Prerequisites to Learn Cloud Computing (AWS, Azure & Google)

Explore model server hardware fundamentals, including server basics, form factors, architecture, components, hardware identification and management tools, maintenance, updates, capacity planning, procurement (physical or virtual), and lifecycle management.

Understand servers as durable hardware with redundancy, hot swap and hot add capabilities, delivering high uptime, scalability, and performance through raid, multiple cores, and expandable storage.

Trace compute evolution from rack servers and blade systems to converged and hyper-converged infrastructure, virtualization, Docker containers, Kubernetes, and serverless offerings across AWS, Azure, and Google.

Compare rack-mountable servers and blade systems within data centers, focusing on enclosures, chassis, scalability, maintenance, cooling, and cabling efficiency.

Explore how server architecture evolves from symmetric multiprocessing to NUMA, detailing local vs remote memory access, memory bottlenecks, and how virtualization and cloud infrastructure optimize NUMA scalability.

Explore major server components, including motherboards, processors, memory, and storage, and learn how processor models, core types, memory speeds, and raid configurations impact cloud capacity and performance.

Compare servers to desktops by explaining their uptime, reliability, availability, and scalability for enterprise sites, while noting redundant and hot-swappable components.

Gather server hardware details—processor model and sockets, drive bays, and expansion cards—for capacity planning and licensing, using msinfo32 or cpac to reveal memory, raid controllers, and nics.

Learn to use remote server management tools from Dell, HP, IBM, and Cisco to monitor hardware health, configure BIOS and RAID, and install the OS via browser interfaces.

Maintain current BIOS, firmware, and drivers to streamline hardware support and troubleshooting with vendors, preventing downtime and outages.

Plan and test firmware, bios, and driver updates with an identical test environment to mirror production, or, if unavailable, test on primary and secondary servers and schedule weekends for recovery.

Learn to build a compelling technical and business justification for a new server by analyzing performance metrics, aging, failures, and their impact on availability and revenue.

Consolidate servers to reduce sprawl, capex, and operating costs by centralizing workloads on virtualized or cloud environments, lowering licenses, space, power, and maintenance.

Develop server operating system concepts for cloud and virtualization, focusing on Windows Server installation, hardware requirements, and basic administration with a hands-on Windows server lab.

Explore how server operating systems are built for server hardware, offering graphical and command line interfaces, remote administration, and advanced hardware configurations for reliability and scalability.

Explore Windows Server 2019, a scalable server OS with core or full GUI installs, Hyper-V virtualization, and editions from standard to data center, licensing considerations.

Assess hardware requirements for Windows Server installation, selecting a suitable processor (Intel or AMD) with virtualization, planning memory, storage (OS drive and RAID), and networking for management and production workloads.

Prepare for server os installation by using a virtual or physical server with a type two hypervisor (VMware or Oracle VirtualBox) and updating bios, plus obtaining installation media and drivers.

install windows 2019 operating system in vmware workstation for a lab, configure bridged, nat, or host-only networking, and allocate 4 gb ram and 1 cpu to support installation and drivers.

Learn post installation steps after server setup, including installing VMware tools, configuring host name and firewall settings, and preparing for future roles such as Active Directory and DNS.

Learn how to install server roles and features with server manager via a wizard, selecting roles such as Active Directory Domain Service, DNS, Hyper-V, and Remote Desktop Services.

Learn essential Windows server network configuration, including IP address discovery, multiple network adapters, static IP setup, subnets, gateways, DNS settings, and basic tools like ipconfig and tracert.

Navigate Windows server storage configuration with the disk management console to add a drive, initialize it, choose MBR or GPT, and extend volumes.

Compare server versus desktop operating systems, review Windows Server 2012 R2 and 2016, hardware needs, steps like host name, firewall, IaaS, and network configuration for Azure, AWS, Google Cloud.

Explore core cloud networking fundamentals, including networking media and cables, devices like switches and routers, topologies, protocols such as TCP/IP and UDP, and IP addressing and subnets across cloud environments.

Explore how data moves between devices via the physical layer, comparing coaxial, twisted pair, fiber optic, and wireless media, including distance limits and speed capabilities.

Discover how network interface cards (NICs) connect servers and laptops to a network via RJ-45 ports and twisted-pair cables, enabling Ethernet MAC addressing, with multi-port NICs providing redundancy across switches.

Explore how switches, as layer 2 devices, replace hubs and bridges in modern data centers, connecting multiple servers and forming collision domains with upstream routers and downstream servers.

Partition a switch into VLANs to isolate traffic for departments and environments, such as web, application, and database servers. Virtual LANs create isolated broadcast domains at the data link layer.

