🎯 By the end of this module you should be able to…
- Plan and deliver a cloud project presentation that an interviewer would find credible.
- Describe the architecture of this very website and justify each decision.
- Run the core labs of the course end to end.
- Answer the most common AWS interview questions clearly and concisely.
- Use the STAR method to talk about what you built.
- Prepare for the evaluation test and know where to go next.
The project: this website
The best project is one you can open in a browser in front of the interviewer. That is exactly what this site is — a static website, written in plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, hosted on Amazon S3.
Architecture, version 1 — what you build in the lab
Browser
│ http://
▼
S3 bucket (static website hosting enabled)
│ index document: index.html
└─ public-read bucket policy
Architecture, version 2 — what you should say you would do next
Browser
│ https://
▼
Route 53 (alias record at the zone apex)
▼
CloudFront + ACM certificate + AWS WAF
│ cache hit → served from the edge
▼ cache miss
S3 bucket (PRIVATE, reached via Origin Access Control)
This comparison is the strongest thing in your presentation
Version 1 proves you can deploy. Version 2 proves you understand why the first one is not production-ready: the S3 website endpoint is HTTP only, the bucket has to be public, there is no caching and no DDoS protection. Being able to explain that gap is the difference between a student who followed instructions and an engineer.
A 10-minute presentation structure
| Minutes | Section | What to cover |
|---|---|---|
| 0–1 | The problem | What the site is for and who would use it. |
| 1–3 | Live demo | Open the S3 URL. Click through two module pages and the final test. |
| 3–5 | Architecture | The version 1 diagram, with every component named. |
| 5–7 | How you built it | The CLI commands. Show the bucket policy and explain each field. |
| 7–9 | Security and cost | Why the bucket is public, what that risks, what it costs (pennies). |
| 9–10 | What is next | The version 2 diagram. CloudFront, HTTPS, OAC, WAF, Route 53. |
Questions you will be asked — have an answer ready
- ❓"Why is the bucket public?" Because the S3 website endpoint requires objects to be publicly readable. In production I would keep the bucket private and use CloudFront with Origin Access Control instead.
- ❓"What does this cost?" Storage is a few KB, so effectively nothing. The cost driver would be requests and outbound data transfer — and CloudFront would reduce both.
- ❓"How would you add HTTPS?" CloudFront in front, with a free certificate from AWS Certificate Manager, and a Route 53 alias record at the apex.
- ❓"How would you deploy a change?"
aws s3 syncfrom a CI pipeline, followed by a CloudFront invalidation — or better, versioned filenames so no invalidation is needed.
Lab guidance — the checklist for the whole course
| Module | Lab | You should be able to… |
|---|---|---|
| 1–2 | Subnetting on paper | Take any CIDR and produce a VLSM allocation table |
| 3 | Linux command line | Navigate, edit with vim, build a pipeline, set permissions, add a user to a group |
| 4 | Billing and budgets | Create a zero-spend budget and an estimate in the Pricing Calculator |
| 5 | IAM | Create a user, a group and a role; attach a policy; enable MFA |
| 6 | Build a VPC | Two AZs, public and private subnets, IGW, NAT, route tables, security groups |
| 6 | Launch a web server | EC2 + Apache via user data, reachable from the internet |
| 7 | DynamoDB table | Create a table, put and query items, understand why Scan is bad |
| 8 | Well-Architected review | Run the free tool against your own workload and read the plan |
| 9 | Alarm to SNS | CPU alarm → SNS topic → confirmed email subscription → test it |
| 10 | Enable GuardDuty | Turn it on, generate sample findings, read a finding properly |
| 11 | S3 static website | Deploy this site with the AWS CLI and open the public URL |
Clean up when the lab ends
Terminate instances, delete NAT gateways, release Elastic IPs, delete unused EBS volumes and empty test buckets. NAT gateways and unattached public IPv4 addresses are the two most common causes of a student bill that should have been zero.
Interview preparation
Twenty questions you should be able to answer in two sentences each
☁️ Cloud & billing
- What is cloud computing, and what are its main advantages?
- IaaS, PaaS, SaaS — give an AWS example of each.
- What are the three drivers of an AWS bill?
- When would you use Spot rather than On-Demand?
- What does AWS Organizations give you?
🌐 Networking
- What makes a subnet public?
- Security group versus NACL?
- What does a NAT gateway do, and where does it live?
- How many addresses does AWS reserve in a subnet, and why?
- VPC peering is not transitive — what do you use instead?
🔒 Security
- Explain the shared responsibility model with an example.
- When do you use an IAM role instead of a user?
- How does IAM decide whether to allow a call?
- GuardDuty versus Inspector?
- What does AWS WAF see that a security group cannot?
🏗️ Architecture
- Name the six Well-Architected pillars.
- RTO and RPO — what is the difference?
- How do you make a web application highly available?
- DynamoDB or RDS — how do you choose?
- Why would you put CloudFront in front of S3?
Talk about your project with STAR
| Letter | Means | For this project |
|---|---|---|
| S | Situation | "I needed to publish my course notes somewhere my classmates could reach." |
| T | Task | "Host a multi-page site with no servers to manage and near-zero cost." |
| A | Action | "I wrote the pages in plain HTML and CSS, created an S3 bucket with the CLI, enabled static website hosting and applied a public-read bucket policy." |
| R | Result | "The site is live on an S3 endpoint, costs a few cents a month, and I can redeploy with one aws s3 sync." |
The two habits that make an interview go well
Say "I do not know, but here is how I would find out" rather than guessing — interviewers respect it and inventing an answer is the fastest way to lose credibility. And always bring the answer back to something you actually built.
Evaluation test and what comes next
📝 The final test on this site
50 questions drawn from all eleven modules, 45 minutes, 60% to pass. The questions are reshuffled every attempt, and you get a per-module breakdown so you know what to revise.
🏅 Certifications worth aiming at
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner — the natural next step after this course.
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate — the one employers ask for most.
- AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate — if you enjoyed Modules 9 and 10.
Keep building
- 🚀Put CloudFront in front of this site Add HTTPS, a custom domain and a WAF web ACL. It is the natural version 2.
- 🤖Automate the deployment
A GitHub Action that runs
aws s3 syncon every push. - 📜Rebuild it as infrastructure as code Describe the bucket, the policy and the distribution in CloudFormation or Terraform. This is the single most employable skill on the list.
- ⚡Add a serverless backend API Gateway + Lambda + DynamoDB so the quiz scores are actually stored.
Free places to keep learning
AWS Skill Builder has free digital courses. AWS Workshops publishes hands-on labs. The AWS documentation and the Well-Architected Framework whitepapers are free, current and are what the certification questions are actually written from.
Key takeaways
- ✅A project you can open in a browser beats a project you can only describe.
- ✅Version 1 proves you can deploy; explaining version 2 proves you understand the gap.
- ✅Clean up every lab — NAT gateways and unattached Elastic IPs are the usual surprise charges.
- ✅Prepare two-sentence answers to the twenty standard questions.
- ✅Use STAR, and always bring the answer back to something you built.
- ✅Cloud Practitioner then Solutions Architect – Associate is the usual path from here.