Does anyone have a 30 to 60-minute lab on "Cloud" basics? I was thinking of having students launch some AWS resources (free tier). Does anyone have something you can share on building / launching / managing cloud resources to put their learning into practice? This is for my 16 and 17 year old A+ students.
Cloud Lab
- Thread starter Chris Gehringer
- Start date
If it were me, I probably wouldn't do a lab on AWS or Azure for A+ students - it's more overkill for what cloud topics you might see on the A+. Instead, I would build a lab illustrates the concepts of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS and maybe show them how to set up VMs using VirtualBox or HyperV, but only to the extent of contrasting actual bare-metal systems. I think they would gain more insight from something like that.
/r
/r
Rick, thank you. We did just that with VirtualBox creating a simple VM with Linux Mint. Just the install and how it works. I showed them an additional VM on my machine with WindowsfX (as an additional example) and then segued into a lesson on virtual networking.
I think if you did an exploratory of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS, you would give your students the proper exposure for any Cloud questions that come up on the A+. That will save you the headache of trying to provision subscriptions and resources in AWS/Azure/GCP. /r
@Chris Gehringer Beside the information Mr. Rick has shared. You can try with Microsoft Learn, what you need to do:
- Guide your students to create account on Microsoft Learn
- You choose which topics that your students need to practice and guide them to practice on Microsoft Learn.
Microsoft Learn provide free resources (Online documents and Practice Labs enviroments (sandboxes)). You can try with it.
- Guide your students to create account on Microsoft Learn
- You choose which topics that your students need to practice and guide them to practice on Microsoft Learn.
Microsoft Learn provide free resources (Online documents and Practice Labs enviroments (sandboxes)). You can try with it.
I use an AWS lab with my A+ hardware students--it's super helpful for them to see how the stuff they've been learning in class about CPUs, storage, memory, etc., applies in the cloud. You can get them into AWS for free if you sign up for AWS Academy, create a course using the AWS Academy Learner Lab - Foundation Services option, and then invite your students to the course. Doesn't cost you or them anything, and it doesn't require a credit card. Then have them go into EC2 and launch an instance. You can talk about the choices they face along the way. You can even have them connect into the instance, either with the Connect tool in AWS or through RDP/SSH from their local computers.
ETA link to AWS Academy:
https://aws.amazon.com/training/awsacademy/
Good point, Jill.
I just also went through the Cloud+ CertMaster; the Azure and AWS labs were pretty comprehensive. My two downsides is that I didn't seem to have enough time to get things done - maybe that's part of it - get faster by having to repeat the lab. The other was the labs were on the old AWS interface and Amazon just created a new look and style. So it's probably not a good idea to use the new interface, unless you've got the concepts down.
Schools might also roll subscription costs for students into lab fees (not sure if this is actually happening, but I could see a viability).
I haven't looked at the CertMaster labs yet. With AWS Academy, you can create a sandbox environment that uses the live AWS cloud, so it's always updated. Then you have students do whatever they need to do. They have access to most services they would need all the way through Cloud+ (starting even at the ITF+ level), and they're given $100 free credit within each Learner Lab. So, like, if they have both an A+ class and a Cloud+ class, you can give them a Learner Lab for each class, and each Learner Lab has its own bucket of $100 free credit for the student to use on any service they can access. No cost to the school or to the student, so no need for increased lab fees.
Gotcha. I don't recall much during the Cloud+ that specifically alluded to Azure, AWS, or GCP, which made those labs great exposure to those services. In fact, I think I might have heavily over-studied in going through those environments.
But this is CompTIA - so I should have known that, given vendor-neutrality and the fluidity of change in those environments (particularly AWS) what I would see would not especially tie into those environments, but rather, would allude to the specific technologies.
But getting back to the OP's point, since the Cloud+ didn't go into those environments, themselves, I would probably say that doing them in A+, aside from an on-screen demo of the portal wouldn't be a productive use of the teaching time, if the aim is preparing students for the A+ exam.
/r
But this is CompTIA - so I should have known that, given vendor-neutrality and the fluidity of change in those environments (particularly AWS) what I would see would not especially tie into those environments, but rather, would allude to the specific technologies.
But getting back to the OP's point, since the Cloud+ didn't go into those environments, themselves, I would probably say that doing them in A+, aside from an on-screen demo of the portal wouldn't be a productive use of the teaching time, if the aim is preparing students for the A+ exam.
/r
Yeah, I think, in order to give a true vendor-neutral learning experience, you have to look for what the various platforms have in common, not what makes them different. You can't really teach or learn cloud well without getting into vendor platforms, but you don't want to get too focused on any specific platform and the particulars of how that platform's services work. "Vendor neutral" doesn't mean "anti-vendor," it means look for concepts and principles that are common across multiple vendors.
Very true. And I did enjoy doing the labs; they gave me a bit of practice with AWS, which I don't use at all, normally. What's interesting about that dynamic is that none of these platforms, in my opinion, stand out as the one I would prefer to use. Right now, my deference is to Azure and GCP, since I've used both of them. But I found myself a lot saying, "ooo...this sucks, Azure does it so much better, or, why, Microsoft, can't this be as obvious as it is in AWS?" So those kinds of compare/contrast exercises are good for knowledge.
But what candidates, particularly for the Cloud+ should also understand is that, while Cloud+ will talk about the generalities of that technology, it doesn't completely prepare someone to work in a cloud environment. A junior IT specialist who is looking to be a cloud admin should also consider taking an appropriate vendor exam for the platform he/she intends to use, such as AZ-900 from MSFT for the basics on Azure.
A great lab that I would suggest that would be good for A+ and Cloud+ candidates to cooperate on would be to construct a Harvester HCI platform. A+/Server+/L+ candidates can assemble the underlying hardware infrastructure and load Harvester on the nodes. Cloud+ can work on provisioning resources and maybe even see if they can connect it to the cloud in the form of a hybrid environment. Security/Pen/CySA candidates can fiddle with it from a security perspective, attack/defend, maybe some capture the flag...? Lots of win here - and not many folks have actually built an On-Prem private cloud.
I'm totally gonna build one of these my own self - when I get a moment...lol
/r