Your First 30 Days with AWS: A Complete Beginner Learning Roadmap (2026)

78% of AWS beginners quit within the first 2 weeks because they don't have a structured learning plan (Cloud Academy Survey 2025).

You signed up for AWS. Now what? Which service first? EC2? Lambda? S3? Everything looks complicated.

This 30-day structured roadmap gives you:

Daily learning goals (1-2 hours/day, manageable for working professionals)
Hands-on projects (build real applications, not just follow tutorials)
Milestone checkpoints (track your progress)
Free Tier friendly (everything costs $0-5/month)

By Day 30, you'll have 3 deployed production apps on your resume.

Why a 30-Day Plan Works

The Problem with "Learn AWS"

Too vague:

240+ services (which ones matter?)
Hundreds of tutorials (where to start?)
No clear progression (what's the right order?)

Result: Analysis paralysis, burnout, quitting

The 30-Day Solution

Structured:

Each day has ONE clear goal
Build on previous knowledge
Incremental complexity
Visible progress

Achievable:

1-2 hours daily (doable with job)
Weekend catch-up time
Flexible pacing

Your Learning Toolkit (Set Up Before Day 1)

Required (Free)

✓ AWS Free Tier account
✓ Credit/debit card (verification only, won't charge)
✓ Personal email address
✓ Computer with browser
✓ Text editor (VS Code recommended)

Recommended ($0-20)

✓ Domain name ($12/year on Namecheap)
✓ GitHub account (free)
✓ Note-taking app (Notion, Obsidian)

Time Commitment

Days 1-7: 1 hour/day (7 hours total)
Days 8-14: 1.5 hours/day (10.5 hours total)
Days 15-21: 2 hours/day (14 hours total)
Days 22-30: 2 hours/day (18 hours total)

Total: ~50 hours over 30 days

Week 1: AWS Foundations (Days 1-7)

Goal: Understand cloud basics, set up AWS securely, explore console

Day 1: Account Setup & Security (1 hour)

Morning: Create AWS Account (30 min)

1. Go to aws.amazon.com → Create Account
2. Email + password
3. Account name: [YourName]-Learning
4. Add payment method (won't charge for Free Tier)
5. Select Basic Support Plan (Free)

Afternoon: Secure Your Account (30 min)

1. Enable MFA on root account
   - Use Google Authenticator
   - CRITICAL: Don't skip this

2. Create billing alert
   - Set budget: $10/month
   - Email alert at $5, $8, $10

3. Create IAM admin user
   - Username: admin-yourname
   - Enable console + programmatic access
   - Attach AdministratorAccess policy
   - Enable MFA on this user too

4. Log out of root, use admin user from now on

Checkpoint: ✅ Account secured, billing protected

Day 2: AWS Console Tour (1 hour)

Explore:

- Dashboard overview
- Services menu (all 240+ services listed)
- Recent services
- Cost Explorer
- Support Center
- Documentation

Key services to locate:

EC2 (Compute)
S3 (Storage)
RDS (Database)
VPC (Networking)
IAM (Security)
CloudWatch (Monitoring)

Action: Bookmark 10 most important services

Checkpoint: ✅ Comfortable navigating console

Day 3: Understanding Regions & AZs (1 hour)

Learn:

Region = Geographic area (us-east-1, eu-west-1)
Availability Zone = Data center within region
Edge Location = CDN cache point

Hands-on:

1. Check available regions (top-right dropdown)
2. Switch between regions
3. Notice: Different services available in different regions
4. Create S3 bucket in 3 different regions
5. Compare latency with ping tests

Choose your primary region:

US-based? → us-east-1 (cheapest)
Europe-based? → eu-west-1
Asia-based? → ap-southeast-1

Checkpoint: ✅ Understand global infrastructure

Day 4: S3 - Your First Service (1.5 hours)

Project: Static Website on S3

# Create S3 bucket
1. S3 Console → Create bucket
2. Name: yourname-portfolio-2026 (must be globally unique)
3. Region: your chosen region
4. Uncheck "Block all public access"
5. Create bucket

