Hands-On Lab: Building High-Performing & Scalable AWS Network Architectures

Prerequisites

Before starting this lab, ensure you have the following ready to successfully deploy a high-performing AWS network architecture:

• AWS Account: An active AWS account with Administrator or PowerUser access.
• AWS CLI: Installed and configured locally (aws configure).
• IAM Permissions: Privileges to create and manage VPCs, Subnets, Internet Gateways, Application Load Balancers (ALB), and CloudFront distributions.
• Knowledge Base: Basic understanding of IPv4 CIDR blocks, subnetting, and AWS Regions.

Learning Objectives

By completing this 30-minute guided lab, you will be able to:

1. Create a Multi-Tier Network Topology: Provision a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) with public subnets spanning multiple Availability Zones for high availability.
2. Deploy Edge Networking: Configure Amazon CloudFront to cache content closer to end-users, dramatically reducing latency.
3. Implement Load Balancing: Provision an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to dynamically distribute incoming web traffic across multiple network paths.
4. Mitigate Bottlenecks: Understand how combining an edge content delivery network (CDN) with scalable local routing satisfies the SAA-C03 "Design High-Performing Architectures" domain.

Architecture Overview

This lab builds a highly scalable web-tier architecture. End-user traffic hits the edge network first. If the content isn't cached, it traverses the AWS backbone to an Application Load Balancer, which distributes traffic across two different Availability Zones.

Here is how traffic behaves under high load:

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: Create a Custom VPC

First, we lay the foundation of our high-performing network by creating an isolated Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

📸 Screenshot: Note the VpcId from the JSON output (e.g., vpc-0123456789abcdef0). You will need this for the next steps.

▶Console alternative

1. Navigate to the VPC Console.
2. Click Create VPC.
3. Select VPC only.
4. Name tag: brainybee-lab-vpc.
5. IPv4 CIDR block: 10.0.0.0/16.
6. Click Create VPC.

Step 2: Provision Public Subnets in Multiple AZs

An Application Load Balancer requires at least two public subnets in different Availability Zones (AZs) for high availability and performance.

[!TIP] Replace <YOUR_REGION>a and <YOUR_REGION>b with your actual region (e.g., us-east-1a and us-east-1b).

▶Console alternative

1. In the VPC Console, go to Subnets > Create subnet.
2. Select your brainybee-lab-vpc.
3. Add Subnet 1: Name brainybee-public-subnet-a, AZ us-east-1a, CIDR 10.0.1.0/24.
4. Add Subnet 2: Name brainybee-public-subnet-b, AZ us-east-1b, CIDR 10.0.2.0/24.
5. Click Create subnets.

Step 3: Attach an Internet Gateway

To make our subnets truly public (allowing the ALB to accept internet traffic), we need an Internet Gateway (IGW).

▶Console alternative

1. Go to Internet Gateways > Create internet gateway.
2. Name it brainybee-lab-igw and create.
3. Select the IGW, click Actions > Attach to VPC.
4. Select your brainybee-lab-vpc and attach.

Step 4: Provision an Application Load Balancer

Now we create an ALB to automatically distribute incoming traffic. ALBs scale elastically to handle high performance demands.

📸 Screenshot: The output will contain a DNSName. Copy this! It is the endpoint you will map to CloudFront.

▶Console alternative

1. Navigate to the EC2 Console, scroll down to Load Balancers.
2. Click Create Load Balancer, select Application Load Balancer.
3. Name it brainybee-lab-alb. Ensure scheme is Internet-facing.
4. In Network mapping, select your VPC and check both AZs and subnets created in Step 2.
5. Select the default security group, and skip listener configuration for this lab.
6. Click Create load balancer.

Step 5: Accelerate with CloudFront Edge Networking

To meet the exam objective of determining scalable network architectures, we use an edge networking service. CloudFront will cache content closer to users globally.

[!NOTE] CloudFront distributions can take 5-10 minutes to deploy fully. The status will show as InProgress.

▶Console alternative

1. Navigate to the CloudFront Console.
2. Click Create Distribution.
3. In the Origin domain field, paste your ALB's DNS Name.
4. Under Default cache behavior, set Viewer protocol policy to HTTP and HTTPS.
5. Scroll down and click Create Distribution.

Checkpoints

Verify your high-performing architecture is configured correctly using these checkpoints:

• VPC Verification: Run aws ec2 describe-vpcs --filters "Name=tag:Name,Values=brainybee-lab-vpc" and ensure the state is available.
• ALB State Check: Run aws elbv2 describe-load-balancers --names brainybee-lab-alb. The State.Code should be active.
• CloudFront DNS Resolution: Once CloudFront status is Deployed, run nslookup <YOUR_CLOUDFRONT_DOMAIN.cloudfront.net>. You should see IP addresses corresponding to global edge locations, proving your network is now distributed.

Troubleshooting

Clean-Up / Teardown

[!WARNING] Remember to run the teardown commands to avoid ongoing charges. CloudFront and Application Load Balancers incur hourly costs even if no traffic is routed through them.

Execute the following commands in order to destroy the provisioned lab environment. Note: You must wait for the CloudFront distribution to be disabled before you can delete it.

[!TIP] To easily clean up CloudFront via the console: Go to the CloudFront console, select your distribution, click Disable, wait ~5 minutes for the status to update, then click Delete.