AWS for System Administrators

Build and manage AWS infrastructure using Terraform, AWS CLI, Boto3, and the AWS CDK to automate deployments, enhance reliability, and operate scalable cloud environments

Key Features

• Use a hands-on approach that mirrors real AWS operations with end-to-end examples
• Use scripting and IaC to handle tasks like infrastructure deployment, credential rotation, backups, and resource cleanup
• Manage complex environments with reusable code, policy enforcement, and multi-account best practices

Book Description

System administrators adopting AWS often struggle with automation, scalability, and multi-account management. Originally authored by Prashant Lakhera and now thoroughly updated by Senior Solutions Architect Marcel Neidinger, this second edition is your scenario-driven, hands-on guide to efficiently deploying and managing cloud infrastructure using Infrastructure as Code (IaC).

This updated edition features new topics like chaos engineering with AWS Fault Injection Simulator, multi-account CI/CD deployments, reusable IaC patterns, and cloud compliance using AWS Config and service control policies—all to help you build modern cloud architectures.

You’ll set up AWS CLI, Terraform, and CDK to automate deployments, as well as explore cloud networking with VPCs, EC2, and Transit Gateway, followed by auto-scaling and load balancing strategies. The chapters highlight AWS Secrets Manager for securely storing and accessing your secrets, along with CloudWatch for monitoring and observability in the cloud. You’ll implement centralized logging and develop backup and disaster recovery strategies. The book guides you through the processes and best practices for setting up a multi-account environment, with real-world scenarios for optimizing costs and ensuring high availability.

By the end of this book, you’ll have the skills to efficiently deploy, manage, and optimize AWS infrastructure at scale.

What you will learn

• Design and deploy networks in the cloud with VPCs and deploy instances with EC2
• Implement auto-scaling and load balancing to optimize application performance
• Deploy relational databases with Amazon RDS
• Secure credentials using AWS Secrets Manager
• Monitor AWS resources using CloudWatch and SNS
• Test infrastructure resiliency using AWS Fault Injection Simulator
• Automate backups and implement disaster recovery strategies
• Set up and manage multiple AWS accounts using AWS Organizations

Who this book is for

This book is designed for system administrators, DevOps engineers, and IT professionals who want to effectively manage and automate AWS environments. A basic understanding of cloud computing, the Linux operating system, and networking concepts is recommended.

Table of Contents

Part 1: AWS Services and Tools

Chapter 1: Setting Up the AWS Environment

Chapter 2: Protecting Your AWS Account Using 1AM

Part 2: Building Infrastructure

Chapter 3: Creating a Data Center in the Cloud Using a VPC

Chapter 4: Scalable Compute Capacity in the Cloud via EC2

Part 3: Scalability and Elasticity of our Cloud Infrastructure

Chapter 5: Increasing Application Fault Tolerance and Efficiency with Elastic load Balancing

Chapter 6: Increasing Application Performance Using AWS Auto Scaling

Chapter 7: Scaling a Relational Database in the Cloud Using Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)

Chapter 8: Managing Secrets and Encryption Keys with AWS Secrets Manager and KMS

Part 4: Monitoring, Metrics, and the Backup layer

Chapter 9: Centralized logging and Monitoring with Amazon CloudWatch

Chapter 10: Centralizing Cloud Backup Solutions

Chapter 11: Disaster Recovery Options with AWS

Chapter 12: Testing the Resilience of Your Infrastructure and Architecture with AWS Fault Injection Service

Part 5: Deployments at Scale

Chapter 13: Deploying Infrastructure Using Cl/CD Pipelines

Chapter 14: Building Reusable Infrastructure -as-Code Components

Chapter 15: Ensuring Compliance Using AWS Config and SCPs

Chapter 16: Operating in a Multi-Account Environment

Chapter 17: End-to-End Deployment of an Application

About the Authors

Marcel Neidinger is a developer turned solutions architect with a focus on cloud networking. He holds four AWS certifications, including SysOps Associate and Advanced Networking Specialty. Marcel has a passion for automation and previously wrote a book about network automation in Python.

Prashant Lakhera (lakhera2015 on Twitter) is an X-RHCA (Red Hat Certified Architect) and a seasoned Linux and open source specialist with over 15 years of enterprise open source experience. Having a positive impact on the world is important to him, which is why he shares his knowledge with others through his website, blog posts, and YouTube channel, which also helps him to dig deep into topics and build on his expertise.