Skip to content

Module 0 — Orientation & Skills Assessment

Goal: map what you already know from telecoms onto cloud engineering, find out exactly where you're starting from, and get you logged into the lab.

0.1 Why a telecoms engineer already half-knows this job

You know this (telecoms) It becomes this (cloud)
OSI layers 1–3, transmission, framing Same OSI model; you'll now live at layers 3–7
Circuits, E1/SDH capacity planning Bandwidth, autoscaling, capacity as code
NOC monitoring, alarms, severity levels SRE, Prometheus alerts, paging, SLOs
Truck roll to fix a site terraform apply / redeploy — no van required
Site survey + install method statement Architecture diagram + Infrastructure as Code
DNS? You've configured routers & NTE DNS, DHCP, routing — now in software (VPC)
Change windows, MOPs, rollback plans CI/CD pipelines, blue/green deploys, rollbacks
SLA on a leased line (99.9%) SLI/SLO/SLA and error budgets — module 7

The mental shift: infrastructure stops being physical objects you visit and becomes text files you version-control. Everything else is the same discipline you already practise: plan, change, verify, monitor, roll back.

0.2 Skills assessment (instructor asks, student answers)

Score each 0 (never seen it) / 1 (heard of it) / 2 (used it) / 3 (comfortable).

Linux 1. Have you ever opened a terminal on Linux or macOS? What did you run? 2. What does cd do? What about ls -l? 3. What's the difference between a file's owner and group? 4. Have you edited a config file on any device via CLI (router, PBX, NTE)? 5. What is SSH? Have you used PuTTY/ssh to reach kit in the field?

Networking 6. Sketch the OSI model from memory. Which layers have you worked at? 7. What's the difference between a switch and a router? 8. What does DNS do? What happens when you type a URL and press Enter? 9. What is NAT? Where have you seen it? 10. Subnetting: what does /24 mean?

General computing 11. Have you written any script or macro, ever (Excel counts)? 12. Do you have a GitHub account? Do you know what git is? 13. What's a VM? A container? (Guesses welcome.)

How to tailor from the scores

  • Linux total ≤ 5: run module 1 in full, slow pace, all labs typed by hand.
  • Linux 6–10: module 1 at normal pace; skip lab 1.1.
  • Networking total ≥ 10 (likely for a field engineer): compress module 2's OSI/DNS theory to a 30-minute recap and spend the time on TLS + 3-tier labs instead.
  • Q12 = 0: insert the git primer (module 6, section 6.1) right after module 1.

Record the scores — re-run the same questions at the end of the course. The delta is the student's proof-of-progress (and useful for their CV).

0.3 Lab access (do this together)

  1. Instructor: terraform apply in terraform/, then terraform output.
  2. Student installs an SSH client (Windows Terminal + OpenSSH, or PuTTY).
  3. Keys: the lab accepts TWO keys — the student's own key and the instructor's key (both registered in the repo variables). Each of you uses your own private key; nothing is shared.
  4. Student connects (the hostname is dynamic DNS — it always points at the lab box, even after stop/start changes its IP): 
    ssh ubuntu@lab.course.elhindi.net
  5. First command ever: 
    echo "Hello from the cloud, $(whoami) on $(hostname)"

Talking point: that machine did not exist ten minutes ago. It was created by a text file. At the end of the course, the student will read that text file and understand every line — and by the capstone, write their own.

0.4 Ground rules

  • Type every command in modules 1–2. Copy-paste is allowed from module 3 onwards.
  • Keep a lab journal (~/journal.md on lab-box): date, what you did, what broke, how you fixed it. This becomes interview material.
  • It is impossible to break anything that matters. The whole environment is disposable; terraform destroy && terraform apply rebuilds it in minutes. Break things enthusiastically.

Quiz (end of session)

1. In one sentence: what is "the cloud"? Someone else's computers, rented by the second, controlled through APIs — i.e. infrastructure you drive with software instead of visiting with a van.
2. What file created your lab machine? A Terraform configuration (terraform/main.tf in this repo). You'll read it in module 4.
3. Which of your existing telecoms skills do you think transfers most directly? Open answer — but troubleshooting methodology, OSI knowledge, and change-control discipline are the usual big three.