Week 4 Worklog

Week 4 Objectives:

• Strengthen data protection practices with AWS Backup, including backup plans, SNS notifications, and restore testing.
• Explore Amazon DynamoDB as a serverless NoSQL service and learn how tables fit into a backup strategy.
• Practice VM migration and portability using VM Import/Export with VMware Workstation, Amazon S3, and EC2.
• Learn hybrid file storage with AWS Storage Gateway (File Gateway) and managed Windows file shares with Amazon FSx.
• Deepen Amazon S3 skills for static website hosting, CloudFront, versioning, and cross-region replication.

Tasks to be carried out this week:

Week 4 Achievements:

• Explored Amazon DynamoDB and understood its serverless NoSQL characteristics, table model (partition key, sort key), and capacity modes (on-demand vs provisioned).

• Practiced basic operations in the DynamoDB console: created a table, performed CRUD on items, and reviewed read/write metrics to become familiar with service operations.

• Understood the role of AWS Backup in centralizing and automating data protection for resources such as EBS, RDS, DynamoDB, and EFS.

• Deployed the lab infrastructure, created a backup plan, assigned resources (including DynamoDB tables) to the plan, and configured backup schedules based on defined policies.

• Configured Amazon SNS to receive notifications when backup or restore jobs complete, enabling centralized job status monitoring.

• Performed restore testing from backups and verified that data could be recovered as expected before applying the approach in production scenarios.

• Completed cleanup of lab resources after practice to avoid unnecessary ongoing charges.

• Understood VM Import/Export concepts and common use cases: workload migration to the cloud, on-premises VM backup, and disaster recovery.

• Prepared a VMware Workstation environment, exported a virtual machine from on-premises, and uploaded the image to Amazon S3 as the intermediate step for import.

• Imported the VM image into AWS, created an AMI, and launched an EC2 instance from the imported AMI to validate that the workload runs in the cloud.

• Practiced the reverse flow: configured S3 bucket ACL, exported an instance/AMI from AWS back to on-premises, and cleaned up resources after the lab.

• Understood how AWS Storage Gateway (File Gateway) connects on-premises file storage with object storage in Amazon S3 using a hybrid model.

• Created an S3 bucket, provisioned EC2 as the gateway host, activated Storage Gateway, and created a file share following the workshop steps.

• Mounted the file share on an on-premises machine, tested file read/write operations, and confirmed that data was synchronized to S3.

• Understood the architecture of Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, including file servers, backend storage, VPC, ENIs, and multi-AZ replication.

• Deployed Multi-AZ file systems (SSD and HDD), created new file shares, and tested access performance from a Windows environment.

• Enabled and observed management features including data deduplication, shadow copies, user session/open file management, storage quotas, and Continuous Access shares.

• Practiced scaling throughput and storage capacity, monitored performance metrics, then deleted the environment and completed cleanup.

• Mastered core Amazon S3 concepts: buckets, objects, durability, and common use cases (websites, backup, data lakes, analytics).

• Deployed static website hosting on S3, configured Block Public Access, public objects, and validated website access.

• Accelerated content delivery with Amazon CloudFront while restricting direct public access to the bucket for a more secure access pattern.

• Enabled bucket versioning, performed object moves between prefixes/buckets, and configured cross-region replication (CRR).

• Summarized notes and best practices for S3 cost, security, and operations; completed cleanup of buckets, distributions, and related resources.