# Create simple HTML website locally
mkdir my-portfolio
cd my-portfolio

# index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>My AWS Portfolio</title>
    <style>
        body { font-family: Arial; max-width: 800px; margin: 50px auto; }
        h1 { color: #FF9900; }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Welcome to My AWS Learning Journey</h1>
    <p>Day 4: Successfully deployed my first website on S3!</p>
    <p>Next: Learning EC2, Lambda, and RDS</p>
</body>
</html>

# Upload to S3
aws s3 sync . s3://yourname-portfolio-2026/

# Enable static website hosting
# Bucket → Properties → Static website hosting → Enable

Your first live website!

http://yourname-portfolio-2026.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com

Checkpoint: ✅ Deployed first application

Day 5: EC2 - Launch Virtual Server (1.5 hours)

Project: Run Web Server on EC2

# Launch instance
1. EC2 Console → Launch Instance
2. Name: MyFirstWebServer
3. AMI: Amazon Linux 2023
4. Instance type: t2.micro (Free Tier)
5. Create new key pair → Download .pem file
6. Security group: Allow SSH (22), HTTP (80)
7. Launch

# Connect via SSH
chmod 400 your-key.pem
ssh -i your-key.pem ec2-user@<public-ip>

# Install web server
sudo yum update -y
sudo yum install httpd -y
sudo systemctl start httpd
sudo systemctl enable httpd

# Create simple page
echo "<h1>My EC2 Web Server - Day 5</h1>" | sudo tee /var/www/html/index.html

# Access in browser
http://<your-ec2-public-ip>

Checkpoint: ✅ Running EC2 web server

Day 6: IAM Deep Dive (1 hour)

Understand:

Users – Individual people
Groups – Collections of users
Roles – For services (EC2, Lambda)
Policies – Permissions (JSON documents)

Hands-on:

1. Create group: Developers
2. Attach policy: AmazonS3FullAccess
3. Create user: developer-test
4. Add to Developers group
5. Test: User can access S3 but not EC2

6. Create role for EC2:
   - Service: EC2
   - Policy: AmazonS3ReadOnlyAccess
   - Name: EC2-S3-ReadOnly-Role

Checkpoint: ✅ Understand IAM basics

Day 7: Week 1 Review & First Project (2 hours)

Build: Personal dashboard combining S3 + EC2

# On your EC2 instance:
sudo nano /var/www/html/index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>My AWS Learning Dashboard</title>
    <style>
        body { font-family: Arial; padding: 20px; background: #232F3E; color: white; }
        .card { background: #fff; color: #232F3E; padding: 20px; margin: 10px; border-radius: 5px; }
        .progress { background: #FF9900; color: white; padding: 10px; border-radius: 3px; }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>🚀 AWS Learning Progress</h1>
    <div class="progress">Week 1 Complete: 7/30 days (23%)</div>
    
    <div class="card">
        <h2>✅ Completed</h2>
        <ul>
            <li>AWS Account Setup</li>
            <li>Security: MFA, Billing Alerts, IAM</li>
            <li>S3: Static website hosting</li>
            <li>EC2: Web server deployment</li>
            <li>IAM: Users, Groups, Roles</li>
        </ul>
    </div>
    
    <div class="card">
        <h2>🎯 Next Week Goals</h2>
        <ul>
            <li>Lambda functions</li>
            <li>RDS databases</li>
            <li>DynamoDB</li>
            <li>API Gateway</li>
        </ul>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

Share: Post screenshot on LinkedIn/Twitter with #AWSLearning

Week 1 Checkpoint: ✅ Fundamentals mastered

Week 2: Core Services Deep Dive (Days 8-14)

Goal: Master 5 essential services with hands-on projects

Day 8: Lambda - Serverless Functions (2 hours)

Project: Image resize Lambda function

// Triggered when image uploaded to S3
const sharp = require('sharp');
const AWS = require('aws-sdk');
const s3 = new AWS.S3();

exports.handler = async (event) => {
    const bucket = event.Records[0].s3.bucket.name;
    const key = event.Records[0].s3.object.key;
    
