Cloud Learning

[Fidel Edwards]

I am new to Cloud world and I wanted to start enhancing my skills in Cloud Computing from Architect point of view.

I have developed few applications which are in AWS but couldn't get time (or might be interest) to go deep into AWS.

Now, I want to learn about a Cloud environment but getting confused on from where should I start with, provided the fact that I can design a monilithic architecture to some cloud based application and also propose a client accordingly.

I have no prior experience of any cloud. So, please suggest from which cloud I should start with. I saw so many videos and did googling but still confused on which cloud (GCP, AWS, Azure etc.) should I start with?

[Tim Holloway]

AWS has free services which is good for learning (and lightweight apps). I don't know details about the other vendors you mentioned, although Azure is a Microsoft product and a lot of cloud systems are based on Linux, not Windows.

Taking AWS as an example, though, there are quite a few cloud services - actually a confusing number if you count not only cloud app hosting but also support services like Elastic Storage.

But going from largest to smallest, you have something like this (I may be a little out of date here):

1. Full VM instance. The free VM is a single instance with about 1GB(?) RAM and has no expiration limit.

2. Container instances. I'm not sure what the product name for this is

3. Application instances. Elastic Beanstalk. .Instead of a whole VM or generic container, you get a ready-to-use Tomcat server, for example.

I have an O'Reilly book on the Amazon cloud myself. Probably should pull the updates. I love O'Reilly because they don't copy-protect stuff - meaning there's no danger my library will evaporate overnight thanks to circumstances I cannot control - and because their ebooks come with free updates. However there are probably other books out there by now, since my book is at least 5 years old.

Incidentally, if you want to learn Cloud from the inside out, you can set up your own cloud using OpenStack, which is a fully open-source cloud system developed by NASA among other well-known contributors. It's not a task for the faint of heart, though and you should have at least 3 servers for a minimal configuration: one storage server, one compute node, and one control server. Or, I believe that there's a Vagrant box that can launch all 3 as virtual machines, which might be easier.

[Fidel Edwards]

Thanks Tim for this usefuk information.

I know AWS is one of the oldest amongst others cloud providers. But How about GCP and Azure to start with.

Also for Containerization things, how can I mimic the lab in my stndalone Windows machine?

[Tim Holloway]

I know virtually nothing about Azure, since I haven't used Windows on a daily basis since 2006. Google Cloud is fairly recent, so I haven't had any projects that needed me to learn that. Or Digital Ocean, for that matter. So my main expertise here is OpenStack, AWS, and general cloud theory.

[Verison Vicentin]

Hi,
This is a good starting point to Azure
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/azure/

[Campbell Ritchie]

That looks helpful: thank you