Systems / AWS Storybook

Learn AWS through the reason a service becomes necessary.

A narrative learning experience for engineers who want to understand AWS the way systems are actually built: a business needs something, the first reasonable approach reaches a limit, and an engineering decision becomes necessary.

Start with the Country of AWS Source repository ↗
Business goal→Reasonable first approach→Constraint or failure→AWS decision

Canonical edition

Choose a path through the Storybook.

Read in order or enter at the question your system is asking now.

01

Infrastructure foundations

Understand the cloud, managed responsibility, events, and architectural thinking before choosing a service.

  1. The Country of AWS
  2. AWS Services: Why Cook the Kitchen When You Just Want the Meal?
  3. Shared Responsibility: The Restaurant Agreement
  4. Event-Driven Thinking: Stop Hiring People to Wait
  5. How to Think Like an Architect
02

AWS services

Learn the contracts that make applications work in production—from identity and compute to deployment and recovery.

Identity and Security10 chapters
  1. AWS Identity and Security: The Protected Restaurant
  2. Amazon Cognito: The Tiny Company’s Guest List
  3. AWS Identity and Access Management: Which Cape Are You Wearing?
  4. AWS Security Token Service: Polyjuice Potion
  5. AWS Key Management Service: The Elder Wand Answers to Its True Owner
  6. AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store: The Filing Cabinet
  7. AWS Secrets Manager: The Private Security Guard
  8. AWS WAF: The Front-Door Screen
  9. AWS Certificate Manager and Amazon EC2: The Protected Staff Entrance
  10. AWS Identity and Security: Many Boundaries, One Restaurant
Compute18 chapters
  1. AWS Compute: The Wand Chooses the Wizard
  2. Amazon EC2: Bits Boba That Stays Open
  3. Amazon Machine Image (AMI): Bottle the Shop Setup, Not the Business
  4. Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling: The Fleet Manager Who Opens Bits Boba Locations Before the Line Gets Too Long
  5. Elastic Load Balancing: The Host Who Seats Every Customer
  6. Containers: The Food Truck That Carries the Kitchen
  7. Amazon ECS: The Operations Manager Behind Your Food Truck Festival
  8. Amazon ECS Task Definitions: The Operating Manual Every Food Truck Follows
  9. AWS Fargate: The RV Resort for Your Food Trucks
  10. Amazon ECR: The Warehouse of Approved Food Truck Blueprints
  11. Amazon EKS: The National Food Truck Association
  12. AWS Batch: The Catering Company
  13. AWS Lambda: The Errand Runner
  14. AWS Lambda: The Dispatch Board
  15. AWS Lambda: The Recovery Shelf
  16. AWS Lambda: The Runner's Kit and Clearance
  17. AWS Lambda: The Shift Change
  18. AWS Compute: The Work Chooses the Compute
Storage11 chapters
  1. AWS Storage: The Memory Chooses Its Home
  2. Instance Store and Amazon EBS: The Photographer’s Workbench
  3. Amazon EFS: The Shared Darkroom
  4. Amazon S3: The Gallery of Objects
  5. Amazon S3: The Gallery Doors
  6. Amazon S3: The Retouching Lab
  7. Amazon S3: The Negative Vault
  8. Amazon S3: The Archive Elevator
  9. Amazon EBS, Amazon EFS, and Amazon S3: Choose the Right Home
  10. AWS Storage: What Remains
  11. Amazon Athena: The Photo Archivist’s Reading Room
Databases12 chapters
  1. AWS Databases: The Truth Chooses Its Home
  2. Amazon DynamoDB: The Warehouse Built Around Retrieval Lanes
  3. Amazon DynamoDB: Keys, Access Patterns, and the Retrieval Map
  4. Amazon DynamoDB: The Second Door Into the Warehouse
  5. Amazon DynamoDB: The Warehouse Under Pressure
  6. Amazon DynamoDB: The Developer’s Workbench
  7. Amazon DynamoDB: After Closing Time
  8. Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora: The Accounting Office
  9. Amazon ElastiCache: The Memory Desk
  10. Amazon OpenSearch Service: The Search Catalog
