Category: VMware & Cloud
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How to Build Cloud Skills for Free: Free Tiers and Labs (Cloud for Beginners, Part 17)
Learn real cloud skills for free in 2026 with the AWS, Azure and Google Cloud free tiers and free labs, and set up the budget alerts that keep you from a surprise bill.
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Public, Private, Hybrid and Multicloud Explained (Cloud for Beginners, Part 16)
Public, private, hybrid and multicloud explained in plain English for freshers, with a real egress cost example and the interview question that always comes up.
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Cloud Reliability, Backups and Disaster Recovery Explained (Cloud for Beginners, Part 15)
Reliability is a number, not a feeling. A plain-English guide to redundancy, backups, RTO and RPO, and the four disaster recovery strategies on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
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Cloud Security Basics Explained for Beginners (Cloud for Beginners, Part 14)
Cloud security is mostly your half of a shared job: turn on MFA, give least access, encrypt data, and know which settings are yours. A plain-English guide for freshers.
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How Cloud Billing Works (and How Bills Explode) (Cloud for Beginners, Part 13)
Cloud bills explode from quiet meters, not the obvious server. Here is how cloud billing really works, the charges that ambush freshers, and a real bill broken down line by line.
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Serverless Explained: What It Is and When to Use It (Cloud for Beginners, Part 12)
Serverless explained for freshers: what it means, how Functions as a Service work, cold starts, a real cost breakdown, and when not to use it.
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Containers and Kubernetes Explained Simply (Cloud for Beginners, Part 11)
A plain-English guide to containers and Kubernetes for freshers: what a container really is, why Kubernetes exists, and what managed clusters cost on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
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Cloud IAM Explained: Identity and Access Management for Beginners (Cloud for Beginners, Part 10)
Cloud IAM decides who can do what to which resource. Learn users versus roles, least privilege, and why an explicit deny always wins, across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
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AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: How to Choose (Cloud for Beginners, Part 9)
AWS, Azure and Google Cloud sell the same core services with different names. A fresher-friendly comparison of strengths, free tiers and which one to learn first.
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Cloud Regions and Availability Zones Explained Simply (Cloud for Beginners, Part 8)
Regions and Availability Zones in plain English: what they are, how to spread an app across AZs to survive a failure, how to pick the right Region, and the cross-AZ data cost that surprises freshers.
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Cloud Networking Basics: VPC, Subnets and Gateways (Cloud for Beginners, Part 7)
A VPC is your private slice of the cloud network. Here is how subnets, route tables and gateways actually fit together, explained for freshers with no networking background.
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Cloud Storage Explained: Object, Block and File (Cloud for Beginners, Part 6)
Object, block and file storage explained for freshers, with real prices, a worked cost example, and the tier traps that quietly inflate cloud bills.
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Architecture & Design
About the Author

Dr Pranay Jha
Dr. Pranay Jha is a Cloud and AI Consultant with 18+ years of experience in hybrid cloud, virtualization, and enterprise infrastructure transformation. He specializes in VMware technologies, multi-cloud strategy, and Generative AI solutions. He holds a PhD in Computer Applications with research focused on Cloud and AI, has published multiple research papers, and has been a VMware vExpert since 2016 and a VMUG Community Leader.
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