Lab 7: The Cloud

Published

2026-07-11

Comprehension questions

What are two reasons you should consider going to the cloud?

Two primary reasons to move to the cloud include:

  • The ability to rapidly increase/decrease computing resources to match demand without investing in physical hardware (i.e., scalability)
  • The cloud provider handles much of the underlying infrastructure management, such as hardware repairs, power, and cooling (i.e., reduce maintenance).

What’s one reason you shouldn’t?

One reason we might avoid the cloud is cost unpredictability. While we only pay for what we use, unmonitored usage or unexpected spikes in demand can lead to much higher monthly bills than anticipated.

What is the difference between PaaS, IaaS, and SaaS?

The differences lie in how much of the technology stack we manage versus how much the provider manages:

%%{init: {‘theme’: ‘base’, ‘themeVariables’: {‘fontFamily’: ‘monospace’}}}%%

graph LR
    subgraph "User Management Level"
        SaaS["SaaS: You manage<br>only usage"]
        PaaS["PaaS: You manage<br>apps & data"]
        IaaS["IaaS: You manage<br>OS, apps, &<br>data"]
    end
    
    Provider(["Provider manages<br>infrastructure"]) --> SaaS
    Provider --> PaaS
    Provider --> IaaS
    
    style Provider fill:#5B8C5A,stroke:#000000,stroke-width:1px,color:#ffffff
    style IaaS fill:#D2562B,stroke:#000000,stroke-width:1px,color:#ffffff
    style SaaS fill:#1B2A41,stroke:#000000,stroke-width:1px,color:#ffffff
    style PaaS fill:#2A6F77,stroke:#000000,stroke-width:1px,color:#ffffff

‘Cloud acronyms’

The table below covers other differences:

Acronym Model Responsibility
IaaS Infrastructure as a Service User manages OS, middleware, and apps
PaaS Platform as a Service User manages applications and data
SaaS Software as a Service Provider manages everything

What’s an example of each that you’re familiar with?

Acronym Description Example
IaaS Provides raw computing resources like virtual servers and networking. Azure
PaaS Provides a framework for developers to build and deploy apps without managing the OS. Posit Workbench
SaaS Delivers finished software applications over the internet. Teams

What are the names of AWS’s services for: renting a server, filesystem storage, blob storage?

Lab 7

The lab for this section is broken into two parts: getting started with AWS and putting the penguins data and model in S3. I’ve put the original files in the original/ folder, and separated the labs into