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Cloud Fundamentals
The Cloud Fundamentals Certificate validates entry-level understanding of cloud computing concepts, service and deployment models, the shared responsibility model, core security and governance considerations, and major-provider service categories.
Who Should Take This
IT generalists, business analysts, auditors, and career-changers who need a working vocabulary for cloud computing. Assumes basic computing literacy. Learners finish able to discuss cloud strategy, recognize cloud service categories, and identify common security/compliance considerations.
What's Included in AccelaStudy® AI
Adaptive Knowledge Graph
Practice Questions
Lesson Modules
Console Simulator Labs
Exam Tips & Strategy
13 Activity Formats
Course Outline
1Cloud Foundations 3 topics
Cloud Definition and Characteristics
- Identify the NIST definition of cloud computing and its five essential characteristics: on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, measured service.
- Identify the historical drivers of cloud adoption: capital efficiency, scale, agility, global reach.
- Apply the NIST characteristics to a sample managed service and identify which characteristics are present.
Cloud Value and Trade-offs
- Identify the typical cloud value drivers: speed of provisioning, elasticity, geographic reach, managed-service depth.
- Identify cloud trade-offs: vendor lock-in, opex unpredictability, data residency, dependency risk.
- Analyze a 'should we move to the cloud?' scenario for a regulated industry workload and identify the deciding factors.
Cloud Adoption Patterns
- Identify the migration 'six R's: rehost, replatform, refactor, repurchase, retire, retain.
- Apply the six R's to a sample application portfolio and identify the appropriate strategy for each application class.
2Service Models 3 topics
IaaS
- Define IaaS and identify what the provider manages (data center, hardware, virtualization) vs the customer (OS and above).
- Identify representative IaaS services across providers (EC2, Azure VMs, GCE) and their typical use cases.
PaaS and FaaS
- Define PaaS and identify what the provider manages (runtime, middleware) vs the customer (application code, data).
- Define FaaS / serverless and identify representative services (AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, GCP Cloud Functions).
- Apply selection guidance for IaaS vs PaaS vs FaaS for a stateless web API: cost, scale, operational burden.
SaaS
- Define SaaS and identify the customer's typical responsibilities: data, identity, configuration, training.
- Identify representative enterprise SaaS categories (CRM, ITSM, HRIS, productivity suites) and the security considerations unique to each.
3Deployment Models 3 topics
Public Cloud
- Define public cloud and identify the typical provider list (AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud).
- Identify when public cloud is appropriate: variable workloads, geographically distributed users, fast time-to-market.
Private and Hybrid Cloud
- Define private cloud and identify the typical drivers: regulatory, sovereignty, performance predictability, existing data-center investment.
- Define hybrid cloud and identify common architectures: on-prem + public extension, multi-cloud federation, edge + cloud.
- Apply hybrid-cloud-design guidance for a workload subject to data-residency requirements while needing burst-scale.
Multi-Cloud
- Define multi-cloud and identify the typical drivers: vendor risk diversification, best-of-breed services, regional coverage, M&A.
- Identify multi-cloud trade-offs: operational complexity, divergent IAM, fragmented monitoring, training overhead.
4Shared Responsibility and Security 3 topics
Shared Responsibility Model
- Identify the shared responsibility model and identify which security responsibilities fall to the customer vs the provider for IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
- Apply shared-responsibility analysis to a sample AWS Aurora deployment, identifying customer-side controls (network, IAM, encryption keys) and provider-managed controls (host OS, patching, replication).
- Analyze a misunderstanding of shared responsibility (e.g., 'the cloud provider handles backups' for an IaaS database the customer self-managed) and identify the resulting risk.
Cloud IAM Concepts
- Identify cloud IAM primitives at conceptual depth: principals (users, roles, service principals), policies, scopes (account, project, subscription, resource).
- Identify least-privilege as a foundational cloud IAM principle and identify common anti-patterns (wildcards, wildcards-on-resources, root-account daily use).
Encryption in Cloud
- Identify cloud encryption building blocks: KMS, customer-managed keys, envelope encryption, default at-rest encryption, in-transit TLS.
- Identify the privacy-and-control trade-offs of provider-managed vs customer-managed vs HSM-backed keys.
5Major Providers and Services 3 topics
AWS Service Categories
- Identify AWS core service categories (compute, storage, networking, database, security, analytics, ML, integration) and identify a representative service in each.
- Apply AWS service selection: identify the appropriate compute service (EC2 / ECS / EKS / Lambda) for a containerized stateless workload.
Azure Service Categories
- Identify Azure core service categories and identify a representative service in each.
- Apply Azure service selection: identify the appropriate database service (SQL Database / Cosmos DB / PostgreSQL / Synapse) for an analytical workload.
