4.7.3: Hands On Lab Exercises

Lab: Cloud vs. Traditional IT Administration Comparison

Objective: Compare administrative workflows between traditional IT and cloud environments by documenting parallel processes.

Scenario: GlobalTech Corp is in the middle of a cloud migration. They currently operate a hybrid environment with on-premises servers and AWS cloud resources. You are a senior administrator responsible for both environments.

Instructions:

1. Workflow Comparison (25 min): Create a side-by-side comparison document for the following administrative tasks. For each task, describe the steps, tools, and time required in both traditional IT and cloud (AWS):
   • Provisioning a new web server
   • Adding a new user with limited permissions
   • Implementing a firewall rule change
   • Setting up monitoring and alerting
   • Performing a disaster recovery drill
2. IAM Policy Design (20 min): Design an IAM structure for GlobalTech's AWS environment with the following teams and requirements:
   • Development team (10 people): needs to deploy to staging, read-only access to production
   • Operations team (5 people): full access to production, can manage all infrastructure
   • Data team (3 people): access to S3 data buckets and analytics services only
   • Executives (2 people): read-only access to billing and cost dashboards

   Create: IAM groups, list of permissions/policies for each group, and at least one custom policy in JSON-like pseudocode.

3. Cost Optimization Audit (20 min): GlobalTech's monthly AWS bill shows:
   • 15 EC2 instances running 24/7 (only 5 are needed outside business hours)
   • 500 GB of S3 storage with no lifecycle policies
   • 3 unused Elastic IP addresses
   • All instances are on-demand pricing with no reserved instances

   Create a cost optimization plan with specific recommendations and estimated savings.

4. Security Audit Checklist (15 min): Create a 15-item security audit checklist for GlobalTech's AWS environment, covering IAM, networking, data protection, monitoring, and compliance.
5. Migration Readiness Assessment (10 min): Identify three on-premises workloads that should be migrated to cloud next and three that should remain on-premises. Justify each decision.

Deliverables:

• Side-by-side workflow comparison table
• IAM structure diagram with groups, policies, and sample policy document
• Cost optimization plan with estimated savings
• Security audit checklist
• Migration readiness assessment