Student Journey: Zero to Cloud Engineer with Uncodemy

# Daily Linux practice (on a VM or WSL)
whoami && hostname
ls -la /etc | head
ps aux --sort=-%mem | head -5
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y nginx
systemctl status nginx --no-pager
curl -I http://localhost
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_ed25519      # fixes "unprotected private key"

# Understand a subnet with Python's ipaddress module
import ipaddress

net = ipaddress.ip_network("10.0.1.0/24")
print("Addresses:", net.num_addresses)          # 256
print("First:", net[0], "Last:", net[-1])
print("Is 10.0.1.57 inside?", ipaddress.ip_address("10.0.1.57") in net)
print("Split into /26:", list(net.subnets(new_prefix=26)))

Architecture self-test
Draw a two-tier web app on AWS and answer:
1. Which subnets are public and which are private? Why?
2. What happens if one Availability Zone fails?
3. How does the app server get database credentials?
4. Where are logs and alarms?
5. Which part costs the most, and can it be smaller?

# CloudWatch alarm on high EC2 CPU (lab)
aws cloudwatch put-metric-alarm \
  --alarm-name web-high-cpu \
  --namespace AWS/EC2 --metric-name CPUUtilization \
  --dimensions Name=AutoScalingGroupName,Value=web-asg \
  --statistic Average --period 300 --evaluation-periods 2 \
  --threshold 70 --comparison-operator GreaterThanThreshold

resource "aws_security_group" "web" {
  name   = "web-sg"
  vpc_id = aws_vpc.main.id

  ingress {
    from_port   = 80
    to_port     = 80
    protocol    = "tcp"
    cidr_blocks = ["0.0.0.0/0"]
  }

  egress {
    from_port   = 0
    to_port     = 0
    protocol    = "-1"
    cidr_blocks = ["0.0.0.0/0"]
  }
}

Interview stories to prepare (STAR)
1. A lab where my instance could not reach the internet — and the fix
2. How I designed for an Availability Zone failure
3. How I kept my AWS bill low while learning
4. Why I moved my project from console clicks to Terraform

Stage tracker
Stage 1 Foundations ........ started ____ done ____
Stage 2 Core AWS ........... started ____ done ____
Stage 3 Architecture ....... started ____ done ____
Stage 4 Automation (IaC) ... started ____ done ____
Stage 5 Job readiness ...... started ____ done ____

Weekly log
Week ___
Learned: ______________
Built: ______________
Broke and fixed: ______________
AWS spend this week: ______
Next week: ______________

My zero-to-cloud story
Starting point: ______________
Hardest stage and why: ______________
Project I am proudest of: ______________
A failure that taught me most: ______________
Where I am now: ______________