Cloud computing essentials for managers / software engineers Training Course

Virtualization Details

1. Overview of Operating System Concepts: CPU, Memory, Network, and Storage
2. Hypervisor
   1. The Supervisor of Supervisors
   2. Concepts of "Host" machines and "guest" operating systems
   3. Type-1 vs. Type-2 Hypervisors
   4. Examples: Citrix XEN, VMware ESX/ESXi, MS Hyper-V, and IBM LPAR
3. Network Virtualization
   1. Introductory overview of the 7-Layer OSI Model
   2. Specific focus on the Network Layer
   3. The TCP/IP Model, also known as the Internet Protocol
4. In-Depth Exploration of Specific Verticals
   1. Application Layer: SSL
   2. Network Layer: TCP
   3. Internet Layer: IPv4/IPv6
   4. Link Layer: Ethernet
5. Packet Structure Analysis
   1. Addressing mechanisms: IP Addresses and Domain Names
   2. Key components: Firewalls, Load Balancers, Routers, and Adapters
   3. Concepts of Virtualized Networks
   4. Higher-order abstractions: Subnets and Zones
6. Practical Exercise:
   1. Become familiar with ESXi clusters and the vSphere client interface
   2. Create or update networks within an ESXi Cluster, deploy guests from VMDK packages, and enable inter-connectivity between guests
   3. Modify a running VM instance and capture a snapshot
   4. Update firewall rules in ESXi using the vSphere client

2. Cloud Computing: A Paradigm Shift

1. A rapid and cost-effective pathway to make products or solutions available globally
2. Resource Sharing
   1. Virtualization within a virtualized environment
3. Key Benefits:
   1. On-demand resource elasticity
      1. Ideate, Code, and Deploy without the burden of infrastructure management
      2. Accelerated CI/CD pipelines
   2. Environment isolation and vertical autonomy
   3. Enhanced security through layering
   4. Optimization of expenses
4. Comparing On-premise Clouds and Cloud Providers
5. The Cloud as a conceptual abstraction for efficient distributed computing

3. Introduction to Cloud Solution Layers

1. IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)
   1. Providers: AWS, Azure, and Google
   2. Select one provider to continue; AWS is recommended.
      1. Introduction to services such as AWS VPC and AWS EC2
2. PaaS (Platform as a Service)
   1. Providers: AWS, Azure, Google, CloudFoundry, and Heroku
   2. Introduction to services like AWS DynamoDB and AWS Kinesis
3. SaaS (Software as a Service)
   1. Brief overview of the concept
   2. Examples: Microsoft Office, Confluence, Salesforce, and Slack
4. Understanding the hierarchy: SaaS builds upon PaaS, which builds upon IaaS, which in turn is built on Virtualization

4. IaaS Cloud Hands-on Project

1. The project utilizes AWS as the IaaS Cloud Provider
2. Use CentOS/RHEL as the operating system for the remainder of the exercise
   1. Note: Ubuntu is also acceptable, but RHEL/CentOS are preferred
3. Obtain individual AWS IAM accounts from your cloud administrator
4. Each student must complete these steps independently
   1. Provisioning entire infrastructure on-demand serves as the definitive demonstration of cloud computing's power
   2. Utilize AWS Wizards and online consoles to accomplish these tasks unless otherwise specified
5. Create a public VPC in the us-east-1 Region
   1. Configure two Subnets (Subnet-1 and Subnet-2) across two distinct Availability Zones
      1. Refer to https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/ for guidance
   2. Create three separate Security Groups
      1. SG-Internet
         1. Permits incoming traffic from the Internet on HTTPS port 443 and HTTP port 80
         2. Restricts all other incoming connections
      2. SG-Service
         1. Allows incoming traffic solely from the SG-Internet security group on HTTPS 443 and HTTP 80
         2. Permits ICMP traffic only from SG-Internet
         3. Blocks all other incoming connections
      3. SG-SSH
         1. Allows SSH (port 22) incoming connections exclusively from the single public IP of the student’s lab machine (or the proxy IP if behind a proxy)
6. Deploy an AMI instance for your chosen OS—preferably the latest RHEL/CentOS version available—and host it on Subnet-1. Attach the instance to the SG-Service and SG-SSH groups.
7. Access the instance via SSH from your lab machine.
8. Install the NGINX server on this instance.
9. Deploy static content of your choice (e.g., HTML pages, images) to be served by NGINX on port 80 (HTTP) and define the corresponding URLs.
10. Test the URLs from the local machine.
11. Create an AMI image from this running instance.
12. Deploy the newly created AMI and host the instance on Subnet-2. Attach the instance to the SG-Service and SG-SSH groups.
13. Start the NGINX server and verify that the access URL for the static content created in the previous step functions correctly.
14. Create a new "classic" Elastic Load Balancer and attach it to the SG-Internet security group.
    1. Understand the differences between a Classic Load Balancer, an Application Load Balancer, and a Network Load Balancer
15. Configure a routing rule to forward all HTTP (port 80) and HTTPS (port 443) traffic to the instance group containing the two previously created instances.
16. Use any certificate management tool (such as Java keytool) to generate a key-pair and self-signed certificate, then import the certificate into AWS Certificate Manager (ACM).

5. Cloud Monitoring: Introduction and Hands-on Project

1. Overview of AWS CloudWatch metrics
2. Navigate to the AWS CloudWatch dashboard for the EC2 instances
   1. Retrieve relevant metrics and analyze their variability over time
      1. Reference: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/viewing_metrics_with_cloudwatch.html
3. Navigate to the AWS CloudWatch dashboard for the Elastic Load Balancer (ELB)
   1. Observe ELB metrics and explain their fluctuations over time
   2. Reference: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/classic/elb-cloudwatch-metrics.html

6. Advanced Concepts for Further Learning

1. Hybrid Cloud environments combining on-premise and public cloud resources
2. Migration strategies: Moving from on-premise to public cloud
   1. Migrating application code
   2. Migrating databases
3. DevOps Practices
   1. Infrastructure as Code
   2. Using AWS CloudFormation Templates
4. Auto-scaling Mechanisms
   1. Leveraging AWS CloudWatch metrics to determine system health and trigger scaling