Week 9 – Cloud Infrastructure Fundamentals

Objectives

  • Understand core cloud infrastructure concepts and service models.
  • Provision and manage cloud resources using infrastructure-as-code.
  • Design reliable, secure, and cost-aware cloud architectures.

Topics

  • Cloud service models: IaaS, PaaS, and managed services.
  • Core compute, storage, and networking primitives (VMs, object storage, VPCs, DNS).
  • Infrastructure-as-code with Terraform: providers, resources, state, and modules.
  • Identity and access management (IAM): roles, policies, and least privilege.
  • Cloud networking: load balancers, subnets, security groups, and ingress.
  • Cost management and resource tagging.
  • Managed container services (e.g. ECS, Cloud Run, or equivalent).

Hands-On Activities

  • Provision a cloud environment using Terraform from scratch.
  • Deploy a containerised application to a managed cloud service.
  • Configure IAM roles and restrict access to resources.
  • Set up a load balancer and connect it to a running service.
  • Tear down and redeploy infrastructure from code alone.

Deliverables

  • Terraform configuration for a complete cloud environment.
  • Deployed and publicly accessible application.
  • IAM policy documentation.

Assessment

  • Infrastructure review: correctness, security posture, and reproducibility.