Schedule
This schedule shows the 10-week plan for lectures, labs, and assignments. Lectures cover the concepts needed for the upcoming lab, ideally one week in advance but at minimum by the first lecture of that lab’s week.
- Lectures: Two 1-hour-20-minute sessions per week.
- Labs: Due on Fridays (multiple sections per week).
- Assignments: Due on Sundays at 11:59 PM, every two weeks starting in Week 2.
Week 1: Hardware and Linux Fundamentals
Section titled “Week 1: Hardware and Linux Fundamentals”| Lecture 1 | Hardware Fundamentals |
| Lecture 2 | Linux Server Planning and Configuration |
| Lab 1a | The Bare Metal |
| Lab 1b | AWS Academy Onboarding |
Hardware Fundamentals directly supports the Bare Metal lab. Linux Server Planning prepares you for next week’s WordPress deployment.
Week 2: Networking and Containers
Section titled “Week 2: Networking and Containers”| Lecture 3 | Networking Fundamentals (LAN/WAN) |
| Lecture 4 | Containerization with Docker |
| Lab 2 | Manual WordPress Server on EC2 |
| Assignment 1 | Sunday: Manual Minecraft Server |
Networking Fundamentals supports the VPC and security group work in this week’s WordPress lab. Docker is introduced this week so you have a full week with it before the hands-on Docker lab in Week 3.
Week 3: Virtualization and Security
Section titled “Week 3: Virtualization and Security”| Lecture 5 | Virtualization and Virtual Machines |
| Lecture 6 | System Security and Hardening |
| Lab 3 | Containerizing WordPress with Docker Compose |
Virtualization provides the conceptual foundation for how containers relate to VMs. Security prepares you for ECR access controls, backup policies, and hardening in the coming weeks.
Week 4: Scripting and Network Troubleshooting
Section titled “Week 4: Scripting and Network Troubleshooting”| Lecture 7 | Shell Scripting and Automation Basics |
| Lecture 8 | Network Configuration and Troubleshooting |
| Lab 4 | ECR, S3 Backups, and Version Switching |
| Assignment 2 | Sunday: Docker + ECR on EC2 |
Scripting skills support the backup and versioning workflows in this week’s lab and the automation-heavy weeks ahead. Network troubleshooting deepens your ability to debug connectivity issues.
Week 5: Infrastructure as Code
Section titled “Week 5: Infrastructure as Code”| Lecture 9 | Infrastructure as Code with Terraform |
| Lecture 10 | Cloud Computing and VM Deployment |
| Lab 5 | Terraform: Your First Infrastructure Stack |
IaC with Terraform is the first lecture so you have the concepts before the hands-on lab. Cloud Computing broadens the context with AWS services, VPCs, and deployment patterns.
Week 6: Configuration Management and CI/CD
Section titled “Week 6: Configuration Management and CI/CD”| Lecture 11 | Configuration Management with Ansible |
| Lecture 12 | CI/CD Pipelines and GitHub Actions |
| Lab 6 | Ansible Playbook and GitHub Actions Pipeline |
| Assignment 3 | Sunday: Infrastructure Automation |
Both lectures directly support this week’s lab. Ansible covers idempotent configuration; CI/CD covers the automated build-test-deploy pipeline you will build with GitHub Actions.
Week 7: Logging and Incident Response
Section titled “Week 7: Logging and Incident Response”| Lecture 13 | Log Management and Analysis |
| Lecture 14 | Incident Response and Disaster Recovery |
| Lab 7 | k3s on EC2: First Kubernetes Deployment |
Log analysis and incident response are essential skills for operating Kubernetes clusters. You will need both when debugging deployments and running failure drills in the coming weeks.
Week 8: Monitoring and Postmortems
Section titled “Week 8: Monitoring and Postmortems”| Lecture 15 | Monitoring and Performance Management |
| Lecture 16 | Postmortems and Communications |
| Lab 8 | Kubernetes Operations: Probes, Rollouts, and Failure Drills |
| Assignment 4 | Sunday: Kubernetes Migration |
Monitoring covers Prometheus, Grafana, and alerting patterns that directly support the k8s probes and resource limits in this week’s lab, and next week’s observability workshop. Postmortems prepares you for the incident documentation required in Assignment 5.
Week 9: Observability and Server Breadth
Section titled “Week 9: Observability and Server Breadth”| Lecture 17 | Windows Server Administration and Active Directory |
| Lecture 18 | Hardware Deep Dive |
| Lab 9 | Observability Workshop: Prometheus and Grafana |
The observability lab builds on the monitoring concepts from Week 8. This week’s lectures broaden your perspective: Windows Server shows how the same administration principles apply outside Linux, and Hardware Deep Dive revisits physical infrastructure with the full-stack understanding you have now built.
Week 10: Wrap-Up
Section titled “Week 10: Wrap-Up”| Lecture 19 | Documentation, Teamwork, and Course Wrap-Up |
| Lab 10 | Make-up lab (catch up on incomplete lab work) |
| Assignment 5 | Sunday: Observability and Incident Response |