Cloud Engineer Associate (300)

Key Skills

• Fundamental Cloud Service Knowledge: Understanding core Alibaba Cloud services (e.g., ECS, VPC, OSS, RDS, ACK, CDN) and their use cases.
• Resource Provisioning: Proficient in deploying and managing cloud resources through the Alibaba Cloud console.
• Basic Tool Knowledge: Familiarity with tools for managing cloud resources, including Auto Scaling, DTS, and DMS.
• Basic Networking Configuration: Understanding how to configure network elements such as VPCs, security groups, and SLBs.
• Basic Security & Monitoring Knowledge: Awareness of essential security practices to secure the Alibaba Cloud account (via RAM), and basic knowledge of
resource monitoring service (CloudMonitor).

Course outline

Course introduction
• Roadmap/agenda
• What the Cloud Engineer role is about
• Pre-course survey

Module 1: Introduction to Alibaba Cloud & Basic Cloud Security
• Getting to Know Alibaba Cloud
o Who we are
o Global infrastructure
§ Regions and zones
§ Alibaba Cloud CDN
§ Choosing where to deploy services
o Why cloud?
§ What is the cloud
§ Cloud deployment and service models
§ Shared responsibility model
§ Cloud pricing models
• Basic Cloud Account Security
o Alibaba Cloud accounts and identities
§ Root user, RAM user, RAM user groups, RAM roles
§ Interacting with Alibaba Cloud
o Setting up your Alibaba Cloud account
§ Authentication & authorization
§ Credentials in Alibaba Cloud
§ Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
§ Locking down the root user

Module 2: Compute & Networking on Alibaba Cloud
• Virtual Private Cloud Fundamentals
o Networking basics and terminology (IP addresses and CIDR blocks)
o What is Alibaba Cloud VPC
o Concepts & components
§ vSwitches
§ vRouters
§ Network ACLs
§ Security groups
o Basic operations
§ Setting up security groups
§ Enabling Internet access for resources within VPCs
• Elastic Compute Service Fundamentals
o Computing on and off the cloud
o Understanding traditional and cloud servers
o Compute options on Alibaba Cloud
o What is Alibaba Cloud ECS
o Functions and features
o Basic operations
§ Launching and releasing instances
§ Duplicating launched instances
o Other compute options on Alibaba Cloud
§ Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes (container)
§ Alibaba Cloud Elastic Container Instances (serverless)

Module 3: Storage on Alibaba Cloud
• Object Storage Service Fundamentals
o Storage types on Alibaba Cloud (file, block, object storage)
o Elastic Block Storage
§ Understanding cloud disks
o Apsara File Storage NAS
o What is OSS
o Concepts & components
§ Buckets, objects, URL identifiers
o Functions and features
§ Bucket policies, versioning, storage tiers, lifecycle management
o Use cases
o Basic operations
§ Creating buckets
§ Uploading and downloading objects from buckets

Module 4: Databases on Alibaba Cloud
• ApsaraDB RDS Fundamentals
o Databases on the cloud
§ RDBs and RDBMSs
§ Managed and self-hosted DBs
o What is ApsaraDB RDS
o Supported engines
o What is a DB instance
o Security & backups
o Tools
§ Data Transmission Service
§ Database Management Service
o Other DB options on Alibaba Cloud
§ PolarDB (Cloud-native RDB developed in-house)
§ Other options for NoSQL, etc.

Module 5: Scaling & Monitoring Alibaba Cloud Resources
• Server Load Balancer Fundamentals
o Availability and business continuity
o What is SLB
o Types of load balancers in Alibaba Cloud
o Concepts and components
§ Listener, backend server groups
§ Health checks
o Additional features
§ Disaster recovery
§ Auto Scaling
§ DDoS protection
• Auto Scaling Fundamentals
o What is Auto Scaling
o How Auto Scaling works
o Concepts & components
§ Scaling modes, scaling components
§ Billing for Auto Scaling
o Basic operations
§ Setting up Auto Scaling with SLB
• CloudMonitor Fundamentals
o Why monitoring matters
o What is CloudMonitor
o Concepts & components
§ Application groups
§ Dashboards and alerts
o Basic operations
§ Creating a dashboard and setting up an alert