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Learning 'the cloud'

5 points by bawana ↗ HN
My extent of remote computing is using putty to ssh into a server. I am under the impression that the cloud is much more. Words like ' dynamic scaling', 'spinning up another machine' mean little to me.

What is the fastest, easiest tutorial for learning cloud technologies? I realize that is a vague question but that is only because I know so little I do not know how to ask a defined question about this. For example, there is cloudacademy that focusses on AWS certification. If we use that as the benchmark - learn and achieving AWS certification - then what tutorials are recommended? I realize there are other clouds out there - Microsoft Azure, Google cloud, and others. Would AWS certification include all the knowledge needed to 'operate' in those clouds? Or is it like the old Microsoft, Sun, IBM propietary systems where the languages were so different and interoperability was not even defined?

7 comments

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jamram82
There are various flavors of cloud. For example Google cloud is mostly app or app based cloud, while AWS is bare metal cloud.

I would suggest following this blog - http://highscalability.com

which goes into real life architecture of various services and gives behind-the-scene look into cloud and non-cloud architecture, and why they chose to use certain tools or technologies.

Core concepts in domains like virtualization, networking, authentication, scalability are the same whether you do it in your own data center or cloud.

My advice is to strengthen yourself in core concepts.

artem_dev
You can check OpenStack project (http://www.openstack.org/) It is an open source cloud platform written mostly on Python.
detaro
I wouldn't recommend playing with OpenStack to a total beginner. There is more beginner info about AWS and to really get any use out of being able to set it up yourself or look into the parts work you need to have an understanding of the concepts already.
push7joshi
> Would AWS certification include all the knowledge needed to 'operate' in those clouds? I believe yes. You mostly have similar features with different service providers. It's just the differing terminology. Also, once you are done with the certification, you can dive further into current trends in the area of virtualization (for ex. containers)
bawana
thank you for your prompt suggestions. OpenStack is a way too much for me. Like a starving Yemeni used to rice might feel if he was thrown into an all-you-can-eat buffet. Highscalability is an interesting blog but it too has concerns that rapidly outstrip the beginners brain. I need a gentle set of tutorials with exercises that walk me through a specific problem - like setting up a 'sharded database' over a cluster and then performing 'work' on it. Then learning how to add streaming data. Then shutting off one machine in the cluster and seeing how the system responds.
quorr
I'd recommend to watch the sales videos of AWS (http://aws.amazon.com/) they give you a non technical view about what a cloud is.

After that you have a good clue about what the cloud can be and then you can dig deeper into the topics that you what to learn.

Unfortunately I don't know a site that teaches a practical way to cloud computing. They are always tending to a product. But if you understand the basics it should be easy to compare different providers by your needs.

neduma
Start with vagrant/ansible, then move on to AWS/DigitalOcean. After few months, you can call yourself 'Cloud Architect'