Stop 10 · Cloud Platforms (AWS / GCP / Azure)Topics · 1/11

Cloud Computing Fundamentals

In short

Startups no longer buy servers and wait weeks for delivery. They rent computers by the second from someone else's data centre. First, learn what that means and what you still manage.

Renting compute, storage and networking on-demand instead of owning physical hardware — understanding IaaS, PaaS and SaaS as different levels of abstraction is foundational before diving into any specific provider.

The mascot stands at a rental yard choosing between a self-drive car, a chauffeur car and a taxi.

Think of it like this

Self-drive, chauffeur or taxi

Rent a self-drive car and you handle driving, fuel and route. Hire one with a chauffeur and you just say where. Book a taxi and you only sit in. IaaS, PaaS and SaaS are those three: the less you manage, the less you control.

Watch it happen

Who manages which layer?

App

Data

Runtime

Servers

1/4On-premises: your own hardware in your own building. You manage every layer, including power and cooling.

The big ideas

What you need to know

On-demand and elastic

Start a server in minutes, add ten more for a sale, delete them after. No waiting for hardware.

Pay for what you use

You're billed by the second, hour or request. Great for spiky loads, painful if you forget to switch things off.

Regions and zones

Providers run data centres in regions around the world, each split into zones. Use more than one zone for resilience.

Shared responsibility

The provider secures the hardware and data centres. You secure your accounts, data, configs and code.

How it works

Renting a server, start to finish

1
Pick a region
Choose one close to your users, like Mumbai for users in India, to cut latency.
2
Pick a size
Choose CPU and memory. Start small; you can resize later.
3
Launch
The provider finds spare capacity on its hardware and boots your virtual machine in minutes.
4
Delete when done
Billing stops when the resources are gone. Stopped is not always free: disks still cost.

Save yourself the pain

Common mistakes

Oops

Thinking the cloud provider is responsible for securing your app and data.

Do this instead

They secure the infrastructure. Weak passwords, open ports and public buckets are your responsibility.

Oops

Assuming the cloud is always cheaper than owning servers.

Do this instead

It's cheaper for variable or uncertain loads. Big, steady workloads can cost more unless you plan and commit.

Your mission

Map your daily apps

~15 min

Quick check

You launch a virtual machine on a cloud provider. Who patches its operating system?

Go deeper

1Learn the differences between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS with one real example of each.
2Understand the shared responsibility model — what the cloud provider secures versus what you do.
3Sign up for a free-tier account on your target cloud provider to explore hands-on.