Cloud Playground Limitations
AWS Cloud playground restrictions and limitations for safe learning
Why These Limitations?
These limitations are designed to ensure a safe, controlled learning environment while preventing accidental costs and maintaining platform stability. They allow you to learn real cloud concepts without the risks associated with production environments.
Cost Protection
Security
Performance
Cloud Service Limitations
Resource Limits
- Maximum 2 EC2 instances per playground
- Instance types limited to t3.micro, t3.small, t3.medium
- Maximum 20GB storage per playground
- No GPU instances available
- Maximum 2 EBS volumes per playground
Service Restrictions
- No IAM user/role creation or modification
- No billing or cost management access
- No organization management features
- No CloudFormation stack creation
- No Lambda function creation
- No S3 bucket creation (read-only access to demo buckets)
Network Limitations
- No VPC creation or modification
- No internet gateway creation
- No NAT gateway setup
- No custom security group creation
- No route table modifications
- Limited to demo VPC configurations
Database Restrictions
- No RDS instance creation
- No DynamoDB table creation
- No ElastiCache cluster creation
- No Redshift cluster creation
- Read-only access to demo databases
Security Limitations
- No KMS key creation or management
- No Secrets Manager access
- No Certificate Manager operations
- No WAF or Shield configuration
- No GuardDuty or Security Hub access
General Limitations
Session Duration
All playground sessions are limited to 1 hour with up to 2 extensions (3 hours total)
- •Automatic termination after session expiry
- •No manual session extension beyond limits
- •Data preservation for 24 hours after session end
Cost Protection
All playgrounds are isolated and cannot incur real AWS charges
- •No billing access or cost management
- •All resources are sandboxed
- •No real AWS account charges possible
Data Privacy
Your playground data is isolated and secure
- •No data sharing between users
- •Automatic data cleanup after session
- •No persistent data storage beyond session
What You Can Do
Learning Activities
- • Explore AWS services and features
- • Practice configuration and management
- • Test different instance types and configurations
- • Learn networking concepts and security
- • Experiment with storage options
Best Practices
- • Plan your session before starting
- • Use demo resources efficiently
- • Document your configurations
- • Practice security best practices
- • Learn cost optimization techniques
- • Understand service limitations
Recommendations
For Learning
- • Start with basic services and gradually explore advanced features
- • Use the demo resources provided to understand service capabilities
- • Practice with different configurations to understand trade-offs
- • Focus on understanding concepts rather than building production systems
- • Use the session time efficiently by planning your learning objectives
For Production
- • Use real AWS accounts for production workloads
- • Implement proper security and access controls
- • Set up billing alerts and cost monitoring
- • Use AWS Organizations for multi-account management
- • Follow AWS Well-Architected Framework principles
Ready to Start Learning?
Understanding these limitations helps you make the most of your learning experience.