWS to Auto Scaling Policies

Today AWS announced the introduction of new auto scaling policies with steps. This is a significant change as no longer does auto scaling need to be a single step response to a CloudWatch alarm. You can now have many steps enabling small changes in capacity to be made in response to small changes in demand and likewise for large changes. The result is highly reactive and smooth response to demand.
We have updated our documentation "Lab Notes - Highly Available and Fault Tolerant Architecture for Web Applications inside a VPC" to v1.02 to reflect this change. Please make sure you understand this before sitting the AWS certification exam.

New Video lab - Using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

We have added a new lab video to the Amazon IAM subject of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate course.

Using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

• Creating users and groups 
• Creating IAM roles.
• Creating an account password policy.
• Downloading a credentials report.

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New Video lab - Using DynamoDB

We have added a new lab video to the Amazon DynamoDB subject of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate course.

Using DynamoDB

• Using the console to create a table with a secondary index
• Adding items and attributes to a table using the console.
• Creating a JSON file containing items.
• Importing data  into a table using a JSON file and the Command Lines Interface command batch-write.
• Creating a JSON file containing query.
• Querying data using a JSON file and the Command Lines Interface query command.

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Trusted Adviser lesson added to AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate course

Trusted Adviser lesson has been added to the Security subject of the BackSpace AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate course to reflect changes in the AWS certification exam.

Check it out at backspace.academy.

New Video lab Low Latency HTML 5 Websites using S3, CloudFront and Route 53 - Part 3

We have added a new lab video to the Amazon Route 53 subject of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate course.

Low Latency HTML 5 Websites using S3, CloudFront and Route 53 - Part 3

• Using Route 53 to serve domain traffic to a CloudFront distribution.
• Using Route 53 to serve domain traffic to a Web Server.
• Using a Route 53 weighted routing policy to temporarily direct traffic to another endpoint.
• Creating a Route 53 health check.
• Using a Route 53 failover policy to direct traffic to another endpoint when a health check is failed.

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New Video lab Low Latency HTML 5 Websites using S3, CloudFront and Route 53 - Part 2

We have added a new lab video to the Amazon CloudFront subject of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate course.

Low Latency HTML 5 Websites using S3, CloudFront and Route 53 - Part 2

• Types of origin servers
• Types of CloudFront Distribution strategy
• Creating a CloudFront distribution
• Invalidating a CloudFront distribution

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New Video lab Low Latency HTML 5 Websites using S3, CloudFront and Route 53 - Part 1

We have added a new lab video to the Amazon S3 subject of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate course.

Low Latency HTML 5 Websites using S3, CloudFront and Route 53 - Part 1

• How to create a bucket 
• Upload a HTML5 website to S3
• Enable versioning and recovering deleted files.
• Configure life cycle rules to automate archiving of past versions to Glacier.
• Hosting a website on S3.

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New Highly Available and Fault Tolerant VPC Architecture Tutorial

New Highly Available and Fault Tolerant VPC Architecture Tutorial Utilising ELB, ENI, Auto Scaling and the new S3 Endpoints and Multi-AZ Aurora Clusters We have just added a new tutorial to the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Course that applies what you have learned in the lessons and quizzes.
These videos cover the essential hands knowledge in AWS architecture required for certification. Look for them in the AWS Architecture Design Patterns subject.

Multiple Subnets per Availability Zone with Auto Scaling groups

You can now select more than one subnet per availability zone in an Autoscaling group.
You no longer need to remove an existing subnet from an Autoscaling group in order to reconfigure the subnets. You can simply add more subnets without affecting your applications availability.

More details in the docs at:
AutoScaling Developer Guide

New 16 TB and 20,000 IOPS EBS Volumes

AWS have now made available Provisioned IOPS (SSD) volumes with up to 16 TB and 20,000 IOPS and a maximum throughput of 320 MBps.

Before you would need to attach 16 x 1 TB 1250 IOPS volumes to achieve the same performance.

General Purpose (SSD) volumes are also now available with up to 16 TB and 10,000 IOPS and a maximum throughput of 160 MBps.

General Purpose (SSD) volumes are also now designed to deliver a consistent baseline performance of 3 IOPS/GB to a maximum of 10,000 IOPS, and provide up to 160 MBps of throughput per volume.

More information in the docs:
Amazon EBS Product Details
EC2 User Guide

Cross-Region Replication for Amazon S3

To  provide 99.999999999% durability, AWS S3 has always had a high degree of replication. In the past, the location of that replicated data has been a mystery to the account holder. This has made it difficult for those that, as part of their organization's compliance, require that data be in totally different geographical locations.
With the release today of Cross-Region Replication for AWS S3, you can now specify the region and bucket location in that region to replicate data to. The process is extremely easy and straightforward.

There are requirements though:

• The source and destination buckets must be versioning-enabled.
• You can replicate from a source bucket to only one destination bucket.
• An IAM role must be created to grant permissions for S3 actions on the buckets.
• If the source bucket owner is not the owner of the destination bucket then you must have permissions for the S3 actions.

More detailed information in the docs at:
Amazon Simple Storage Service - Developer Guide - Cross-Region Replication

Amazon CloudFront Signed HTTP Cookies

Previously restricting access to CloudFront involved using signed URLs. Now another option is available through the use of signed HTTP cookies.This has the advantage of allowing restricted access to multiple objects or to a whole site. An example process for transcoded media files in an S3 bucket is as follows:

If you are sitting an AWS make sure you remember that there are now two ways of securing access to CloudFront objects; signed URLs and signed HTTP cookies.
More information at: Serving Private Content through CloudFront