Specialist Preparation Program in Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Program facts

Study fee

Free

subjects

4

lessons

13

Estimated time

22 hours

Content last reviewed

23 October 2026

Access period

30 days

Study language

Arabic and English

About the program

The program begins with NIST's five cloud characteristics, then separates service from deployment models and clarifies customer and provider duties. You turn a vague booking brief into requirements with units and tests, calculate starting capacity, and examine loss of an instance. You draw the entry path to an application and private database and assign identity and booking-data controls. You then calculate RPO and RTO against synthetic recovery records, define booking-success indicators and incident alerts, and estimate usage cost with explicit units. Finally, you inventory migration dependencies, plan cutover and rollback that preserve new transactions, compare intended and actual deployment state, weigh two options with mandatory gates, and review configuration drift after handover. Each lesson has two data-bearing exercises with worked solutions and checks. Estimated minutes cover one language learning path, not accredited hours. Fictional prices are not live offers, and workplace data belongs only in an authorized environment.

Practical relevance

The aids support a small application, operations or migration review: document workload assumptions, assign an unowned control, test an unintended access path, and distinguish a booking failure from a dashboard symptom. Exercises use invented data without requiring a paid cloud account. Adapt them to a real service only after checking its agreement and obtaining needed authorization.

Why this program

The program gives a beginning specialist concrete operating aids rather than product labels alone. Learners produce an evidence table, responsibility matrix, capacity calculation, access and recovery checks, and a bounded decision record. Following one small connected workload shows how resource choices affect a testable booking outcome without claiming that theory alone qualifies someone to launch a system.

What you will learn

• Evaluate a cloud offer and produce evidence-based workload requirements and a responsibility matrix with stated limits.
• Calculate starting capacity, trace data and network paths, and test narrow permissions and booking behavior.
• Measure recovery and booking indicators, estimate unit-aware usage cost, and allocate shared spend transparently.
• Sequence a bounded migration, verify deployment, compare options, and handle configuration drift in an accountable handover.

Who it is for

• This program suits a junior cloud operator, application support practitioner or technical project coordinator who needs to prepare basic cloud decisions and run bounded checks under authorized owners. Learners should be able to read a small data table and describe a simple application and network path. It is useful for teams assessing a small workload or limited migration. It does not confer a professional license, independent production authority or external exam preparation.

Curriculum

1. Subject 1 Open for free

   Scope the workload and cloud boundary

   Begin by checking an offer against five cloud characteristics, separating absent evidence from a demonstrated contradiction for the particular service. Distinguish service models from deployment models and assign remaining application, identity and data duties to the customer or provider according to the actual offer. Then turn a vague booking brief into measurable requirements: request type and peak, booking success, acceptable data loss and recovery time. Produce a characteristic evidence table, responsibility matrix and unit-aware requirements sheet. Seek a specific observation rather than accept provider branding or a rate without a measurement window, and distinguish service capability from success of the workload that uses it. The unit closes by identifying which decisions the specialist can prepare and which belong to service and data owners.

   3 lessons · 4.5 hours

   1. Establish cloud characteristics and service boundaries 1.5 hours
   2. Assign responsibility across service models 1.5 hours
   3. Turn a workload brief into testable requirements 1.5 hours
2. Subject 2

   Design resources and controls

   Build an initial design from demand evidence rather than an instance-size label. Calculate core demand from arrival rate and service time, then test operating headroom and one-instance failure while observing the database. Draw the HTTPS path to the application and private database; select transactional storage for booking and object storage for independent receipts by access pattern. Assign narrow actions and resources to application, support and backup identities, testing both permission and denial while naming the data-retention decision owner. Outputs are a capacity sheet, traffic table, storage selection and permission matrix. All values and cities are fictional. You learn why front-end scaling cannot fix a database bottleneck and why a connection fault does not justify exposing a database to every public address.

   3 lessons · 4.5 hours

   1. Estimate compute capacity and verify scaling 1.5 hours
   2. Trace the network path and select storage 1.5 hours
   3. Assign identity and data controls under shared responsibility 1.5 hours
3. Subject 3

   Operate, recover and account for cost

   Operate the service from a user's result: can a booking complete, can its data be recovered after disruption, and what resources caused its cost? Calculate a backup gap against RPO and include detection, authorization, import and functional verification in RTO; possession of a copy alone is not successful recovery. Define a booking-success indicator and an alert with denominator, time window and sample floor, then separate observed failure from a causal hypothesis. Calculate compute, storage and transfer lines using fictional prices and allocate a shared line under an explicit rule. Deliver a recovery-gap table, timed exercise, alert card and cost sheet. Fictional cases establish neither a live price nor a universal availability target; they show where a service-owner decision is needed.

   3 lessons · 4.5 hours

   1. Test backup and recovery against RPO and RTO 1.5 hours
   2. Build service indicators and triage incidents 1.5 hours
   3. Calculate usage and allocate cloud cost 1.5 hours
4. Subject 4

   Migrate, verify and hand over

   Finish the workload path with a dependency map showing what writes and reads the database and when night jobs run. Plan cutover and fallback without hiding transactions created on the new target. Verify deployment by comparing version, instance minimum, network boundary and backup evidence with approved state, and test a booking journey rather than a home page alone. Combine capacity, identity, recovery and cost evidence in a decision record with mandatory gates and explicit weights; a specific tested connector change can alter the recommendation. After handover, inspect configuration drift and distinguish authorized scaling from a public database or an evidence gap. Deliver a migration map, acceptance record, weighted decision and change-impact matrix. All cases are fictional; production and purchasing decisions remain with authorized owners.

   4 lessons · 6 hours

   1. Inventory migration dependencies and plan a reversible cutover 1.5 hours
   2. Verify a bounded deployment and repair a failed check 1.5 hours
   3. Integrated cloud decision and accountable handover 1.5 hours
   4. Control configuration changes and drift after handover 1.5 hours

Subjects unlock in sequence as you progress.

Strengths

• Begin by checking an offer against five cloud characteristics, separating absent evidence from a demonstrated contradiction for the particular service.
• Build an initial design from demand evidence rather than an instance-size label.
• Operate the service from a user's result: can a booking complete, can its data be recovered after disruption, and what resources caused its cost? Calculate a backup gap against RPO and include detection, authorization, import and functional verification in RTO; possession of a copy alone is not successful recovery.
• Finish the workload path with a dependency map showing what writes and reads the database and when night jobs run.

Evidence basis

Definitions use NIST, while responsibility, operations, recovery, cost and migration use identified primary guidance; cases and figures are fictional.

Assessment

Assessments follow the program blueprint and may use module assessments, a final assessment, or a combination, under the approved attempt policy.

Assessment attempts: 2 per assessment, 7 days apart

The pass mark is announced before the program is published.

Certificate

The credential confirms completion and successful assessment; it does not represent professional licensure unless explicitly and lawfully stated.

Every certificate has a public verification code. Verify a certificate

Verification example: a real issued certificate

Program questions