Cloud Library

Cloud Cost Optimization: Ten Habits That Keep Bills Predictable

Ten practical habits that keep cloud bills predictable on Azure, Oracle Cloud, and Hetzner: budgets, tagging, weekly bill reviews, right-sizing, scheduled shutdowns, spot capacity, retention rules, egress, and commitments.

5 min read

How Cloud Credits Work: Trials, Promotional Credits, and Billing

How cloud credits are granted and applied: free trial balances, promotional codes, startup program grants, and service credits, plus what changes when you upgrade and how to track expiry before value is lost.

5 min read

Multi-Cloud for Small Teams: When It Helps and When It Hurts

When a small team benefits from more than one cloud provider and when it only adds duplication: geography, data residency, unique services, and credits versus doubled IAM, networking, egress, and on-call knowledge.

5 min read

Pay-As-You-Go vs Reserved and Committed Pricing in the Cloud

Pay-as-you-go bills metered usage at list rates; reservations, savings plans, and committed use discounts trade flexibility for lower rates. How each model works on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud.

5 min read

Cloud Account Security Essentials: MFA, Roles, and Least Privilege

The three controls that stop most cloud account compromises: MFA on the root identity, roles instead of long lived keys, and least privilege on AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, plus a takeover checklist.

6 min read

Setting Budgets and Billing Alerts on Any Cloud Provider

How to set budgets and billing alerts on AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, what DigitalOcean and Hetzner offer instead, how to wire alerts to automated actions, and which thresholds actually give you time to react.

5 min read

IAM Basics: Users, Roles, and Policies Across Cloud Providers

How identities, groups, policies, and scopes fit together in AWS IAM, Google Cloud IAM, Azure RBAC, Oracle Cloud compartments, and IBM Cloud access groups, with patterns that work on every provider.

5 min read

Object Storage vs Block Storage: Which One Does Your App Need?

Block storage is a disk attached to one server; object storage is files over HTTP in a bucket. How EBS, S3, DigitalOcean Volumes and Spaces, and Linode storage differ, and how to choose between them.

6 min read

Cloud Networking Basics: VPCs, Subnets, Firewalls, and Floating IPs

The network pieces behind every cloud server: VPCs and private networks, subnets and CIDR ranges, security groups and Cloud Firewalls, elastic and floating IPs, NAT gateways, and load balancers on AWS, Hetzner, and Vultr.

6 min read

Managed Kubernetes Across Providers: EKS, GKE, AKS, DOKS, LKE, and IKS

A practitioner's comparison of EKS, GKE, AKS, DOKS, LKE, and IKS: what managed covers, identity and networking integration, control plane pricing models, quotas, and a security baseline.

6 min read

Infrastructure as Code: Getting Started with Terraform on Any Cloud

How Terraform is organised, which providers cover AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, DigitalOcean, and Hetzner, what init, plan, and apply do, where to keep state, and how to handle credentials safely.

6 min read

Business & Startups

All in this topic

Planning, cost control, provider choice, research computing, email and account handover for teams.

A Cloud Infrastructure Plan for Early-Stage Startups

A practical infrastructure plan for early-stage startups on AWS, Google Cloud, or DigitalOcean: account structure, one deployment pattern, a minimum managed stack, cost controls, access that survives hires, and a phased checklist.

6 min read

Cloud Cost Optimization: Ten Habits That Keep Bills Predictable

5 min read

Multi-Cloud for Small Teams: When It Helps and When It Hurts

5 min read

How to Choose a Cloud Provider for Your Business

How to choose a cloud provider for a business: start from your workloads, answer seven deciding questions, compare Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, and OVHcloud profiles, score a shortlist, and run a short evaluation.

5 min read

Cloud Fundamentals

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Accounts, quotas, credits, pricing models, storage and networking explained across providers.

What Is a Cloud Account? Organizations, Projects, Billing, and Access

What a cloud account really contains: resources, identity, billing, and quotas. How AWS accounts, Google Cloud projects, and Azure subscriptions differ, and what to review when you take one over.

6 min read

IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS: Where Each Cloud Provider Fits

IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS define how much of the stack you run versus the provider. See where AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, and Google Workspace fit, and how to choose a layer.

5 min read

Cloud Regions and Availability Zones: How to Choose a Location

Regions and availability zones decide latency, price, quotas, data residency, and fault tolerance. How AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, and BinaryLane structure locations, and how to choose.

