The Most Practical Way to Get Started on AWS: Build a Producation Grade Cloud Setup

September 17, 2025

The Most Practical Way to Get Started on AWS: Build a Producation Grade Cloud Setup

When people say ‘learn AWS,’ it’s easy to get lost in a sea of services. In reality, most real-world architectures start with a VPC, subnets, instances, storage, and permissions.
In this guide, we’ll build a secure, production-style setup step-by-step — and we’ll do it four ways:

  • AWS Console
  • AWS CLI
  • Bash Automation Scripts
  • Terraform

What You Will Gain After Doing This

  • Hands-on experience with core AWS services
  • Learn how to automate (CLI, scripts, Terraform)
  • Cover security best practices (bastion, private DB, IAM roles, S3 VPC endpoints)

AWS Architecture Diagram

AWS Architecture

🖼️ What This Architecture Shows

This diagram represents a secure, highly available, multi-AZ VPC that you’d find in a real-world AWS setup.
It’s not a “Hello World” demo — it’s a mini production environment with all the moving parts you’d expect:

  • Networking: VPC, public/private/DB subnets across 3 Availability Zones
  • Security: Bastion host, security groups, IAM roles, VPC endpoint
  • Compute: Public EC2 (Bastion) + Private EC2
  • Storage: S3 bucket with VPC endpoint (private access)
  • Database: Multi-AZ RDS with primary + standby in private DB subnets
  • Routing: Internet Gateway, NAT Gateway, route tables

🛠️ Why Building This Gives You Real-World Hands-On

  1. You’ll Design a Real Network Topology

    • 3-tier subnets (public, private app, private DB) across multiple AZs — exactly how production networks are built for availability and security.

  2. You’ll Practice the Right Security Patterns

    • Bastion host for controlled SSH access (no direct SSH to private servers).
    • Security groups that only allow specific sources (Bastion → Private EC2, Private EC2 → DB).
    • IAM roles for EC2 to access S3 instead of hard-coded credentials.
    • S3 VPC Endpoint for private S3 access without exposing to the Internet.

  3. You’ll Work With Core AWS Services

    • EC2, VPC, Subnets, Security Groups, Route Tables, NAT Gateway, Internet Gateway, RDS, S3, IAM Roles, VPC Endpoints — these are bread-and-butter AWS services.

  4. You’ll Learn Multi-AZ High Availability

    • Deploying subnets and DBs across multiple AZs shows you how AWS achieves fault tolerance.

  5. You’ll Deploy It Four Ways

    • AWS Console: You’ll understand each setting and option visually.
    • AWS CLI: You’ll get comfortable with automation commands.
    • Bash Script + CLI: You’ll learn how to parameterize and repeat deployments.
    • Terraform: You’ll practice true Infrastructure as Code, versioning, and repeatability.

This combo is exactly how real production teams work: design + manual console, then automation via CLI, then Infra as Code via Terraform.