Cloud Computing Foundations Module Guide
Your guide: Cloud Clara
“Before you decide what belongs in the cloud, know what the cloud actually is — a definition, five traits, and a stack, not a marketing word.”
Start with a phone that saves a photo online. The phone sends the photo to a remote system. That system can keep the file, make a copy, and send it back on demand. The same basic idea supports many connected products. A small device can collect data while a larger remote system stores it or does more work.
This module explains the choices behind that simple action. You will learn what the word cloud means, what a service gives you, and which jobs stay with you. You will also see where the system runs and how one machine can safely support more than one task. Each lesson adds one part to the picture. Read them in order when the terms are new. Use the route below to return to one choice when you need it.
Keep one question in mind: who controls each part when something goes wrong? The answer helps you compare a service, check its limits, and plan a system that people can run. By the end, you should be able to name the main choices and say why one fits a given job.
Cloud computing is the systems-computing layer underneath IoTClass.org’s applied cloud-IoT-architecture content in Cloud, SDN & Production. That book assumes you already know what IaaS, an SLA, or a hypervisor are, then teaches you how to make an IoT architecture decision with them. This module teaches what those terms mean in the first place, from the NIST definition up.
Use this book when the vocabulary itself — not yet the IoT decision — is the gap: what does “elastic” formally mean, who manages what under PaaS, what is a hypervisor actually doing, how does a deployment model differ from a service model. The chapters build outward from NIST’s own three-pillar organization of the topic.
Start With the Word Itself
“The cloud” gets used for almost anything reachable over the internet. This module treats it as what NIST actually defined it as in 2009: a specific model with five essential characteristics, three service models, and several deployment models — not a synonym for “someone else’s server.”
Use the module as a build sequence: each chapter assumes the terms the previous one just defined, the same way the rest of this estate teaches protocols and architectures.
Recommended Route
- Start with Cloud Computing: Origins and the NIST Model for the evolution ladder, the verbatim NIST definition, and the five essential characteristics.
- Continue with Service Models: IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS for the full responsibility bracket, the hypervisor model, and each service model’s own features and limits.
- Take Deployment Models and Virtualization for the seven deployment models, the on/off-premise ownership matrix, and how containers differ from virtual machines.
- Follow with Service Management and Economics for SLA anatomy, the accounting-to-billing pipeline, and what actually makes cloud economics work.
- Then Cloud Platforms and Tooling to learn how to evaluate real platforms — and how to spot when a product claim has gone stale.
- Finish with Cloud Security Fundamentals for shared responsibility, the data-security hexagon, and identity basics.
Design Questions
- What does NIST’s definition actually require before something counts as “cloud,” and what are its five essential characteristics?
- Which layer of the stack does IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS hand to the provider, and which layer stays with you?
- What is a hypervisor doing, and why does it make multi-tenant infrastructure possible?
- Where does an IoT-specific responsibility-boundary decision belong once these definitions are solid? (See Cloud, SDN & Production.)