Tutorial / Cram Notes

AWS Organizations is a service that allows you to consolidate and manage multiple AWS accounts within a central location. With AWS Organizations, you can set up a hierarchy of Organizational Units (OUs) that reflect your company’s structure and manage policies across accounts more efficiently.

Centralized Control

AWS Organizations enables centralized control over all the accounts in your organization, allowing for consistent policy application, simplified billing, and enhanced security. For example, you can use service control policies (SCPs) to define what services and actions are allowed or denied for all accounts or specific OUs within your organization.

Example Use Case – Multi-account VPC Strategy

You might have multiple AWS accounts for different environments (development, staging, production) or departments. Organizing these accounts under a single AWS Organization allows you to streamline networking configurations such as:

  • Sharing Amazon VPC subnets across accounts using AWS Resource Access Manager.
  • Centralized management of VPC peering connections.
  • Implementing consistent VPC endpoint policies across multiple accounts.

AWS Resource Access Manager for Resource Sharing

AWS Resource Access Manager (AWS RAM) enables you to share AWS resources with any AWS account or within your organization. Instead of creating duplicate resources, you can share existing resources centrally, leading to cost savings and operational simplicity.

Multi-account Transit Gateway with AWS RAM

Transit Gateways act as a hub that controls how traffic is routed among connected VPCs and other services. When used in conjunction with AWS RAM, a Transit Gateway can be shared across multiple accounts, avoiding the need to create individual transit gateways for each account.

Example Steps for Sharing a Transit Gateway:

  1. Create a Transit Gateway in a central account.
  2. Use AWS RAM to share the Transit Gateway with other accounts or OUs in your organization.
  3. Other accounts accept the invitation and can then attach their VPCs to the shared Transit Gateway.

AWS Direct Connect Sharing

Similarly, AWS Direct Connect connections can be shared across multiple accounts using AWS RAM. This means you can procure a Direct Connect connection in one account and then share it, thereby centralizing the connection and reducing costs.

Route 53 Resolver Rules Sharing

AWS RAM also enables you to share Route 53 resolver rules across accounts in your organization, simplifying DNS resolution for private domains across your AWS environment.

Resource Access Scenarios and Permissions

With these services, you must carefully plan access permissions. For instance, when sharing a Transit Gateway, you configure which accounts can attach their VPCs and which routes they are allowed to use.

Key Permissions for Sharing Resources:

  • Share Creator: The account that holds and shares the resource, setting permissions for others.
  • Share Receiver: The account that receives access to the shared resource and uses it within their environment.

Summary

By leveraging AWS Organizations and AWS Resource Access Manager, you can manage your network infrastructure across multiple AWS accounts more effectively, providing the following benefits:

  • Central management of network resources such as Transit Gateways, Direct Connect, VPCs, and Route 53.
  • Simplified billing and policy administration across accounts with defined OUs and SCPs.
  • Enhanced security through consistent resource sharing without duplication, following the principle of least privilege.

Understanding and applying these concepts can set candidates on the path to success in the AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty (ANS-C01) exam, allowing for a comprehensive multi-account networking strategy that aligns with AWS best practices.

Practice Test with Explanation

True or False: AWS Organizations allows you to centrally manage billing; control access, compliance, and security; and share resources across your AWS accounts.

  • (A) True
  • (B) False

Answer: A

Explanation: AWS Organizations enables you to centrally manage billing, access, compliance, and security, besides the ability to share resources across multiple AWS accounts.

In AWS Organizations, what does Service Control Policy (SCP) enable you to do?

  • (A) Limit the maximum number of AWS accounts you can have in an organization
  • (B) Apply permissions to all users and roles in an organization’s accounts
  • (C) Monitor resource usage and API activity within your AWS accounts
  • (D) Automatically replicate data across AWS Regions

Answer: B

Explanation: SCPs enable you to apply permission policies to all users and roles in an organization’s accounts, thereby controlling their AWS service actions.

What primary benefit does AWS Resource Access Manager (AWS RAM) provide?

  • (A) It simplifies resource sharing across AWS accounts
  • (B) It deploys resources across multiple AWS regions
  • (C) It automates the backup process of AWS resources
  • (D) It helps in migrating resources from on-premises to AWS

Answer: A

Explanation: AWS RAM simplifies resource sharing across AWS accounts, allowing you to share AWS Transit Gateways, Subnets, AWS License Manager configurations, and more.