  11. AWS Databases: The Right Room for the Question
  12. AWS Databases: Choose the Home for the Truth
APIs and SDKs11 chapters
  1. Amazon API Gateway and AWS SDK: Byte Burger's Three Zones
  2. Amazon API Gateway: The Customer Front
  3. Amazon API Gateway: The Order Contract
  4. Amazon API Gateway: The Membership Desk
  5. Amazon API Gateway: The Crowd-Control Rope
  6. Amazon API Gateway: The Street Address
  7. AWS SDK: The Operations Assistant
  8. AWS SDK: The Busy Supplier Line
  9. AWS SDK: The Long Inventory Receipt
  10. AWS SDK and Amazon S3: The Temporary Loading Dock Pass
  11. Amazon API Gateway and AWS SDK: The Byte Burger Contract
Application Integration12 chapters
  1. AWS Application Integration: The Lunch Rush
  2. Amazon SQS: The Kitchen Ticket Rail
  3. Amazon SQS: The Ticket That Came Back
  4. Amazon SNS: Order 42 Is Ready
  5. Amazon EventBridge: The Operations Switchboard
  6. AWS Step Functions: The Fulfillment Runbook
  7. AWS Step Functions: When the Fryer Fails
  8. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams: The River of Receipts
  9. AWS AppSync: The Order in Your Pocket
  10. AWS Service Integrations: The Retry Storm
  11. AWS Application Integration: Who Gets the Message?
  12. AWS Application Integration: Byte Burger Keeps Moving
Deployment16 chapters
  1. AWS Deployment: The Friday Franchise Rollout
  2. AWS Deployment Packages: The Sealed Release Kit
  3. Amazon ECR and Amazon ECS: The Container Depot
  4. AWS CloudFormation: The Franchise Blueprint
  5. AWS CloudFormation: The Renovation Preview
  6. AWS SAM: The Serverless Store Plan
  7. AWS CDK: The Blueprint Factory
  8. AWS Deployment Testing: The Test Kitchen
  9. AWS AppConfig: The Same Release, Different Store
  10. AWS CodeBuild: The Central Build Kitchen
  11. AWS CodePipeline: The Release Conveyor
  12. AWS CodeDeploy: The Rollout Manager
  13. AWS Deployment Strategies: How Many Stores Change Tonight?
  14. AWS Elastic Beanstalk: The Turnkey Franchise
  15. AWS Deployment: The Morning After the Rollout
  16. AWS CloudShell, AWS CLI, and Amazon Q Developer: The Franchise Control Desk
Observability and Optimization12 chapters
  1. Amazon CloudWatch, AWS X-Ray, and AWS CloudTrail: The Operations Room
  2. Amazon CloudWatch: The Operations Manager
  3. Amazon CloudWatch Logs: The Incident Notebook
  4. Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights: The Evidence Wall
  5. AWS X-Ray: The Store Manager
  6. AWS X-Ray: The Marked Receipt
  7. AWS CloudTrail: The Security Guard
  8. AWS Lambda: The Failing Station
  9. Amazon API Gateway and Integrations: The Blocked Counter
  10. Amazon DynamoDB: The Hot Pantry
  11. Troubleshooting and Optimization: The General Manager
  12. Troubleshooting and Optimization: The Better Shift
Networking and Content Delivery7 chapters
  1. Amazon VPC, Amazon Route 53, and Amazon CloudFront: Byte Burger's Perimeter
  2. Amazon VPC: Byte Burger's Property Line
  3. Security Groups and Network ACLs: The Doors and the Fence
  4. Amazon Route 53: The Address, Signpost, and Branch Director
  5. Amazon CloudFront: The Lunchtime Food Truck
  6. VPC Endpoints and NAT Gateway: The Private Supplier Gate and Service Exit
  7. Networking: The Locked Kitchen
Systems Under Pressure7 chapters
  1. AWS Applications: The Saturday Rush
  2. Amazon API Gateway, Amazon SQS, and AWS Lambda: Accepted Is Not Complete
  3. AWS SDK and AWS Step Functions: The Payment Supplier Slows Down
  4. Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon ElastiCache, and Amazon SQS: The Promotion Finds the Hot Shelf
  5. Amazon CloudWatch, AWS X-Ray, and AWS CloudTrail: The Change Nobody Noticed
  6. Amazon SQS, AWS Step Functions, and Amazon DynamoDB: The Recovery Shift
  7. AWS Applications: The Restaurant Under Pressure