Explore switch ports: an access port carries traffic for a single device, while a trunk port carries traffic for multiple devices across switches, enabling upstream and downstream communication.

Routers manage traffic by connecting multiple small networks at layer 3 using IP addresses and routing protocols to route packets via the next hop, forming the internet backbone.

Explore how firewalls function as security devices that inspect network traffic and enforce policies, using ACLs, NAT, and stateful filtering across cloud and on-prem environments.

Discover how a vpn provides secure access to data center resources via encryption, a vpn terminator, and a vpn agent, with point-to-site and site-to-site connections using ipsec and ipv6.

Explore how load balancers ensure high availability and optimize resource use by health-checking servers and distributing traffic across multiple backends, using layer 4, layer 7, and DNS level approaches.

Identify and contrast local area networks, wide area networks, intranet, and the internet, and explain how switches, routers, VLANs, and backbone networks interconnect devices across campuses and clouds.

Explore common network topologies—star, bus, ring, and mixed—and how each connects devices, a foundation for cloud computing and network virtualization.

Understand how networking protocols establish an agreed format for exchanging data between systems, enabling communication. Review Ethernet, IP, and fiber distributed data interface, including data compression and error checking.

Explore the OSI reference model, a seven-layer framework for worldwide network communication. See how each layer provides abstraction and interacts with the next, including fragmentation and MTU concepts.

Explore how networks share information through devices and cables, and how fragmentation forms packets to improve bandwidth, with protocols guiding packet metadata, size, and retransmission.

Explore local and remote packet delivery, including mac addresses, arp, ip addresses, dns, routing, and how switches, gateways, and routers route data across networks.

Explore how IP addresses assign unique numbers to networked computers, using IPv4's 32-bit dotted decimal format like 192.168.123.132 with network and host IDs, and IPv6's larger space.

Understand subnetting a /16 network into smaller blocks like /24 to improve traffic management, security, and isolation of web, application, and database servers, with usable IP addresses.

Learn how network address translation masks private IP addresses behind a public IP to protect sensitive servers and enable internet access. Explore static NAT, dynamic NAT, and port address translation.

Explore how CIDR enables classless IP routing, reducing router table load and conserving IPv4 addresses by aggregating subnets into supernets, a practice used by ISPs and cloud providers.

Explore storage fundamentals, from hard drives and interfaces to RAID, local versus remote storage, replication, backups, and cloud storage services across AWS, Azure, and Google.

Explore what a hard disk is, how it permanently stores the operating system and data, and how internal and external connections and RAID configurations boost capacity, speed, and fault tolerance.

Explore the physical components of a hard drive—platters, heads, spindles, and arms—and how format tracks, sectors, and form factor influence read and write latency and overall capacity.

Explore the evolution of hard disk types from floppy and tape to CDs, DVDs, USBs, SATA, SAS, SSDs, and NVMe, noting capacity and read/write operations.

Compare iops and throughput, defining throughput as data per time. Learn how sequential and random i/o on hdds and ssds drive latency and inform capacity planning.

Balance storage capacity and iops to meet application requirements. Learn how mixing drives can achieve the necessary capacity and performance.

Learn how raid levels combine multiple disks to increase storage capacity, performance, and fault tolerance, managed by a raid controller, emphasizing raw vs usable capacity and identical drives.

raid 0 stripes data across two drives to boost capacity and performance, but provides no redundancy, so a single disk failure can destroy data.

Raid 1 mirrors data across two drives using a raid controller, presenting a single logical disk; usable capacity is half the raw capacity, with automatic rebuild after a drive failure.

Raid five is distributed parity across drives, requiring a raid controller and three disks. Usable capacity reduces with parity and writes, about 37 IOPS; YouTube reads are supported.

Raid 10 (1+0) merges mirroring and stripping, requiring four drives, delivering 200 gb usable from 400 gb raw with 200 iops, tolerating two drive failures for databases and master files.

Explore storage hardware that links servers to storage systems, including copper and optical cables, throughputs, connectors, and components like host bus adapters, NICs, and switches.

Explore storage technologies and the shift from local to remote, centralized storage, with a storage administrator optimizing performance and cost while enabling access tracking and activity logs.

Explore direct attached storage (DAS), its role in local server storage, and how capacity bottlenecks and visibility challenges arise, highlighting the shift toward centralized storage solutions.

Explore centralized storage systems, including disk array enclosures and NAS architectures, and learn how NAS provides preformatted file storage via NFS/SMB over IP networks with RAID and redundancy.

