AWS Tutorial for Beginners – Step-by-Step Guide to Cloud Computing

About this video

Beginner AWS tutorial by Mike, deploying a Node.js website for Mike’s Macaroon Market that needs compute, image storage and a database. After creating a free AWS account with email verification, password, card and phone verification and free basic support, he chooses the US East 1 (North Virginia) region, avoiding US West 1 (Northern California) for higher cost. In EC2 he launches an instance with default Amazon Linux and default free-tier-eligible type, proceeds without a key pair, keeps 8 GB default storage, and edits the Launch Wizard 1 security group to add inbound port 8080 for all IPs because the app uses 8080. In S3 he creates a public bucket using hyphens in the name, unchecks Block all public access, adds tags, pastes a bucket policy allowing public read, and creates a root access key and secret (noting the safer separate-user warning). In RDS he uses Easy create, Postgres, smallest free-tier size, an AWS-generated password, and Connect to an EC2 compute resource. Finally he connects via EC2 Instance Connect, installs git and Node.js with dnf, clones the code from GitHub, sets environment variables for S3 and RDS, runs npm install, starts the app as a background job with & and disown so it survives closing SSH, and browses to the instance IP on port 8080.

Key takeaways

• Structure an AWS site as EC2 for the web server, S3 for files/images, and RDS for the database, staying in free-tier defaults where possible
• Choose region deliberately, e.g. US East 1 (North Virginia); US West 1 is noted as higher cost, and regions vary in services and pricing
• Open the app’s port in the EC2 security group — 8080 for all IPs here — instead of using default port 80
• For public S3 images, uncheck Block all public access and add a bucket policy for public read, then create an access key and save the secret immediately as it cannot be seen again
• Run the web app as a background job with & and disown so it keeps running after the SSH/EC2 Instance Connect session closes, and set a spending limit to avoid surprise bills

Episode details: published April 22, 2025 · 21:52 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Kevin Stratvert’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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