CST489 Week 9

What project milestones did you accomplish this week?

This week I successfully completed the AWS Cloud Practitioner course on Amazon as well as the Agile Project Management course. In addition to completing the coursework, I applied the AWS concepts I learned by deploying an older project to the cloud in order to test and reinforce my new skills. The site is currently being hosted at:
http://54.177.87.154:3000/

For this project, I built and deployed the application using several AWS services. I created a Docker image of my project and stored it in Amazon ECR (Elastic Container Registry). My ECS service pulls this image and runs the containerized application. The project’s data is stored in an Amazon RDS MySQL database, which handles the backend data storage. I also configured an S3 bucket to store static assets such as pet photos, CSS files, and JavaScript files. Additionally, I set up security groups to control network traffic and manage access to the different services.

The general flow of the application works as follows:

  1. A user visits the website
    http://54.177.87.154:3000/

  2. The request is sent to the ECS container running the application

  3. The container runs the Pet-Pals application

  4. The application queries the RDS MySQL database for data

  5. Static assets such as images are retrieved from the S3 bucket

  6. The website loads and displays the content to the user

This deployment helped me better understand how AWS services work together in a real-world cloud architecture.

What is your plan for next week?

Since I am currently on track with my AWS and Agile coursework and slightly ahead in my software engineering course, I plan to dedicate approximately 20–30 hours next week to the NVIDIA RAG course. My goal is to deepen my understanding of retrieval-augmented generation and how it can be applied in AI-powered applications.

What challenges, if any, are you currently facing in project development? Do you need instructor assistance?

At this point, the only remaining step for the AWS Cloud Practitioner course is completing the certification exam. However, I have a question regarding certification requirements. For the Google Agile Project Management course, I am unsure whether a formal certificate is required or if proof of completion is sufficient.

Additionally, I originally believed that completing the AWS course would provide a voucher for the Cloud Practitioner certification exam, but it appears that promotion has ended. I would like clarification on whether proof of course completion is acceptable, or if I should still pursue obtaining the official AWS certification.

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