Explore storage area networks as centralized, high-throughput block storage built with fibre channel switches, optical cables, and host bus adapters, delivering redundancy and fast access across workloads.

Learn how iSCSI maps storage over TCP/IP to Ethernet by translating packets into Fibre Channel frames, enabling converged storage with unified switches and multi-protocol support.

Explain das, nas, and san connectivity, showing how ethernet or fibre channel links hosts to storage with unified switches and fibre directors, and relate to cloud block and file storage.

Learn how to maintain business continuity and disaster recovery with RPO and RTO concepts, high availability, and replication strategies—synchronous and asynchronous—to meet service level agreements.

Explore array-based replication, database log shipping, and storage or hypervisor snapshots across on-premises and cloud environments, including VMware virtualization and synchronous replication.

Explore capacity optimization technologies for storage, including thin provisioning, compression, deduplication, and auto tiering, to reduce data center footprint, cut costs, and optimize performance across SSD, SAS, and SATA tiers.

Explore backup overview and recovery, covering methods, types, targets, cloud backup, retention, and the trade-offs between hot, offline, LAN-based, and LAN-free backups.

Explore full, differential, and incremental backups, compare backup time and space implications, and learn how application-aware backups safeguard logs to prevent downtime.

Explore backup and recovery concepts, including backup window, methods, types, targets, cloud backups, and retention, and compare LAN-based and LAN-free approaches using tape libraries, Fibre Channel, and backup software.

Learn about backup targets such as tape drives and tape libraries with writers, virtual tape libraries, disk pools, and cloud storage, and how metadata and retention shape backup strategies.

Learn virtualization fundamentals, types, and server virtualization, and discover how virtualization drives data center consolidation, private and public cloud evolution, and the role of hypervisors like VMware.

Explore virtualization as creating software versions of hardware and services—hardware, operating system, server, desktop, and application virtualization—from virtual servers to software defined data centers.

Run multiple virtual servers on a single physical box. Apply an abstraction layer to separate hardware from operating systems, reducing datacenter size, power use, and administrative needs.

Explore how server virtualization curbs provisioning costs and sprawl by running multiple virtual machines on a single physical server, via VMware ESX (Elastic Sky X).

Leverage virtualization to gain agility, flexibility, scalability, and cost savings with automated operations, centralized management, and infrastructure as code, enabling a software-defined data center and cloud-like scalability.

Compare type one bare metal hypervisors and type two hosted hypervisors, describing direct hardware control, host operating systems, and examples like VMware ESX, Hyper-V, Zen servers, and Oracle VirtualBox.

Learn what a virtual machine is, a software defined computer with a guest OS and virtual hardware, using config, disk, and snapshot files, enabling portability, manageability, and security.

Identify key server virtualization vendors, including VMware, Hyper-V, Red Hat, and Citrix Xen, and see how private and public clouds leverage network, storage, and virtualization with a management layer.

Trace VMware's history from its 1998 founding to pioneering virtualization with type one and type two hypervisors, vCenter Server, and NSX network virtualization.

Explore server virtualization fundamentals, hypervisors, and virtual machines, and learn how virtualization boosts agility, performance, availability, and lowers capital and operating expenditures across AWS, Azure, and Google.

Define cloud computing as delivering IT services over the internet, and explore five essential NIST qualities, plus data-center options and service models from on-premises to cloud.

Explain cloud computing as standardized information technology capability delivered over the internet on a pay-as-you-go, self-service model, renting storage, compute, and networking while providers handle maintenance.

Explore the essential qualities of cloud computing, including on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, elasticity, and pay-as-you-go delivery of IT services over the internet for public cloud providers.

Explore cloud delivery models from infrastructure as a service to software as a service, comparing control, cost, and administration while noting platform as a service and on-premises integration.

Explain private, community, public, and hybrid cloud deployment models and illustrate the five essential cloud qualities, including on-demand self-service, rapid elasticity, resource pooling, pay-as-you-go, and broad network access considerations.

Explore how cloud computing now supports blogs, marketing sites, big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and high-performance computing, with emphasis on scalability, automation of deployment, and security and compliance.

Explore how cloud security relies on regulatory compliance, standards, and certifications, including CSA, PCI, HIPAA, and government data protection requirements.

Compare capital expenditure and operating expenditure models for cloud adoption, highlighting upfront costs of on-premises data centers versus scalable, on-demand cloud billing, with emphasis on planning and skilled cloud architecture.

Choose a cloud platform: Azure, Google, Oracle, Alibaba, or AWS, and specialize in areas like infrastructure administration, development, databases, big data, or data science.