Clouds#
The cloud is infrastructure as an API. The operator stands up redirectors, ranges, C2 planes, and analysis estates from a terminal, and tears them down without leaving artifacts behind. Providers offer the same core building blocks under different names; software-defined infrastructure is what makes the whole estate programmable underneath.
Read the provider’s primitives, learn the seams between them, and the cloud becomes both a lab for operator-built capability and a target surface to enumerate when the mission calls for it.
Foundations#
The common primitives every provider exposes and the mental model that survives switching between them.
What “infrastructure as an API” actually buys the operator, and how SDN, SDS, and SDDC fit together underneath.
Providers#
The reference cloud. Largest catalog, deepest IAM, most opinions baked in.
Microsoft’s cloud, tightly integrated with AD and the Windows estate the operator often meets on target.
Google’s cloud. Strongest data and ML primitives.
The dominant cloud across China and APAC.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Database-heritage cloud the operator meets in enterprise estates.
IBM Cloud. Mainframe-adjacent and regulated-industry heavy.
Tencent Cloud. APAC reach with gaming, video, and WeChat adjacencies.
Lightweight, developer-first. Cheap stand-up for ranges and throwaway infrastructure.
Edge network, DNS, R2, Workers, Tunnel. Sits in front of a lot of the public internet.
PaaS in its original sense. Push code, get a URL.