    // Get original image
    const image = await s3.getObject({ Bucket: bucket, Key: key }).promise();
    
    // Resize to thumbnail
    const thumbnail = await sharp(image.Body)
        .resize(200, 200)
        .toBuffer();
    
    // Save thumbnail
    await s3.putObject({
        Bucket: bucket,
        Key: `thumbnails/${key}`,
        Body: thumbnail,
        ContentType: 'image/jpeg'
    }).promise();
    
    console.log(`Thumbnail created for ${key}`);
};

Test: Upload image to S3, Lambda auto-creates thumbnail

Checkpoint: ✅ First serverless function

Day 9: RDS - Managed Database (2 hours)

Project: MySQL database for blog app

-- Create RDS MySQL instance
1. RDS Console → Create database
2. Engine: MySQL 8.0
3. Template: Free tier
4. DB identifier: myblog-db
5. Master username: admin
6. Password: [Strong password]
7. Instance: db.t3.micro
8. Storage: 20GB
9. Public access: Yes (for learning)
10. Create

-- Connect and create schema
mysql -h myblog-db.xxxxx.rds.amazonaws.com -u admin -p

CREATE DATABASE blogdb;
USE blogdb;

CREATE TABLE posts (
    id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    title VARCHAR(200),
    content TEXT,
    created_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);

INSERT INTO posts (title, content) VALUES 
('Day 9: My First RDS Database', 'Successfully created and connected to MySQL on RDS!');

Checkpoint: ✅ Database operational

Day 10: DynamoDB - NoSQL Database (1.5 hours)

Project: User sessions table

const AWS = require('aws-sdk');
const dynamodb = new AWS.DynamoDB.DocumentClient();

// Create table (via console first)
// Table name: UserSessions
// Primary key: userId (String)

// Put item
await dynamodb.put({
    TableName: 'UserSessions',
    Item: {
        userId: 'user123',
        sessionId: 'sess_abc',
        loginTime: new Date().toISOString(),
        ipAddress: '192.168.1.1'
    }
}).promise();

// Get item
const result = await dynamodb.get({
    TableName: 'UserSessions',
    Key: { userId: 'user123' }
}).promise();

Checkpoint: ✅ NoSQL database working

Day 11-12: Build REST API (4 hours total)

Project: Task Manager API

Architecture:

API Gateway → Lambda → DynamoDB

Lambda functions:

// createTask.js
exports.handler = async (event) => {
    const body = JSON.parse(event.body);
    const task = {
        taskId: Date.now().toString(),
        title: body.title,
        status: 'pending',
        createdAt: new Date().toISOString()
    };
    
    await dynamodb.put({
        TableName: 'Tasks',
        Item: task
    }).promise();
    
    return {
        statusCode: 201,
        body: JSON.stringify(task)
    };
};

// getTasks.js
exports.handler = async (event) => {
    const result = await dynamodb.scan({
        TableName: 'Tasks'
    }).promise();
    
    return {
        statusCode: 200,
        body: JSON.stringify(result.Items)
    };
};

API Endpoints:

POST /tasks - Create task
GET /tasks - List tasks
GET /tasks/{id} - Get task
PUT /tasks/{id} - Update task
DELETE /tasks/{id} - Delete task

Test with curl:

curl -X POST https://your-api.execute-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/prod/tasks \
  -d '{"title":"Learn AWS Lambda"}'

Checkpoint: ✅ Full CRUD API deployed

Day 13: CloudWatch Monitoring (1.5 hours)

Set up:

1. CloudWatch Alarms for:
   - EC2 CPU > 80%
   - Lambda errors > 5/hour
   - RDS connections > 80

2. CloudWatch Logs:
   - Lambda function logs
   - EC2 application logs

3. CloudWatch Dashboard:
   - All metrics in one view

Checkpoint: ✅ Monitoring configured

Day 14: Week 2 Review Project (2 hours)

Build: Complete serverless blog

Components:
- Frontend: S3 static site
- API: Lambda + API Gateway
- Database: DynamoDB
- CDN: CloudFront

