Chapter 98: More AWS
What is More AWS
When people (especially in India) search or ask “More AWS” / “what is more AWS?” / “tell me more AWS” / “next after Cloud Practitioner what AWS”, they almost always mean one of these four things:
- What are the next certifications / learning path after Cloud Practitioner?
- What are the more advanced / less-known / specialized AWS services?
- What comes after the basic services (EC2, S3, VPC, IAM, RDS, Lambda…)?
- What are the real-world / production / enterprise-level AWS topics that are rarely taught in beginner courses?
So today I will answer all four interpretations — because they are very closely related — in one complete, structured, honest session.
Let’s go step by step — whiteboard style — like your favorite teacher who wants you to see the full mountain, not just the first base camp.
1. Interpretation #1 — “What is next after Cloud Practitioner?” (Most common meaning)
You finished AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02). You now understand:
- Shared Responsibility Model
- Global Infrastructure
- Billing & Pricing
- Basic services (EC2, S3, VPC, IAM, RDS, Lambda, CloudWatch, CloudTrail)
- Security basics (GuardDuty, WAF, Shield)
- Support plans & Trusted Advisor
Next logical steps in 2026 India (most followed path in Hyderabad / Bengaluru):
| Order | Certification / Path | Realistic time (working professional) | Difficulty | Monthly bill when you need it | Why most people choose this order |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) | 2–5 months | Medium | ₹50k–1.5 lakh | Best overall next step — architecture thinking + most job postings |
| 2 | Developer Associate (DVA-C02) | 3–6 months (after SAA) | Medium | ₹30k–1 lakh | If you love coding & serverless |
| 3 | SysOps Administrator (SOA-C02) | 4–8 months | Medium-hard | ₹80k–2 lakh | If you want operations / DevOps role |
| 4 | Security Specialty (SCS-C01) | 6–12 months | Hard | ₹1–3 lakh | If security / compliance is your goal |
| 5 | Advanced Networking Specialty | 8–14 months | Very hard | ₹2 lakh+ | Rare — only for network engineers |
Most popular sequence in Hyderabad 2026:
Cloud Practitioner → Solutions Architect Associate → Developer Associate or Security Specialty
Why SAA first? It teaches you how to think architecturally — which services to choose, when to use serverless vs EC2, how to make systems highly available, secure, cost-effective. Almost every job description above ₹8–10 lakh CTC asks for SAA.
2. Interpretation #2 — “What are the more advanced / less-taught AWS services?”
These are the services that appear after you know EC2, S3, VPC, IAM, Lambda, RDS, DynamoDB, CloudWatch, CloudTrail.
Top “next level” services Hyderabad teams start using after CP/SAA (2026):
| Service / Group | When you usually discover it | What problem it solves (plain language) | Typical monthly cost (moderate usage) | Learning order priority |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Organizations + SCPs | When you have 3+ accounts | Central governance, prevent dangerous actions | Free | Very high |
| AWS Control Tower / Landing Zone Accelerator | After Organizations | Automated secure multi-account foundation | Free (pay for underlying resources) | High |
| AWS IAM Identity Center (SSO) | When team > 3–5 people | Single sign-on across all accounts | Free | Very high |
| Amazon Aurora Serverless v2 | After RDS | Auto-scaling relational DB | ₹4k–20k | High |
| Amazon EventBridge | After Lambda | Glue that connects everything (events → actions) | Very low | High |
| AWS Step Functions | After Lambda | Orchestrate complex workflows visually | Very low | Medium-high |
| AWS App Runner / ECS Fargate | After EC2 | Run containers without managing servers | ₹5k–30k | High |
| Amazon Managed Grafana + Prometheus | After CloudWatch | Advanced observability dashboards | ₹2k–15k | Medium |
| AWS Backup | After basic backups | Centralized backup across all services | ₹1k–8k | High |
| Amazon Macie | After S3 usage grows | Automatically discover PII in buckets | ₹2k–12k | High (compliance) |
3. Interpretation #3 — “What are the more advanced architectural patterns / real-world topics?”
These are the things rarely covered in CP / SAA courses but appear everywhere in real projects.
Top 10 “more AWS” topics Hyderabad teams learn after CP/SAA:
- Multi-account strategy (Organizations + OUs + SCPs + tag policies)
- Landing zone design (Control Tower / custom with CDK)
- Least-privilege IAM at scale (permission boundaries, IAM Access Analyzer)
- Encryption strategy (KMS customer-managed keys, cross-account key sharing)
- Observability stack (CloudWatch + X-Ray + OpenSearch + Grafana)
- Disaster Recovery & multi-region (Pilot Light / Warm Standby / Multi-Region Active-Active)
- Cost governance at scale (Savings Plans, Budgets, Cost Anomaly Detection, CUR + Athena)
- Security at scale (Security Hub, GuardDuty, Macie, Inspector, Network Firewall)
- Serverless-first design (API Gateway + Lambda + Step Functions + EventBridge)
- Compliance automation (Audit Manager, Config rules, Security Hub standards)
Summary Table — “More AWS” Cheat Sheet (2026 – India Focus)
| Question people usually mean | Best next step / topic in 2026 |
|---|---|
| “What certification after CP?” | Solutions Architect Associate → Developer / Security Specialty |
| “What services come after EC2/S3/Lambda/RDS?” | Organizations, Control Tower, IAM Identity Center, Aurora Serverless, EventBridge, Step Functions, App Runner |
| “What real-world patterns to learn?” | Multi-account strategy, least-privilege IAM, observability stack, disaster recovery, cost governance |
| “Where to learn More AWS practically?” | AWS Workshops (workshops.aws), Adrian Cantrill SAA course, AWS re:Invent talks (YouTube), own free-tier projects |
Teacher’s final note (real talk – Hyderabad 2026):
“More AWS” is not a secret advanced service — it is the moment you stop learning features and start learning how to combine them safely, scalably, compliantly, and cost-effectively.
Most people who stay stuck at Cloud Practitioner level think “I know all services now”.
People who reach ₹15–40 lakh CTC cloud roles think:
“I know how to combine services, govern them, secure them, monitor them, cost-optimize them, and prove they are production-ready.”
That mindset shift usually happens when you:
- Build 3–5 real mini-projects
- Run a Well-Architected Review on your own work
- Break things in free-tier and fix them
- Read one real customer case study per week
You’ve already finished the map. Now start walking the path.
Got it? This is the “what comes after the basics” lesson.
Next?
- Step-by-step: Build a complete multi-account landing zone in ap-south-2?
- Deep dive: How to use Organizations SCPs for RBI / DPDP compliance guardrails?
- Or 5 mini-projects every Cloud Practitioner should build before attempting SAA?
Tell me — next whiteboard ready! 🚀🏔️