GCP Service Categories
- Identify GCP core service categories and identify a representative service in each.
- Apply GCP service selection: identify the appropriate ML service (Vertex AI / Generative AI Studio / AutoML / BigQuery ML) for a quick proof-of-concept.
6Cloud Economics, Governance, and Operations 3 topics
Cloud Economics
- Identify the major cloud cost drivers: compute hours, storage GB-months, data egress, request-based services, license-included instances.
- Identify cloud cost-optimization patterns: rightsizing, reserved/committed-use, spot/preemptible, lifecycle policies, autoscaling.
- Apply cost-modeling for a sample application (web tier + DB + object storage + egress) and identify which cost levers will move the bill the most.
Cloud Governance
- Identify cloud governance topics: account/subscription structure, naming standards, tagging, guardrails (SCPs, Azure Policy, org policies), cost-center allocation.
- Apply landing-zone design that separates prod / non-prod / shared / log-archive accounts and identify the security benefits.
Cloud Operations
- Identify cloud operations practices: monitoring, logging, alerting, incident response, change management adapted for cloud.
- Identify the role of FinOps as a discipline alongside SecOps and DevOps in mature cloud operations.
- Analyze an incident scenario in a multi-account AWS environment where logs were spread across accounts and identify the centralization fix.
7Cloud Use Cases and Career 7 topics
Common Workload Patterns
- Identify common cloud workload patterns: web application, batch analytics, real-time analytics, machine learning, line-of-business SaaS, content delivery.
- Apply pattern recognition to a sample workload and identify the most appropriate cloud building blocks.
- Analyze a 'lift-and-shift went badly' scenario where moving an on-prem app produced higher costs and worse performance, and identify the design changes that would have helped.
Industry-Specific Considerations
- Identify industry-specific cloud considerations: HIPAA in healthcare, PCI in retail, FedRAMP in government, IRAP in Australia, GxP in life sciences.
- Apply industry-specific compliance lookup for a hypothetical scenario (a US healthcare SaaS expanding to Europe) and identify the regulatory matrix.
- Identify cloud sovereignty offerings: AWS GovCloud, Azure Government, GCP Assured Workloads, EU sovereign-cloud initiatives.
Cloud Career and Continuous Learning
- Identify common cloud career paths: cloud engineer, cloud architect, cloud security engineer, FinOps practitioner, cloud auditor.
- Identify reliable continuous-learning sources: provider docs, AWS re:Post, Azure Updates, GCP release notes, cloud-focused podcasts and newsletters.
- Apply a personal cloud-learning plan that mixes structured certification, hands-on labs, and reading the providers' release notes weekly.
Vendor Lock-In and Portability
- Identify vendor-lock-in concerns: data egress costs, proprietary services, control-plane dependencies, identity-system coupling.
- Apply portability-aware design: portable storage formats (Parquet, Iceberg), provider-agnostic IaC (Terraform, Pulumi), abstracted APIs (S3-compatible interfaces).
Provider Selection
- Identify provider-selection criteria: regional coverage, compliance certifications, partner ecosystem, pricing model, service depth in the customer's domain.
- Analyze a multi-cloud-vs-single-cloud decision for a startup with limited operations capacity and identify the operational-cost-vs-strategic-flexibility trade-off.
Sustainability and Carbon Footprint
- Identify cloud-sustainability considerations: provider carbon-footprint reporting (AWS Customer Carbon Footprint Tool, Azure Sustainability Calculator, GCP Carbon Sense), region selection, workload scheduling.
- Apply carbon-aware design: schedule batch jobs in regions with cleaner grids, use spot/preemptible for shifting workloads, cache aggressively to reduce compute.
Customer Stories and Anti-Patterns
- Identify common cloud success patterns: aggressive automation, FinOps culture from day one, security-first foundations, well-defined account/subscription hierarchy.
- Identify common cloud anti-patterns: lift-and-shift without rearchitecture, no cost monitoring, no central logging, treating cloud like a single big VM.
Scope
Included Topics
- Cloud computing definition, characteristics (NIST), and value proposition.
- Service models: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, FaaS / Serverless.
- Deployment models: public, private, community, hybrid, multi-cloud.
- Shared responsibility model across service models.
- Major providers and their core service categories: AWS, Azure, GCP.
- Cloud economics: CapEx vs OpEx, reserved vs on-demand, total cost of ownership.
- Cloud security and compliance fundamentals at conceptual depth.
- Cloud governance topics: identity, encryption, logging, posture management.
Not Covered
- Hands-on configuration of any specific service.
- Vendor-specific certification depth (covered in CSP-specific specs).
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