AWS System Design Roadmap

Follow the structured path from mental models and serverless primitives to enterprise multi-region active-active system design.

0
Module 0 Beginner 3 Hours

Foundations & Mental Models

The First-Principles Mindset: Global Infrastructure, Cost Guardrails & Architecture Literacy

Master the mental models required to evaluate cloud architectures. Learn how AWS Regions, Availability Zones, and Edge locations interact, how the Shared Responsibility Model shapes security, and how to read complex system topologies.

Core Outcomes:
  • ✓ Deconstruct ambiguous business requirements into Well-Architected technical constraints.
  • ✓ Understand the physical reality of Regions, Availability Zones, Local Zones, and Edge Locations.
  • ✓ Set up foolproof billing alarms, anomaly detectors, and SCP budget guardrails.
3 Included Case Studies:
Deconstructing Enterprise Architecture: The Case Study Method 8m Diagram Literacy: Translating Logical Architecture to Physical Subnets 8m Free-Tier & Budget Trap Guard: Automated Cost Anomaly Defense 7m
AWS Global InfrastructureIAMAWS BudgetsCost Anomaly DetectionAWS Organizations
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1
Module 1 Beginner 4 Hours

Global Static Website & CDN Architecture

High-Performance, Zero-Maintenance Edge Distribution with S3, CloudFront & Route 53

Learn how to build sub-50ms latency static websites and Single Page Applications (SPAs) with 99.99% availability using Amazon S3, CloudFront CDN, Route 53 DNS, and AWS Certificate Manager (ACM).

Core Outcomes:
  • ✓ Configure private S3 buckets with Origin Access Control (OAC) to prevent unauthorized public reads.
  • ✓ Set up custom domain SSL/TLS certificate automation via ACM and Route 53 Alias records.
  • ✓ Implement edge compute security headers (CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options) via CloudFront Functions.
3 Included Case Studies:
Global Enterprise Blog: Edge-Localized Content & Security Headers 7m Zero-Maintenance Developer Portfolio & Docs Site 6m Viral Startup Marketing Site: Surviving 50,000 Req/Sec Surges 8m
Amazon S3Amazon CloudFrontAmazon Route 53AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)CloudFront Functions
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2
Module 2 Beginner 5 Hours

Compute Fundamentals & Auto Scaling

Stateless Elasticity: EC2, Application Load Balancers & Auto Scaling Groups

Master horizontal scaling and compute elasticity on AWS. Learn how to architect multi-AZ compute clusters behind Application Load Balancers (ALBs), configure dynamic Auto Scaling policies, and decouple server state.

Core Outcomes:
  • ✓ Architect stateless compute tiers across multiple Availability Zones to eliminate single points of failure.
  • ✓ Configure ALB target groups, health checks, and path-based routing rules.
  • ✓ Establish dynamic Auto Scaling policies based on CPU utilization and ALB Request Count.
2 Included Case Studies:
Internal Analytics Portal: Scheduled Auto-Scaling & Spot Fleets 7m Legacy Monolith Migration: Lift & Shift to Multi-AZ Auto Scaling EC2 9m
Amazon EC2Application Load Balancer (ALB)Auto Scaling Groups (ASG)Amazon Machine Images (AMI)AWS Systems Manager Session Manager
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3
Module 3 Intermediate 6 Hours

Serverless Architecture & Event-Driven Systems

Pay-Per-Execution: AWS Lambda, API Gateway, SQS & EventBridge

Master event-driven serverless architecture on AWS. Learn how to architect zero-idle-cost backends using Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, Amazon SQS buffering, and EventBridge choreographies.

Core Outcomes:
  • ✓ Architect asynchronous, event-driven decoupling between microservices using SQS and EventBridge.
  • ✓ Mitigate Lambda cold starts through optimal memory allocation, provisioned concurrency, and bundle tree-shaking.
  • ✓ Select between API Gateway HTTP APIs (low latency, cost-effective) and REST APIs (WAF, request validation, API keys).
3 Included Case Studies:
Real-Time Serverless Image Processing & Media Pipeline 8m Global Serverless URL Shortener: Sub-15ms Redirection 6m Resilient Webhook Ingestion Engine: Buffering 10,000 Webhooks/Sec 7m
AWS LambdaAmazon API GatewayAmazon SQSAmazon EventBridgeAmazon DynamoDBAWS Step Functions
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4
Module 4 Intermediate 6 Hours

Databases & Data Persistence

Relational ACID vs Key-Value NoSQL vs In-Memory Caching

Master database selection on AWS. Compare Amazon RDS (PostgreSQL/MySQL), Amazon Aurora Serverless v2, DynamoDB single-table design, and ElastiCache Redis under extreme concurrency and throughput.

