Overview
For this first project we assume you might be starting from scratch with using Cloud services and may not even have a cloud account. We start from there, and practice creating a few empty cloud resources. Cloud storage accounts are a handy way to back up your data and access it from practically anywhere, so we’ll create a storage account for ourselves and get familiar with the free tools that are available. We will create a virtual machine within Azure and AWS and get comfortable with managing it. The motivations for this exercise are:
- We need to create accounts to do anything at all in the cloud.
- We want an easy way to learn to work with the cloud and one good way is via the providers’ web portals. We’ll work with these for a while until we reach for more advanced tools.
- We need to be at least a little concerned about the cost of cloud services, so we want to learn how to manage costs to get the more done with less expenditure.
- The saying goes that resources in the cloud should be treated like cattle rather than pets. A first step in this direction is to learn how to shut down or even delete resources and bring them back with minimal effort.
There are several activities to be completed. To gain full benefit from the project, you will need to do the activities twice: once on Azure and once on Amazon Web Services.
Do the Project on Azure
Here is a series of links to the detailed instructions for doing the project on Azure:
- Prepare Your Account (Azure)
- Get Some Personal Storage (Azure)
- Provision Your Virtual Machine (Azure)
- Work With Your Virtual Machine
- Operate the Firewalls
- Image and Replicate Your Virtual Machine (Azure)
- Study Pricing and Usage Costs (Azure)
Do the Project on Amazon Web Services
Here is a series of links to the detailed instructions for doing the project on Amazon Web Services: