Game migration to the cloud is accelerating. To operate efficiently on AWS, game creators need to understand the principles of modern, cloud-native application design. Containers are a key component of cloud-native implementations. However, while game creators want to adopt containerization, they are not clear how to go about it. What are the benefits and challenges they will encounter? What are key game-specific use cases and how do they design solutions? What are the design considerations, patterns, and best practices for containerizing game workloads? What AWS container services are available? Which services should they use, and under what circumstances?
The AWS for Games Containers Principles curriculum will answer the questions previously proposed and provide game creators with an understanding of solution design principles for running game workloads in containers on AWS.
This curriculum consists of three discrete courses.
These courses are:
- Course 1: Introduction to Game Hosting Using Containers
- Course 2: Containers for Game Servers
- Course 3: Containers for Game Services, Deployment, and Management
Completing all three is necessary to earn credit for this curriculum. You can also focus on only what you need and do not need to complete all three.
- Curriculum level: Intermediate
- Curriculum Duration: 3 hours and 55 minutes.
Activities
This curriculum includes video presentations, e-learning interactions, and knowledge checks.
Curriculum objectives
In these courses, you will learn to:
- Explain the business and technical value of developing games workloads using containers.
- Identify the key use cases, benefits, challenges, and considerations of operating containerized games on AWS.
- Determine which AWS container service best fits a given use case.
- Identify differentiating design considerations for container-based game server architectures using AWS container services.
- Recognize AWS architecture patterns and best practices for containerized game server architectures.
Intended audience
This curriculum is intended for infrastructure and operations teams, developers, and producers who plan to use containers on AWS for game development.
Prerequisites
We recommend that attendees of this curriculum have the following:
- Basic computer networking familiarity.
- Understanding of Docker and Kubernetes.
- Basic familiarity with Amazon Web Services (AWS).
- Understanding of virtualization.
- Some familiarity with Linux is helpful but not required.
Curriculum outline
The curriculum contains three self-contained courses that can be completed in any order and used as a reference as needed.
Course 1: Introduction to Game Hosting Using Containers (45 minutes)
- Lesson 1: How to Use This Course
- Lesson 2: Overview
- Lesson 3: AWS Container Services and Considerations
- Lesson 4: Choosing the Right Container Services for Your Game
- Lesson 5: Review
- Lesson 6: Course Assessment
- Lesson 7: Next Steps
Course 2: Containers for Game Servers (1 hour and 25 minutes)
- Lesson 1: How to Use This Course
- Lesson 2: Overview
- Lesson 3: Containers for Game Servers
- Lesson 4: Review
- Lesson 5: Course Assessment
- Lesson 6: Next Steps
Course 3: Containers for Game Services, Deployment, and Management (1 hour and 45 minutes)
- Lesson 1: How to Use This Course
- Lesson 2: Overview
- Lesson 3: Containers for Game Services
- Lesson 4: Deployment, Management, and Orchestration
- Lesson 5: Review
- Lesson 6: Course Assessment
- Lesson 7: Next Steps