Core Outcomes:
  • ✓ Select the right database engine based on data access patterns, ACID requirements, and query complexity.
  • ✓ Architect Multi-AZ standby failover and Read Replicas for high-read relational workloads.
  • ✓ Leverage AWS RDS Proxy to prevent serverless Lambda connections from overwhelming PostgreSQL/MySQL pools.
3 Included Case Studies:
E-Commerce Catalog & Orders: Relational vs NoSQL Polyglot Persistence 9m Global Session Store: Sub-Millisecond Auth with ElastiCache Redis 7m Sub-Millisecond Gaming Leaderboard: Redis Sorted Sets & DynamoDB 8m
Amazon RDS (PostgreSQL/MySQL)Amazon Aurora Serverless v2Amazon DynamoDBAmazon ElastiCache (Redis)AWS RDS Proxy
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5
Module 5 Intermediate 6 Hours

Networking & Security Foundation

VPC Topology, Subnet Isolation, Least Privilege IAM & KMS Encryption

Master zero-trust cloud network architecture. Learn how to design multi-tier VPCs, route tables, Security Groups, NACLs, NAT Gateways, VPC Interface Endpoints (PrivateLink), and AWS KMS envelope encryption.

Core Outcomes:
  • ✓ Design 3-tier VPC topologies separating public load balancers, private compute, and isolated database subnets.
  • ✓ Eliminate expensive NAT Gateway egress data processing costs using AWS VPC Interface Endpoints.
  • ✓ Implement stateful Security Groups and stateless Network Access Control Lists (NACLs).
2 Included Case Studies:
Production 3-Tier Enterprise VPC: Complete Network Isolation 9m Zero-Trust Financial Backend: Eliminating NAT Gateway Data Fees 8m
Amazon VPCAWS IAMAWS Key Management Service (KMS)AWS Secrets ManagerAWS WAFAWS PrivateLink
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6
Module 6 Advanced 7 Hours

Data Lakes, Analytics & Batch Processing

Schema-on-Read, Serverless Lakehouse & Real-Time Stream Ingestion

Master big data analytics on AWS. Learn how to ingest high-velocity event streams with Kinesis, build an S3 Lakehouse with Glue Data Catalog, run ad-hoc serverless SQL queries with Athena, and power BI data warehouses with Redshift.

Core Outcomes:
  • ✓ Build an immutable S3 Data Lake adopting the Medallion Architecture (Bronze / Silver / Gold tiers).
  • ✓ Ingest 20,000+ events/sec via Kinesis Data Streams and Kinesis Data Firehose with automated format conversion (JSON to Parquet).
  • ✓ Partition data by date (`year=YYYY/month=MM/day=DD`) to minimize Athena S3 byte scanning costs by 90%+.
3 Included Case Studies:
Centralized Enterprise Security Log Lake: CloudTrail & VPC Flow Logs 8m Executive BI Datamart Pipeline: Redshift Serverless & Glue ETL 8m Real-Time Clickstream Analytics: Ingesting 20,000 Events/Sec into S3 & Athena 9m
Amazon S3 LakehouseAWS GlueAmazon AthenaAmazon Kinesis Data StreamsAmazon Redshift Serverless
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7
Module 7 Advanced 8 Hours

Containers & Modern Application Platforms

Microservices Orchestration: Amazon ECS Fargate vs Amazon EKS

Master modern containerization on AWS. Compare serverless container orchestration (AWS Fargate) with Kubernetes on AWS (EKS), container security in ECR, service discovery with AWS Cloud Map, and ALB path-based ingress routing.

