Phase 3: Cloud Platform fundamentals
Author: GPS
How does this phase apply to Cloud?
As a cloud professional, you will spend most of your time working within a cloud platform, or multiple platforms. Everything you build, support, and develop will be on a platform, making this phase essential for your cloud career.
Here are some popular questions we get at this phase:
Which cloud to learn?:
How to break down this phase
| Order | Topic |
|---|---|
| 1 | Cloud Certification |
| 2 | Cloud Resume Challenge |
Resources
| Cloud Platform | Title |
|---|---|
| AWS | AWS training and Certification |
| Azure | Microsoft Learn |
| GCP | Google Cloud training |
Regardless of which learning material you choose, it will have some sort of demo/hands-on aspect to it. Do it. Don't just watch or read. This isn't a Netflix show—this is learning time.
Learning advice
When starting with the cloud, you'll do everything via the UI, which is fine initially. However, once you're in a job, you'll use a CLI or Infrastructure as Code (covered in Phase 4) to manage your environments. For every exercise you do via the UI, look up the CLI command and do it that way too. By now, you should be familiar with using a command line, which is why the Linux and programming phases come before this one.
This is also a great time to introduce yourself to the official documentation, AWS, Azure or GCP
If there is something you don't understand about a service or command, your go to should be the documentation first.
Projects
We recommend your first cloud project to be the Cloud Resume Challenge. Once you're done with that, visit the Projects page for more!
| Platform | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| AWS | Cloud Resume Challenge | Build your resume with AWS services. |
| Azure | Azure Cloud Resume Challenge | Build your resume with Azure services. |
| GCP | GCP Cloud Resume | Build your resume with GCP services. |
Things you should be familiar with at the end of this phase
- An understanding of best practices for cloud infrastructure (reliability, performance efficiency, security, cost optimization, etc.)
- How to grant and revoke access and permissions to users and applications.
- How to setup billing alerts/alarms, budgets, and how to use the billing tools.
- How to use the object storage service and understanding of other storage options.
- How to deploy scalable virtual machines and an understanding of other compute services the platform offers.
- How to setup monitoring for virtual machines and an understanding of all monitoring services the platform offers.
- How networking works for virtual machines (Vnets/VPCs, subnets, route tables, public and private IP addresses, VPNs, gateways, etc.)
- How to create an API with the Functions as a Service offering your cloud platform has and an overall understanding of what the service is capable of.
- Web application hosting services your cloud platform has to offer and hands on experience with one of the services.
- Database services your cloud platform has to offer and hands on experience with one of them.
- How to use the CLI to create and manage cloud resources.
Certifications you might want to look into
We recommend cloud certifications as they provide a structured learning path. However, you don't need every certification available. Aim for 1 or 2 certifications plus 2 hands-on projects that showcase all the skills in this guide.
We recommend you get an associate level certification.