True or False: You need to create new resources in each AWS account when sharing them with AWS RAM.

  • (A) True
  • (B) False

Answer: B

Explanation: AWS RAM allows you to share existing resources with multiple AWS accounts, which helps to avoid the need to create duplicate resources in each account.

Which AWS service can you use to create a centralized router in a multi-account environment?

  • (A) AWS Transit Gateway
  • (B) AWS Direct Connect
  • (C) Amazon Route 53
  • (D) Amazon VPC

Answer: A

Explanation: AWS Transit Gateway acts as a centralized router in a multi-account environment, allowing different VPCs and on-premises networks to communicate with each other.

When using AWS Direct Connect, what can you use to partition a single physical connection into multiple virtual interfaces?

  • (A) Transit Virtual Interfaces (Transit VIFs)
  • (B) Direct Connect Gateways
  • (C) Virtual Private Gateways (VGW)
  • (D) Link Aggregation Groups (LAG)

Answer: D

Explanation: Link Aggregation Groups (LAG) allow you to partition a single physical AWS Direct Connect connection into multiple virtual interfaces (VIFs), facilitating different virtual connections over the same physical link.

True or False: AWS RAM is not required for sharing Amazon VPC subnets with other AWS accounts.

  • (A) True
  • (B) False

Answer: B

Explanation: AWS RAM is indeed required when you want to share subnets in an Amazon VPC with other AWS accounts or within your AWS Organization.

In the context of AWS Organizations, what is the term used to describe the method of removing an account from an organization?

  • (A) Detach
  • (B) Release
  • (C) Leave
  • (D) Exit

Answer: A

Explanation: In AWS Organizations, the term “Detach” is used when removing an account from an organization to ensure that it no longer applies the policies and settings of that organization.

What is one of the limitations when using AWS RAM?

  • (A) It cannot share resources that are already shared by another service
  • (B) It doesn’t support the sharing of Amazon EC2 instances
  • (C) It is only available in the US East (N. Virginia) region
  • (D) It can only share resources within the same AWS Organization

Answer: B

Explanation: AWS RAM does not support the sharing of Amazon EC2 instances; instead, it enables the sharing of network-related resources like Transit Gateways, Direct Connect Gateways, and route tables.

True or False: AWS RAM allows you to share resources publicly with any AWS account or through the AWS Marketplace.

  • (A) True
  • (B) False

Answer: B

Explanation: AWS RAM does not allow public sharing of resources; it is designed for you to share resources only with specific AWS accounts or within your AWS Organization.

Can Amazon Route 53 be used to manage DNS records for your AWS resources across multiple accounts?

  • (A) Yes, but only within the same AWS Region
  • (B) Yes, Route 53 supports cross-account DNS management
  • (C) No, Route 53 DNS management is limited to a single AWS account
  • (D) No, Route 53 can only manage DNS records for Amazon S3 buckets

Answer: B

Explanation: Amazon Route 53 can be used to manage DNS records for AWS resources across multiple accounts, providing a central place for DNS configuration and management.

True or False: When using a multi-account AWS Transit Gateway, network traffic is automatically encrypted.

  • (A) True
  • (B) False

Answer: B

Explanation: By default, AWS Transit Gateway does not encrypt network traffic. For encryption, the traffic needs to traverse a VPN connection, or you must implement encryption at a different layer (such as the application layer).

Interview Questions

Interview Question 1:

AWS Organizations is a service that allows you to consolidate and manage multiple AWS accounts centrally. It provides a way to create groups of accounts and apply policies to those groups for governance. With AWS Organizations, you can automate account creation, set up consolidated billing, and enforce compliance and security policies across your AWS accounts.

Interview Question 2:

AWS Resource Access Manager (AWS RAM) enables you to share AWS resources such as Amazon VPC subnets, AWS Transit Gateways, and AWS Route tables with other AWS accounts. The benefits include avoiding duplicate resources, saving costs, simplifying the management of shared resources, and enabling a centralized governance model while maintaining the ability to operate within a multi-account AWS environment.

