Week 10 Posting - Cloud Automation

For the final week of class, we learned about cloud automation and using common terminology that are used in automation services and techniques. Refining documents and logs are important to keeping the network and system consistent and effective. It’s a good habit to update the number of resources being used and being contributed over time. That’s when managing the life cycle plays a crucial role in evolving the system and implement appropriate processes.

            During our reading, I learned five concepts of lifecycle management: roadmaps, version control, updates and upgrades, migrations, and deprecations (West, 2022, pp. 401-402). The roadmap provides a visual perspective of the resource’s life cycle. It outlines all significant phases and goes into detail of each stage. Version control leans more towards monitoring and keeping a look out on any level of changes done in the system. Updates and upgrades are related to patching, which eliminates any errors and add necessary features. Migration happens during growth. If the system grows, it will need to move to another location and hope that environment provides the nourishment it needs. Lastly, deprecations relate to resources that are out of date and are no longer available. It’s the professional’s job to evaluate the area and create a plan to proceed with new features.

            Blogging helps improve my writing skills and language usage. It allows me to be expressive and improve my craft. In addition, it helps build my brand of work and allow myself to be known to many professional companies. Blogging helps me in my current job by applying everything I learned from this class and properly implement topics from different weeks. After school, I will consider blogging when important topics that I’m knowledgeable of cross my path.

 

West, J. (2022b). CompTIA Cloud+ Guide to Cloud Computing. Course Technology. 

Week 9 Posting - Managing Cloud Capacity and Performance

This week, the class and I learned how to manage cloud capacity and performance. One of our weekly objectives is to describe the relevance of events and data in monitoring cloud resources. During my readings, I want to point out the importance of utilizing a syslog and its priority on data gathering.

            Whether it’s on site or in the cloud, Syslog is the protocol for managing event data logs and sending them to their respected storage location. This protocol collects and stores logging transactions and history information. Event message format, transmission, and handling are three main components to the syslog infrastructure (West, 2022, pp. 361-362). The format is structured with types of data to allow syslog to be used in a variety of environments. The transmission is majority focused on data movement across networks. The handling aspect is for creating and analyzing the event messages.

            Two servers the Syslog uses for logging events are the generator and collector. The generator creates syslog messages and transactions from a file and moves them to the collector that gathers these messages (West, 2022, p. 362).

 

West, J. (2022b). CompTIA Cloud+ Guide to Cloud Computing. Course Technology.

Week 8 Posting - Cloud Storage

This week, the class and I went over the topic of cloud storage and identifying multiple types of data types stored in the cloud. In the realm of cloud security, it’s essential to classify data in a form of different axes. I want to argue that prioritizing different organizational methods will increase security that store these data. During our reading, I learned about 4 types of data classification axis: sensitivity, compliance, lifecycle, and visibility (West, 2022, p. 337). Sensitivity controls who can access the data and whether it can be accessed remotely or strictly on-premises. Compliance proposes the standards and regulations of data storage and movement. Encryption is one of the main topics in this axis. Lifecycle is focused on the duration of data in the specific storage. Lastly, visibility is centered on monitoring data and tracking any sort of movement and transactions.

West, J. (2022b). CompTIA Cloud+ Guide to Cloud Computing. Course Technology.

Week 7 Posting - Identity and Access Management

 

This week, the class and I learned about identity and access management. We learned how to evaluate account manage requirements and other technical concerns. During my studies, I learned about common identity and access management (IAM) issues that may hinder and negatively impact performance and productivity. When it comes to issues related to authentication, there are three common areas of impact: expired certificates, misconfigured certificate, and federation /single sign-on issues (West, 2022, p. 288). When certificates expire, it’s common for the system to send a friendly reminder to the user that they’ll expire within a certain duration. In some cases, the certificates will need to be renewed manually. Checking the expiration date of a certificate can help the users to acknowledge when it’ll be time to renew it. In some cases, users attempt the wrong certificate to access or perform a command in the system. If that’s the case, go to the root and configure it correctly. Lastly, mistyping is a common problem when signing to a system. Ensure the credentials are correct and there’s no blockage between the SSO service and service provider’s app (West, 2022, p. 288).

West, J. (2022b). CompTIA Cloud+ Guide to Cloud Computing. Course Technology.

Week 6 Posting - Securing Cloud Resources

 

This week, the class and I learned about securing cloud resources and identifying different types of threats to cloud security. System misconfiguration occurs when an application is configured improperly or are missing certain settings or guidelines. This creates a ripple effect that exposes weak spots in the system for threat actors to take advantage of. There are common security weak spots that IT professionals should consider when a security issue arrives: unencrypted data and communications, obsolete security technologies, incorrect hardening settings, security device failure, insufficient security controls and processes, and unauthorized physical access (West, 2022, p. 249). To fix these misconfigurations, the team must consider identifying the root of the problem, evaluate the severity, implement correction, and document the situation. The reason for documenting is for future reference, meaning if this situation occurs again, the team will be prepared.

West, J. (2022b). CompTIA Cloud+ Guide to Cloud Computing. Course Technology.

Week 5 Posting - Cloud Connectivity and Troubleshooting

This week, the class went out cloud connectivity and troubleshooting. We learned how VLANs and common network connectivity tools work. I want to shed to light a recent technology that addresses the weaknesses of VLANs in a cloud computing atmosphere called VXLAN or virtual extensible LAN).

This overlay technology creates an “extended” virtual network on top of the current infrastructure. In terms of the OSI model, it is adding a layer 2 overlay structure above layer 3 (West, 2022, p. 183). The VXLAN header is inserted between the outer UDP header and original layer 2 frame. The header itself consist of the VXLAN flags and VXLAN network ID. An optimal time to use VXLAN is when the users need to accomplish any type of network segmentation that goes beyond what the original can deliver since VXLAN enables up to 16 million virtual networks.

West, J. (2022b). CompTIA Cloud+ Guide to Cloud Computing. Course Technology.

Week 4 Posting - Cloud Networking

This week, the class covered cloud networking, which involves appropriating IP address spaces in cloud networks, identifying cloud stacks, and configuring network interfaces in the cloud. For me, I found incorporating the OSI model to the Cloud Stack Theoretical model benefits me by learning how to manage and organize the information. Layer 1 is the physical layer. This layer includes servers, cables, hardware, etc. Layer 2 is the virtualization layer. This layer emphasizes the virtualization software and hardware. Layer 3 is the network layer. This layer focuses on managing resources, costs, security, and other services. Layer 4 is the OS layer. This layer is centered around data storage, data processing and workloads. Lastly, layer 5 is the application layer. This layer is for the traditional lower-layer functions. The cloud service provider is responsible for monitoring the physical and virtualization layer (West, 2022, p. 132).

West, J. (2022b). CompTIA Cloud+ Guide to Cloud Computing. Course Technology.