Sefism Cloud Engineering Cheat Sheet

What this cheat sheet is

The cloud engineering cheat sheet is the revision companion to Sefism's Cloud engineering roadmap. It is for students and early-career engineers learning one cloud in depth, and it covers the Linux and networking underneath, identity, compute, storage, virtual networks, monitoring, cost and a first taste of infrastructure as code, plus the certifications worth taking and in what order.

Use it to revise each idea in a line or two, map service names across providers and spot the mistakes behind surprise bills. Each concept explains what it is and why it matters, and many include a command or the common mistake.

Three cloud editions

The sheet follows the roadmap's cloud choice, and each edition has 75 concepts across the same ten chapters:

• AWS (the default): IAM, EC2, Lambda, S3, RDS, VPC, CloudWatch, cost control and CloudFormation or Terraform, plus the Cloud Practitioner to Solutions Architect Associate path. Every command uses the AWS CLI.
• Azure: Entra ID and RBAC, virtual machines, Functions, Blob Storage, Azure SQL, virtual networks, Azure Monitor, cost control and Bicep or Terraform, plus the AZ-900 to AZ-104 path. Every command uses the Azure CLI.
• Google Cloud: IAM and service accounts, Compute Engine, Cloud Run, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, VPC, Cloud Monitoring, cost control and Terraform, plus the Cloud Digital Leader to Associate Cloud Engineer path. Every command uses gcloud.

In every edition, the service map shows the other two providers' names alongside, which helps when a job posting asks for a cloud you have not used.

Chapter by chapter

1. Linux and networking for cloud (7 concepts)

Linux shell essentials, SSH key pairs, IP addresses and CIDR blocks, private IP ranges, ports, TCP and UDP, DNS records, and HTTPS and TLS certificates. Most entries have a command you can run.

2. Cloud concepts and billing

IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, the shared responsibility model, regions and availability zones, how your cloud structures accounts, your cloud's free offer, on-demand, committed and spot pricing, budgets and billing alerts, the Well-Architected frameworks, and two service map entries: one for compute and data, one for network, identity and operations.

3. Identity and access

Root and owner accounts, MFA, users, groups and roles, least privilege, how a permission is written on your cloud (an IAM policy, an Azure RBAC role assignment, or a Google Cloud allow policy and bindings), identities for workloads and secrets management.

4. Compute: VMs, containers and serverless (8 concepts)

Virtual machines, instance types and sizes, machine images, autoscaling groups, managed container platforms, serverless functions, cold starts and choosing a compute option.

5. Storage and databases (8 concepts)

Object storage, keeping buckets private, block storage disks, storage tiers and lifecycle rules, managed relational and NoSQL databases, backups and restore tests, and high availability and replicas.

6. Virtual networks, DNS and load balancers (8 concepts)

The virtual network, public and private subnets, routes, gateways and NAT, security groups and firewall rules, load balancers, managed DNS zones, content delivery networks and private access to managed services.

7. Monitoring and cost control (7 concepts)

Metrics and alerts, centralised logs, audit logs, tags and labels, cost analysis tools, common cost traps and rightsizing and schedules. The cost traps entry is the one to reread before every lab session.

8. Infrastructure as code

The idea, Terraform providers and resources, plan, apply and destroy, Terraform state, drift, and your cloud's native tool: CloudFormation on AWS, Bicep on Azure, or Terraform on Google Cloud.

9. Certifications and the order to take them

A certification path for your cloud and what each exam proves: Cloud Practitioner, Solutions Architect Associate and CloudOps Engineer Associate on AWS; AZ-900, AZ-104 and AZ-305 on Azure; Cloud Digital Leader, Associate Cloud Engineer and Professional Cloud Architect on Google Cloud. Shared entries cover pairing every certificate with a project, starting from the official exam guide, and validity and renewal. The sheet notes that names and codes were checked on the official certification pages in September 2026.

10. Portfolio: a three-tier app with IaC (7 concepts)

Three-tier architecture, a reference layout on your cloud, health checks and readiness, deploying with a pipeline, a cost report, a timed teardown and rebuild, and architecture decision records.

Each chapter lists up to three library resources, such as the Linux Upskill Challenge, AWS Skill Builder, Microsoft Learn: Azure Administrator training, Terraform Tutorials and The Cloud Resume Challenge.

Rules of thumb and glossary

Nine rules of thumb close the sheet, including: set a budget alert before you create anything else; tag every resource with project, env and owner from day one; before you close your laptop, check for running VMs, NAT gateways, load balancers, databases and public IPs; use workload identities instead of access keys; learn one cloud to associate level before touching a second; read the IaC plan every time and stop when it says a stateful resource will be replaced; and prefer the most managed service that fits. A glossary of 46 short terms sits alongside, and every concept joins it automatically.

How to use it with the roadmap

• After each stage, read the matching chapter and run its commands yourself. The roadmap's topics link straight to the concepts that cover them.
• While building, keep the networking, identity and cost chapters open. Access-denied errors, unreachable databases and surprise bills are the three problems they exist to prevent.
• Before a certification exam or a technical round, reread the service map and the certification chapter, then explain your three-tier app chapter by chapter.

How it works on Sefism

Everything on Sefism is free to learn from. The public page shows all ten chapters with their introductions and opens the first two in full. Keeping the sheet uses credits and opens every chapter in the member area; new members get starting credits when they join. If you add the Cloud engineering roadmap to your dashboard (your first roadmap is free), this sheet comes with it.

Related on Sefism

• Which cloud to learn first: AWS, Azure or GCP
• How do I practise AWS, Azure or Google Cloud without a surprise bill?
• Three-Tier Web App on AWS with Infrastructure as Code and a Cost Report, the project chapter 10 describes.
• The DevOps and cloud cheat sheet for pipelines, Kubernetes and larger infrastructure as code.

FAQ

Is there a cheat sheet for AWS, Azure and Google Cloud? Yes: one sheet with three editions, each using its own CLI and naming the equivalent services on the other two.

Does it help with the AWS Solutions Architect Associate, AZ-104 or Associate Cloud Engineer exams? It covers what each exam proves and the order to take them, and its chapters follow the core services those exams use. It is not an exam guide; the sheet itself says to start from the official one.

Can I use it without the roadmap? Yes, but it is written in the roadmap's order and works best alongside it.

Which edition should I pick? The cloud you are learning. The service map helps when you need to translate to another.