This IBM® Redbooks® publication is based on the Presentations Guide of the course A Practical Approach to Cloud IaaS with IBM SoftLayer, which was developed by the IBM Redbooks team in partnership with IBM Middle East and Africa University Program.

This course is designed to teach university students how to build a simple infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud environment based on IBM SoftLayer®. It provides students with the fundamental skills to design, implement, and manage an IaaS cloud environment using the IBM SoftLayer platform as an example.

The primary target audience for this course is university students in undergraduate computer science and computer engineer programs with no previous experience working in cloud environments. However, anyone new to cloud computing can benefit from this course.

The workshop materials were created in July 2015. Thus, all IBM SoftLayer features discussed in this Presentations Guide are current as of July 2015.

Unit 1. Understanding the IaaS approach

Unit 2. Platform architecture for cloud computing

Unit 3. Server offerings in cloud computing

Unit 4. Storage options in cloud computing

Unit 5. Networking options in cloud computing

Unit 6. Managing a simple IaaS environment

Unit 7. Server offerings in cloud computing: Advanced topics

Unit 8. Storage options in cloud computing: Advanced topics

Unit 9. Networking options in cloud computing: Advanced topics

Unit 10. Securing cloud environments

Unit 11. Monitoring cloud environments

Unit 12. Automating cloud management with APIs