Computer Clouding Course

Lesson 1 • Key Cloud Benefits and Risks

Surveys agility, scalability, reliability, and common risks. Prepares students to make balanced cloud adoption arguments.

Lesson 2 • Cloud Deployment Types

Covers public, private, hybrid, and multi-cloud deployments. Students match deployment type to organizational requirements.

Lesson 3 • What Cloud Computing Is

Defines cloud computing, its origin, and key characteristics. Grounds all subsequent topics in a shared conceptual vocabulary.

Lesson 4 • Core Cloud Economics

Explains CapEx vs. OpEx, pay-as-you-go pricing, and cost drivers. Connects financial models to cloud adoption decisions.

Lesson 1 • Data Center Fundamentals

Describes physical components: servers, networking, and storage racks. Anchors virtual concepts in tangible hardware reality.

Lesson 2 • Virtualization Concepts

Explains hypervisors, virtual machines, and resource abstraction. Directly enables understanding of IaaS provisioning.

Lesson 3 • Cloud Networking Fundamentals

Explains virtual networks, subnets, gateways, and DNS in cloud environments. Connects physical networking knowledge to virtual topology design.

Lesson 4 • Containerization Essentials

Introduces containers, images, and container runtimes versus VMs. Prepares students for cloud-native application deployment.

Lesson 1 • Using the Cloud CLI and SDKs

Introduces command-line interfaces and software development kits for cloud automation. Shifts students from GUI-only to scripted resource management.

Lesson 2 • Configuring Virtual Networks

Guides creation of virtual networks, subnets, and security groups. Builds practical networking skills on top of conceptual foundations.

Lesson 3 • Provisioning Compute Resources

Covers instance types, sizing, and launch configurations. Students create and connect to virtual machines in a cloud environment.

Lesson 4 • Managing Cloud Storage Services

Demonstrates creating buckets, volumes, and file shares. Reinforces storage architecture by applying it to real provisioning tasks.

Lesson 1 • Identity and Access Concepts

Defines users, groups, roles, and policies in cloud IAM. Establishes the vocabulary needed for all access control tasks.

Lesson 2 • Authorization and Policy Design

Teaches policy syntax, effect statements, and condition keys. Students write and test IAM policies for real resource scenarios.

Lesson 3 • Authentication Mechanisms

Covers passwords, API keys, MFA, and certificate-based auth. Students configure secure authentication for human and machine identities.

Lesson 4 • Role-Based Access Control

Explains RBAC patterns, role assumption, and cross-account access. Enables secure delegation without sharing long-term credentials.

Lesson 1 • Shared Responsibility Model in Depth

Maps provider vs. customer security duties across service models. Prevents security gaps caused by misunderstood ownership.

Lesson 2 • Data Encryption in the Cloud

Explains encryption at rest, in transit, and key management services. Students configure encryption for storage and communication channels.

Lesson 3 • Security Compliance and Governance

Covers compliance frameworks, security benchmarks, and automated policy enforcement. Students align cloud environments with regulatory requirements.

Lesson 4 • Network Security Controls

Covers firewalls, network ACLs, DDoS protection, and private endpoints. Students layer network defenses around cloud workloads.

Lesson 1 • High Availability Architecture

Teaches availability zones, region pairs, and multi-AZ deployments. Students design systems that survive single-zone failures.

Lesson 2 • Load Balancing in the Cloud

Explains application, network, and global load balancers and their routing algorithms. Students distribute traffic for performance and fault tolerance.

Lesson 3 • Auto Scaling Configuration

Covers auto scaling groups, launch templates, and scaling policies. Students configure dynamic scaling that responds to real demand.

Lesson 4 • Disaster Recovery Planning

Covers RTO, RPO, backup strategies, and DR patterns from pilot light to active-active. Students select and implement appropriate DR tiers.

Lesson 1 • Cost Visibility and Tagging

Covers billing dashboards, cost allocation tags, and account structures. Students attribute spending to teams, projects, and environments.

Lesson 2 • Rightsizing and Waste Elimination

Identifies oversized resources, idle assets, and orphaned storage. Students reduce waste without degrading application performance.

Lesson 3 • Budgets, Forecasts, and Alerts

Teaches budget creation, spend forecasting, and alert thresholds. Students prevent bill shock through proactive financial controls.

Lesson 4 • FinOps Culture and Practices

Introduces FinOps principles, team collaboration, and continuous optimization cycles. Students embed cost accountability into engineering workflows.

Lesson 1 • Architecture Review and Documentation

Covers architecture review boards, decision records, and diagram standards. Students produce professional-grade design artifacts.

Lesson 2 • Designing for Performance Efficiency

Covers caching, CDN, database selection, and compute right-sizing for performance. Students eliminate bottlenecks through architectural choices.

Lesson 3 • Infrastructure as Code Principles

Explains declarative templates, state management, and idempotent deployments. Students automate repeatable infrastructure provisioning.

Lesson 4 • Microservices and Serverless Patterns

Introduces microservice decomposition, event-driven design, and serverless functions. Students apply modern patterns to reduce operational overhead.