Interview Question 3:

The primary use cases for utilizing a multi-account strategy with AWS Transit Gateway include network isolation for security or organizational boundaries, centralized management and monitoring, simplified inter-account connectivity, cost allocation, and limits exposure to account-level failures or breaches.

Interview Question 4:

With a multi-account environment, AWS Transit Gateway acts as a central hub that manages traffic routing among multiple VPCs and on-premises networks. It simplifies network architecture by allowing you to connect all your VPCs and branch networks to a single gateway and manage routing using route tables, without requiring individual peering connections between each VPC.

Interview Question 5:

AWS Direct Connect provides a dedicated network connection from on-premises to AWS. In a multi-account setup, it can help reduce costs, improve bandwidth throughput, and offer more consistent network performance compared to standard internet-based connections. Moreover, it supports AWS Transit Gateway to facilitate private, direct connections to multiple AWS accounts through a single connection.

Interview Question 6:

Amazon Route 53 can be used in multi-account architectures to provide scalable DNS and domain name registration services. You can manage routing policies to direct traffic to different AWS accounts based on geographic location, latency, or other criteria. This ensures high availability and fault-tolerance across your accounts.

Interview Question 7:

Service Control Policies (SCPs) are a type of policy that can be used within AWS Organizations to manage permissions and control the actions that users and roles can perform across multiple AWS accounts. SCPs help ensure compliance with organizational policies and prevent actions that might violate security or operational best practices.

Interview Question 8:

To connect VPCs across different AWS accounts, you can use VPC peering, AWS Transit Gateway, or AWS RAM for resource sharing. VPC peering is used for direct network connections between two VPCs, while AWS Transit Gateway and AWS RAM enable you to share resources like a Transit Gateway to connect multiple VPCs without the need for individual peering relationships.

Interview Question 9:

AWS Organizations assists with cost management by offering consolidated billing, which aggregates the usage from all accounts in the organization to help you take advantage of volume discounts. Additionally, you can set up budget alerts and leverage cost allocation tags to track expenditures by department, project, or other criteria across your AWS environment.

Interview Question 10:

When sharing a Transit Gateway across AWS accounts using AWS RAM, you open the potential for network reachability between accounts. This increased connectivity can be beneficial but must be carefully managed to avoid unintended access. Proper security groups, network ACLs, and route table configurations should be in place to ensure that only the required traffic is allowed between accounts, maintaining a strong security posture.

Interview Question 11:

Some limitations with AWS RAM include the inability to share resources with AWS accounts outside of your organization if they are not part of an AWS Organizations structure with “all features” enabled. Additionally, not all resource types are shareable with AWS RAM, and there may be region-specific constraints or feature limitations on the shared resources. It’s also important to understand that sharing doesn’t extend the permissions for resource modification unless explicitly granted.

Interview Question 12:

To set up a shared VPC using AWS RAM, first ensure that the accounts are part of the same AWS Organizations, with sharing enabled. Then, from the owner account, create a Resource Share in AWS RAM and add the desired VPC or subnets to it. Specify the accounts or organizational units you want to share with and send the invitation. The receiving accounts need to accept the invitation to access the shared resources. Finally, set up the necessary permissions for the resources so the participant accounts can use them appropriately.

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Sam Molstad
5 months ago

AWS Organizations and AWS RAM have been a game changer for managing multiple AWS accounts. The ability to share resources like Transit Gateway and Direct Connect is invaluable.

Kathrin Nicolas
5 months ago

Great post on AWS Organizations and AWS RAM! Very insightful for the ANS-C01 exam preparation.

Ievfimiya Davidchenko
6 months ago

This blog is just what I needed for my exam prep. AWS Organizations and RAM are complex but crucial topics.

Emeli Jerstad
7 months ago

Can anyone explain how to use AWS RAM for sharing a Transit Gateway across multiple accounts?

Einar Fure
7 months ago

Thanks for making this blog! It has simplified many concepts for me.

Emmanuel Holberg
6 months ago

How does AWS Organizations help in managing multiple VPCs more efficiently?

Rita Johnson
6 months ago

The diagram explaining multi-account Direct Connect setup was very helpful. Thank you!

Yasemin Sommer
6 months ago

I think there is a typo in the section discussing Route 53.

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