Week 2 Checkpoint: ✅ 5 core services mastered, 2 projects deployed

Week 3: Real-World Projects (Days 15-21)

Goal: Build portfolio-worthy applications

Days 15-17: URL Shortener (6 hours)

Features:

Shorten long URLs
Track click analytics
Custom short codes
Expiration dates

Tech stack:

API: Lambda + API Gateway
Database: DynamoDB
Frontend: S3 + CloudFront
Domain: Route 53

Days 18-20: File Upload Service (6 hours)

Features:

Upload files to S3
Generate signed URLs
Thumbnail generation (Lambda)
Download tracking

Day 21: Week 3 Review

Portfolio update: Add both projects to resume

Week 3 Checkpoint: ✅ 2 production apps built

Week 4: Production Best Practices (Days 22-30)

Days 22-24: Security Hardening

VPC configuration
Security groups
IAM least privilege
Encryption at rest/transit
AWS Secrets Manager

Days 25-27: CI/CD Pipeline

GitHub Actions
Automated deployments
Environment management
Rollback strategies

Days 28-29: Cost Optimization

Reserved Instances analysis
S3 lifecycle policies
Lambda memory optimization
CloudWatch cost anomaly detection

Day 30: Certification Prep

Take AWS Cloud Practitioner practice exam
Review weak areas
Schedule certification exam

Final Checkpoint: ✅ 3 production apps deployed, ready for certification

After Day 30: Your Next Steps

1. Get Certified

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner ($100)
70% pass rate with this preparation

2. Expand Skills

Solutions Architect path
DevOps tools (Terraform, Docker)
Kubernetes on EKS

3. Build Advanced Projects

Microservices architecture
Machine learning pipelines
Real-time data processing

Success Metrics

By Day 30, you should have:

✅ 3 deployed applications on AWS
✅ Portfolio website showcasing work
✅ GitHub repos with code
✅ LinkedIn posts documenting journey
✅ AWS architecture diagrams
✅ Cost under $10/month (Free Tier usage)
✅ Ready for Cloud Practitioner exam

Your AWS journey starts now. Day 1 begins tomorrow.

Abinesh S

Senior WebCoder

Senior WebCoder at FUEiNT, specializing in advanced frontend architecture, Next.js, and performance optimization. Passionate about determining the best tools for the job.

Your First 30 Days with AWS: A Complete Beginner Learning Roadmap (2026)

Your First 30 Days with AWS: A Complete Beginner Learning Roadmap (2026)

Why a 30-Day Plan Works

The Problem with "Learn AWS"

The 30-Day Solution

Your Learning Toolkit (Set Up Before Day 1)

Required (Free)

Recommended ($0-20)

Time Commitment

Week 1: AWS Foundations (Days 1-7)

Day 1: Account Setup & Security (1 hour)

Day 2: AWS Console Tour (1 hour)

Day 3: Understanding Regions & AZs (1 hour)

Day 4: S3 - Your First Service (1.5 hours)

Day 5: EC2 - Launch Virtual Server (1.5 hours)

Day 6: IAM Deep Dive (1 hour)

Day 7: Week 1 Review & First Project (2 hours)

Week 2: Core Services Deep Dive (Days 8-14)

Day 8: Lambda - Serverless Functions (2 hours)

Day 9: RDS - Managed Database (2 hours)

Day 10: DynamoDB - NoSQL Database (1.5 hours)

Day 11-12: Build REST API (4 hours total)

Day 13: CloudWatch Monitoring (1.5 hours)

Day 14: Week 2 Review Project (2 hours)

Week 3: Real-World Projects (Days 15-21)

Days 15-17: URL Shortener (6 hours)

Days 18-20: File Upload Service (6 hours)

Day 21: Week 3 Review

Week 4: Production Best Practices (Days 22-30)

Days 22-24: Security Hardening

Days 25-27: CI/CD Pipeline

Days 28-29: Cost Optimization

Day 30: Certification Prep

After Day 30: Your Next Steps

Success Metrics

Abinesh S

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