FreeLevel 2 · Practical Skills

Cloud Fundamentals: Cost, Scaling and Reliability

Most cloud courses teach you to click through a console. This one teaches you to understand what a cloud estate costs, why, and how reliable and secure it is, which is what employers need. You'll review the cloud account of Tallybook, a Lagos invoicing app, from its inventory, three months of billing, a month of hourly utilisation and traffic, its outages and its user accounts. You'll learn the service models, regions and shared responsibility; explain the bill by service, environment and team, in dollars and naira; rightsize servers on peak use; find idle and forgotten resources; compare schedules, commitments and spot pricing; design autoscaling that fixes month-end overloads; calculate availability for components in series and parallel against an SLO; rank access and storage security findings; and set budgets and unit costs. Every number comes from running the code on the account's data.

About 7 hours
10 modules
1 badge
Final project
Optional verified certificate

Curriculum

01What the Cloud IsWhat cloud computing actually is (renting computers, storage and services by the hour), the service models and regions, who is responsible for what, and a first look at a real company's cloud estate.15 min
02Reading the Cloud BillBreak a cloud bill down by service, environment and team, find the spend nobody owns, see what it costs in naira, and explain why it grew.25 min
03Rightsizing from UtilisationUse hourly CPU and memory data to find servers that are far bigger than they need to be, choose a safe smaller size with a rule based on peak use, and work out the saving.25 min
04Idle and Forgotten ResourcesFind the resources that cost money while doing nothing (idle servers, unattached disks, unused IP addresses, old snapshots and the disks of stopped servers) and plan their removal safely.25 min
05Schedules and Pricing ModelsStop paying for servers outside the hours they're used, and compare on-demand, committed and spot pricing for the servers that remain, with the risks of each.25 min
06Scaling with DemandUse hourly traffic to see why a fixed number of servers is both too many most of the time and too few at month-end, and design autoscaling rules that fix both.25 min
07Availability and SLOsMeasure availability against a target, calculate how components in series and in parallel combine, and find which single change would remove most of the downtime.25 min
08Security and AccessAudit who can do what in a cloud account (multi-factor authentication, administrators, people who have left, old access keys, unused service accounts and public storage) and fix the riskiest findings first.25 min
09Cost Governance and Unit CostsKeep cloud costs under control after the clean-up, with ownership, budgets and alerts, and measure cost per unit of business (here, per thousand requests) so growth and waste can be told apart.20 min
10Final ProjectPlan your final project, a cost, reliability and security review of a real-looking cloud estate, with every saving and risk measured and a 90-day plan the leadership can approve.20 min
Final assessmentPass it (60% or more) to earn the Cloud Fundamentals: Cost, Scaling and Reliability course completion badge.

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Cloud Fundamentals: Cost, Scaling and Reliability

About 7 hours

10 modules

1 badge

Final project

Optional verified certificate

Curriculum

01What the Cloud IsWhat cloud computing actually is (renting computers, storage and services by the hour), the service models and regions, who is responsible for what, and a first look at a real company's cloud estate.15 min

02Reading the Cloud BillBreak a cloud bill down by service, environment and team, find the spend nobody owns, see what it costs in naira, and explain why it grew.25 min

03Rightsizing from UtilisationUse hourly CPU and memory data to find servers that are far bigger than they need to be, choose a safe smaller size with a rule based on peak use, and work out the saving.25 min

04Idle and Forgotten ResourcesFind the resources that cost money while doing nothing (idle servers, unattached disks, unused IP addresses, old snapshots and the disks of stopped servers) and plan their removal safely.25 min

05Schedules and Pricing ModelsStop paying for servers outside the hours they're used, and compare on-demand, committed and spot pricing for the servers that remain, with the risks of each.25 min

06Scaling with DemandUse hourly traffic to see why a fixed number of servers is both too many most of the time and too few at month-end, and design autoscaling rules that fix both.25 min

07Availability and SLOsMeasure availability against a target, calculate how components in series and in parallel combine, and find which single change would remove most of the downtime.25 min

08Security and AccessAudit who can do what in a cloud account (multi-factor authentication, administrators, people who have left, old access keys, unused service accounts and public storage) and fix the riskiest findings first.25 min

09Cost Governance and Unit CostsKeep cloud costs under control after the clean-up, with ownership, budgets and alerts, and measure cost per unit of business (here, per thousand requests) so growth and waste can be told apart.20 min

10Final ProjectPlan your final project, a cost, reliability and security review of a real-looking cloud estate, with every saving and risk measured and a 90-day plan the leadership can approve.20 min

Final assessmentPass it (60% or more) to earn the Cloud Fundamentals: Cost, Scaling and Reliability course completion badge.