Welcome to Cloud computing fundamentals. This module aims to give you an opportunity to explore cloud computing concepts and prepare you with a view towards a career in cloud computing technologies. As well as providing you with an opportunity to gain hands-on experience with a cloud provider platform. The learning path aims to contribute towards vendor certification with Amazon Web Services (AWS), and some of the content of this module has been curated by AWS.
When it comes to the term ‘cloud computing’, many people don’t entirely understand what that means. There is a persistent notion that the cloud is a vague term and can be used to describe so many different areas of computing that people struggle to comprehend what it is and how it works.
By the time you have completed the learning, practical tasks, and assessments for this course, that veil of confusion will be lifted. You will see that the entire topic comes down to the location and control of IT services like networking, computing, security, and storage.
The services listed above are traditionally offered via hardware that the organisation owns and deploys from a location on the business premises. As the business grows, networking resources are added, which means they need to purchase additional hardware to meet higher capacity. If the increase in demand is only temporary, the company is stuck with more hardware than it needs.
Traditionally, storage and compute processing also happens on-premises and are also at risk of challenges of scale. In addition, they are exposed to disaster and security risks by having all hardware located on a single site.
Using cloud services mitigates or eliminates most of those risks. “Fortunately, cloud-based servers offer the potential for unlimited resources and storage space. Therefore, your business can continue to expand. You can scale without fear of knowing how your server will manage and store extra data.” – MicroPro.com1
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud computing platform provided by Amazon that offers a range of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and packaged-software-as-a-service (SaaS) services, allowing organizations to access compute power, database storage and content delivery. It launched its first web services in 2002 and its IaaS services in 2006, and was one of the pioneers of the pay-as-you-go cloud computing model.
The following video from TechTarget provides a broad overview of what AWS is.
To learn more about AWS, consider reading the techTarget article linked below.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the largest cloud computing platform, offering 200+ universally featured resources, from infrastructure to machine learning. These combinable systems provide maximum usability and are designed expressly for the optimization of your application’s performance through content delivery features, data storage, and more.
The following link provides a list and description of the Top 25 AWS services.
The following video from Simplilearn gives an overview of some key AWS services.
companies choose Amazon Web Services (AWS) for many different reasons, including offering businesses flexible computing environment, that are cost-effective and scalable. companies looking for excellent value often find it with AWS because you only pay for what you use.
Take a look at this list of Fortune 500 companies currently using AWS.
- Netflix
- Kellogg’s
- Pfizer
- McDonald’s
- Adobe
To read more about how these and other companies are leveraging AWS to deliver and maintain their products and services follow the link below.
This module is presented in three parts.
Networking Fundamentals
Topic 2, Networking Fundamentals, is a refresher on critical networking concepts you must understand to become competent with the processes and procedures of cloud computing.
AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials
In topic 3, you will be directed to the AWS skillbuilber learning platform to complete the AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials course.
This course contains 11 modules and will build your AWS Cloud knowledge by learning about AWS Cloud concepts, AWS services, security, architecture, pricing, and support.
When you have completed the learning at AWS, you will return here.
Practical activities
With the knowledge and experience gained from instruction at AWS, you will return here to complete topic 4, Practical Activities.
These topics and learning opportunities have been curated to provide the experience necessary to achieve the stated learning outcomes of the module.
On successful completion of this course, students are able to:
- Identify and classify various cloud services in order to recommend a suitable business model.
- Analyse various policies and procedures of a cloud service including but not limited to security, governance, privacy, cost management and service level agreements.
- Demonstrate specialized technical or theoretical knowledge of cloud computing and explain it’s role in business decision making