5 min read

What Is a vCPU? Understanding Cloud Compute Sizing

A vCPU is a share of a physical processor, not a whole core. Learn how shared, dedicated, and burstable vCPUs differ, how vCPU quotas work, and how to size a cloud server.

5 min read

Developer Workflows

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Deploying servers, containers, Kubernetes, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, serverless and GPU work.

Deploying Your First Cloud Server: A Practical Checklist

A practical checklist for deploying a first cloud server on DigitalOcean, Vultr, Hetzner, or any VPS provider: region, image, sizing, SSH hardening, firewalls, private networking, backups, and alerts.

6 min read

SSH Keys for Cloud Servers: Generate, Add, and Rotate

How SSH key authentication works, how to generate an Ed25519 key pair, where to add public keys on Linode, UpCloud, Kamatera, EC2, Compute Engine, and Azure, and how to rotate keys safely.

6 min read

Running Docker on a Cloud VPS: Setup and Best Practices

Install Docker on a DigitalOcean, Hetzner, or BinaryLane VPS, lock down port publishing and the Docker socket, run a stack with Compose, and manage volumes, backups, and image updates.

5 min read

Managed Kubernetes Across Providers: EKS, GKE, AKS, DOKS, LKE, and IKS

A practitioner's comparison of EKS, GKE, AKS, DOKS, LKE, and IKS: what managed covers, identity and networking integration, control plane pricing models, quotas, and a security baseline.

6 min read

Email Infrastructure

All in this topic

Port 25, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, deliverability, and SMTP versus API sending.

Port 25 and Cloud Email Sending: Why Providers Restrict It

Why cloud providers restrict outbound port 25 on new accounts, what ports 587 and 465 are for, how authenticated relays and Amazon SES replace direct delivery, and how providers handle lift requests.

6 min read

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC: Email Authentication Setup

How SPF, DKIM, and DMARC work, what alignment means, how to configure them for Amazon SES and Google Workspace, and a safe rollout order from p=none to p=reject.

6 min read

Transactional vs Marketing Email: Infrastructure Differences

How transactional and marketing email differ in triggers, consent, volume, and reputation, why they need separate sending identities, and how to run both on Amazon SES.

6 min read

Email Deliverability Basics: Reputation, Warm-Up, and Bounces

How sender reputation is built and lost, why new IPs and domains need warm-up, how to handle bounces and complaints automatically, and the list hygiene that keeps mail in the inbox.

6 min read

Provider Guides

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How each listed provider organises accounts, regions, billing and services, written for practitioners.

AWS Explained: Core Services, Regions, and How the Platform Is Organized

A practical overview of how AWS is organised: accounts and Organizations, IAM identity, regions and availability zones, core services by category, billing, budgets, and the service quotas that shape every account.

6 min read

Google Cloud Explained: Projects, Compute, Data, and AI Services

How Google Cloud is organised: projects, folders, and the organization resource, billing accounts and credits, Cloud IAM roles, regions and zones, and the compute, data, and AI services teams use most.

6 min read

Microsoft Azure Explained: Subscriptions, Resource Groups, and Core Services

How Microsoft Azure is structured: Entra ID tenants, subscriptions, resource groups, Azure RBAC, regions and availability zones, core compute, storage, database, and AI services, plus billing, budgets, and quotas.

6 min read

DigitalOcean Droplets Explained: Plans, Images, and Networking

DigitalOcean Droplets explained: teams and projects, shared and dedicated CPU plan families, images, snapshots and backups, regions, VPC networking, Droplet limits, billing, and the port 25 policy.

6 min read

Security Basics

All in this topic

MFA, IAM, VPS hardening, secrets, audit logs and acceptable use policies.

Cloud Account Security Essentials: MFA, Roles, and Least Privilege

6 min read

IAM Basics: Users, Roles, and Policies Across Cloud Providers

How identities, groups, policies, and scopes fit together in AWS IAM, Google Cloud IAM, Azure RBAC, Oracle Cloud compartments, and IBM Cloud access groups, with patterns that work on every provider.

5 min read

Securing a VPS: Firewalls, Fail2ban, and Automatic Updates

Harden a Linux VPS on DigitalOcean, Hetzner, or BinaryLane with a provider firewall and ufw, key only SSH, Fail2ban jails for public services, and unattended security updates that keep packages patched.

6 min read