Certiport - Cloud Computing

Curriculum

CertiPort Cloud Computing

1. Determine if cloud solution is appropriate

1.1 Explain advantages provided by cloud to stakeholders

• Describe cloud infrastructure

• Distinguish between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS

• Show how cloud allows building applications cheaper than with traditional models

• Show how cloud allows building applications faster than with traditional models

1.2 Explain cost to stakeholders

• Identify the use case (new development or transition of existing product or service)

• Identify the resources that will be required to construct the service or product using cloud-hosted components (include compute, data, and network costs)

• Identify support plan that will be required to meet performance, availability, scalability, and reliability (PASR) criteria

• Consider factors that go into return on investment

1.3 Explain performance to stakeholders

• Identify performance criteria

• Consider what solutions meet the criteria

• Assess cost and availability of technical expertise

1.4 Explain reliability to stakeholders

• Identify reliability criteria, including network speeds

• Consider what solutions meet the criteria

• Understand service-level agreement (SLA) with cloud provider

• Consider disaster-recovery and backup plans (including backup redundancy or replication factor)

1.5 Explain availability to stakeholders

• Identify the use case (new development or transition of existing product or service)

• Identify any upstream or downstream SLAs that will govern availability requirements

• Establish availability metrics

• Assess the SLA offered by the cloud-hosted solution

1.6 Explain scalability to stakeholders

• Identify the use case (new development or transition of existing product or service)

• Understand that rules can be set to adjust resources based on need

1.7 Recommend off-the-shelf (OTS) or custom solutions as needed

• Identify the use case (new development or transition of existing product or service)

• Evaluate if existing OTS offering meets performance, availability, scalability, and reliability needs

• Evaluate technical effort needed for custom solution

• Evaluate if custom solution can exceed OTS on PASR criteria

 

2. Developing cloud architecture

2.1 Choose between public, private, and hybrid cloud implementations

• Identify the security and privacy requirements for the solution (focusing on networking options that each provides) • Consider limits imposed by tenancy in various cloud implementations

2.2 Draw an architectural diagram (show data flows)

• Break down the proposed solution into compute, data, and networking components

• Produce logical groupings for the components

• Mark data flows between components (including the protocol)

• Identify system and component boundaries (including responsibility model)

2.3 Define requirements

• Decide whether to virtualize server, network, storage, and desktop

• Be aware of design patterns like microservices and serverless

• Consider networking infrastructure, storage devices, memory, and end-user devices required

2.4 Identify how services communicate through application programming interfaces (APIs)

• Identifying services with which the application needs to integrate

• Interact using an API 2.5 Create virtual machines

• Determine the operating system for the virtual machines

• Choose the appropriate size for the virtual machines

• Decide on geographic setting for the virtual machines (latency, legal requirements)

• Configure options (e.g., time limitations, scaling, backups) for the virtual machines

2.6 Identify data storage requirements

• Distinguish between structured and unstructured data

• Determine amount of storage needed

• Consider location of storage

 

• Consider storage security

 

 

3. Implementing the cloud development life cycle

3.1 Create content in virtual environments

• Understand that a source-code management system needs to be set up

• Install and configure the prerequisite packages in the virtual environment

• Save changes and keep track of the codes in a source code management system (such as Github)

3.2 Perform testing

• Provide different test cases, test scenarios, and test scripts

• Run the tests and report the bugs iteratively

3.3 Structure the overall cloud-based solution

• Integrate systems and applications within the selected environment

• Integrate systems and applications with legacy systems

• Integrate systems and applications with third-party applications

• Distinguish between containers and virtual machines

• Know when to choose containers over virtual machines

3.4 Deploy application on server

• Decide on the strategy to deploy a new application, replacing a previous one

• Understand version control

• Identify cloud-hosted solutions to create code and data pipelines (e.g., cloud-native CI/CD offerings and workflow automation like GitHub Actions)

• Identify existing CI/CD practices

 

4. Managing cloud operations

4.1 Manage operational costs

• Understand usage-based pricing

• Scale up and scale down to meet demand cost-effectively

4.2 Develop business continuity and disaster recovery policy

• Identify potential risks and disaster scenarios

• Establish on-premise vs offsite backup strategy

4.3 Provide support to users

• Identify protection and security policies for external and internal users

• Provide application and hardware support for internal users

• Provide training tools for internal and external users

4.4 Monitoring cloud systems

• Log events

• Monitor hardware and software (e.g., interpret graphs and dashboards)

• Understand notifications or alerts for provisioning backup

 

5. Understanding cloud governance

5.1 Comply with privacy and regulatory requirements

• Identify relevant privacy requirements based on geographical and domain constraints (e.g. BIPA, HIPAA, PDP, FERPA, COPPA, GDPR, CCPA, etc.) as well as organization-specific policies

• Identify cloud-provider compliance for these privacy regulations

• Assess types of data managed within the environment

• Assess location and storage of data

• Be aware of NIST and ISO frameworks and standards

5.2 Comply with ethical guidelines

• Consider the impact of bias, lack of transparency, and lack of accountability

• Explain potential bias and transparency challenges with prebuilt services

5.3 Managing cloud security

• Understand options and concepts for identity verification and authentication, including digital identity and multifactor authentication

• Understand access policies and authorizations (e.g., options for access, vendor-provided roles vs. custom roles and permissions, and access hygiene, including least privilege access, removal of access when not needed, disabling accounts)

• Understand the importance of data security and encryption

• Understand options to protect against unauthorized access in cloud environments (including intrusion detection and prevention, firewalls