Lab · Cloud Computing (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud)
Lab: the cloud maths for a coaching centre
The brief
A coaching centre in Indore wants to move its online test portal to the cloud. Work out the monthly cost of its own server against a cloud server, how much downtime an SLA really allows, how reliable a chain of services is, and which AWS region to choose when student data must stay in India.
Why it matters
Before any company moves to the cloud, someone has to answer three questions with numbers: will it cost less, will it stay up, and where will the data live? Cloud support associates, pre-sales engineers and solutions architects do these sums every week, and interviewers love to ask them.
Skills you practise
- CapEx versus OpEx
- pay-as-you-go pricing
- SLA percentages and downtime
- availability of parts in a chain
- choosing a region: data residency and latency
What you will have at the end
cloud_maths.py with four tested functions, and the answers for the coaching centre: its monthly cost on its own server against the cloud, the downtime its SLA allows, the availability of its three-part portal, and the region it should use.
How it is marked (rubric, 100 points)
| Correct resultsEvery check passes, including the empty and "no region fits" cases. | 50 |
|---|---|
| Clear codeReadable names, the rounding done once at the end, no numbers copied from data.py into the functions. | 20 |
| Can explain the numbersYou can say in two sentences why the cloud is cheaper (or not) here, what 43.2 minutes means, and why the region must be in India. | 30 |
0/4 steps done
Step 1 of 4
Own server or cloud server: the monthly cost
onprem_monthly() spreads the hardware price over its life and adds the running cost; cloud_monthly() multiplies the hourly rate by the hours used.
Buying a server is CapEx: one big payment that lasts several years. To compare it with a monthly cloud bill (OpEx), spread the price over the months it lasts: price ÷ (years × 12). Then add what it costs to run each month, such as electricity and the maintenance contract.
A cloud server is pay-as-you-go: rate per hour × hours used. The portal only needs 300 hours a month, so the centre pays for 300 hours, not 720. Round both answers to 2 decimals. All the prices here are example prices.
Run shows what your code prints. Check runs the step's tests. Ctrl+Enter checks too.