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Welcome, students — and future Solutions Architects. This lesson walks through KodeKloud Playgrounds, a convenient, sandboxed environment you can use to practice AWS and other cloud infrastructure skills without touching your personal accounts or incurring charges. Playgrounds are ideal for practicing topics that commonly appear on the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam and for exploring services hands‑on. Visit the KodeKloud Playgrounds at kodekloud.com/playgrounds to see available environments for cloud providers, Linux, Kubernetes, containers, HashiCorp tooling, observability tools, and even machine learning. What you’ll find on the AWS playground page:
  • A list of supported AWS services for that session.
  • Quick start notes, usage limits, and troubleshooting guidance.
  • Region availability and session duration information.
A webpage screenshot showing a bulleted list of AWS services with several lines highlighted in blue. On the right is a "Launch now" button and a small circular video overlay of a person, with browser tabs visible along the top.
Why this matters: most services listed (with the exception of developer/CI/CD services that begin with “Code”, such as CodePipeline and CodeDeploy) are relevant to the Solutions Architect exam. Even services seen more often in operational contexts (for example, CloudShell) are useful to understand. Use the supported-services list to plan labs and avoid permission surprises.
Playground sessions are time-limited (typically around three hours). Use them to experiment and learn — they are sandboxed so you won’t incur charges on your own accounts.
Getting started — launching a playground session
  1. Click Launch Now, then Start Lab.
  2. Wait for provisioning to finish. The session page will display temporary credentials and a direct console link.
  3. Use the provided IAM user sign-in page (the account ID field is usually pre-filled) to log in:
    • Paste the supplied account ID if required.
    • Paste the provided password.
    • Click Sign In to open the AWS Management Console.
The playground gives you an IAM user and temporary credentials so you can begin exploring without manual account setup. Once signed in, you can experiment with many core AWS services listed for that session: EC2, RDS, S3, ECR, EKS, SNS, and more. Pay attention to the region selector in the console when testing region‑specific features — the playground notes which regions are available.
A screenshot of the AWS EC2 console showing the Resources/Launch instance panels with the region selector open (listing regions like US East and Asia Pacific). A small circular webcam overlay of a person appears in the bottom-right.
Example: launching an EC2 instance (recommended lab workflow)
  • Open the EC2 console and click Launch Instance.
  • Add a Name tag (for example, “my-test-server”) to help identify the instance.
  • Choose an AMI. Amazon Linux is a common default for labs; Ubuntu, RHEL, and others may also be available depending on the session.
A screenshot of the AWS EC2 "Launch an instance" web console showing the Name and tags section, Application and OS Images (AMIs) options, and a Summary panel on the right. A small circular video overlay of a person appears in the bottom-right corner.
  • Select an instance type. Playground sessions typically include T2 and T3 families (and sometimes T4g) with sizes limited by session policies. For lightweight tests, choose t2.micro or t3.micro if available; pick a small/medium instance if you need more CPU or memory.
A screenshot of a KodeKloud support webpage showing a "Virtual Machines" section with a table of VM types, CPU and RAM specs, plus a search bar and left-side navigation. There's also a small circular webcam overlay in the bottom-right corner.
  • Create or select a key pair for SSH access. The playground typically requires key-pair authentication:
    • Choose the PEM format for SSH from Linux/macOS.
    • Choose PPK for PuTTY on Windows.
    • Download and secure the private key immediately — you’ll need it to SSH into the instance.
The screenshot shows the AWS EC2 "Create key pair" dialog with fields for the key pair name, key type (RSA or ED25519), and private key file format (.pem or .ppk). A small video overlay of a person speaking appears in the bottom-right corner.
  • Configure networking (VPC/subnet). If no custom VPC exists, the console can create a default VPC and subnets automatically.
  • Adjust storage: set the root volume type (for example, gp3 or gp2) and choose an appropriate size.
  • Configure a security group to permit required traffic (for example, SSH from your IP). In playgrounds you may see examples that allow broader access for convenience — avoid replicating that in production.
  • Review settings and click Launch.
After the instance is active, SSH to it using the downloaded private key and the instance’s public IP (if a public IP was assigned). You can also extend labs to other supported services (RDS, SNS, S3, ECR, EKS, etc.) to build multi-service scenarios that reflect real exam-style architectures.
Playgrounds are convenient for experimentation, but treat the environment like a real account: protect private keys, restrict security group rules, and avoid leaving sensitive data exposed. Do not use playground credentials for production access.
Quick reference — common playground tasks vs. exam relevance Links and references Use the playgrounds to gain hands‑on experience with the core services and workflows that appear on the Solutions Architect exam. If a service is listed in the playground and you’re unsure about it, spin up a short lab session to practice until the concepts click. Thanks for following this lesson.

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