Core Outcomes:
  • ✓ Evaluate the architectural decision matrix between ECS Fargate (simplicity, low Ops) and EKS (Kubernetes ecosystem, multi-cloud).
  • ✓ Implement IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA) and ECS Task Execution Roles for granular least-privilege security.
  • ✓ Configure ALB target groups with path-based and header-based routing to decouple microservices.
2 Included Case Studies:
Monolith to Microservices: Strangler Fig Pattern on AWS Fargate 9m Polyglot Microservices on Amazon EKS with Karpenter Autoscaling 10m
Amazon ECS (AWS Fargate)Amazon EKS (Kubernetes)Amazon ECRApplication Load Balancer (ALB)AWS Cloud MapKarpenter
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8
Module 8 Advanced 6 Hours

DevOps, CI/CD & Infrastructure as Code

Automate Everything: GitOps, Blue/Green Deployments & CDK/Terraform

Master automated delivery pipelines and declarative cloud provisioning on AWS. Learn how to architect end-to-end CI/CD with CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, AWS CDK (TypeScript), and Terraform.

Core Outcomes:
  • ✓ Construct multi-stage GitOps deployment pipelines with automated lint, test, security scan, and manual approval gates.
  • ✓ Implement zero-downtime Blue/Green and progressive Canary traffic shifting with automatic CloudWatch rollback alarms.
  • ✓ Model cloud architectures in TypeScript using AWS CDK construct libraries.
2 Included Case Studies:
Multi-Environment GitOps Engine: Trunk-Based Delivery with AWS CDK 8m Zero-Downtime Blue/Green & Canary Traffic Shifting with CodeDeploy 8m
AWS CodePipelineAWS CodeBuildAWS CodeDeployAWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK)HashiCorp TerraformAWS Systems Manager (SSM)
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9
Module 9 Advanced 6 Hours

Observability, Monitoring & Reliability

The 3 Pillars of Telemetry: Metrics, Logs, Traces & Automated Self-Healing

Master production telemetry on AWS. Learn how to correlate Amazon CloudWatch Metrics/Logs/Alarms, AWS X-Ray distributed traces, CloudTrail audit trails, and AWS Config compliance rules to minimize MTTR.

Core Outcomes:
  • ✓ Instrument distributed systems with AWS X-Ray and OpenTelemetry to identify microservice bottleneck traces.
  • ✓ Design CloudWatch Composite Alarms combining error rates, p99 latency spikes, and CPU saturation.
  • ✓ Automate incident response with EventBridge and Lambda self-healing remediation routines.
2 Included Case Studies:
Cloud Cost Anomaly Sentinel: Autonomous FinOps Waste Hunting 7m Automated Incident Detection & Self-Healing Telemetry Engine 9m
Amazon CloudWatch (Metrics & Logs)AWS X-RayAWS CloudTrailAWS ConfigAWS Fault Injection Simulator (FIS)
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10
Module 10 Expert 12 Hours

Advanced Real-World Capstone Systems

Enterprise-Scale Architectures: Streaming, Banking, Multi-Tenant SaaS & IoT

Deconstruct complex, multi-service enterprise architectures based on real-world industry leaders. Study before-and-after transformations, multi-region active-active topologies, zero-RPO/RTO ledgers, and million-device IoT pipelines.

Core Outcomes:
  • ✓ Architect active-active multi-region databases across oceans with sub-second replication conflict resolution.
  • ✓ Build media ingestion, chunked distributed transcoding, and tokenized CDN delivery at Netflix scale.
  • ✓ Enforce strict zero-RPO financial ledgers with KMS envelope encryption and compliance audit trails.
4 Included Case Studies:
FinTech Active-Active Core Banking: Zero-RPO Multi-Region Ledger 11m Global Multi-Tenant B2B SaaS: Tenant Isolation & Metering Engine 10m Netflix-Scale Global Video Streaming: Transcoding, Origin Shielding & CDN 12m Smart Connected Fleet: Ingesting Telemetry from 500,000 Vehicles 11m
Amazon Route 53 ArcAmazon DynamoDB Global TablesAWS Elemental MediaConvertAWS IoT CoreAmazon TimestreamAmazon Aurora Global Database
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