By Amanda Tan, Internet2 CLASS Program Manager
The next cohort of the new CLASS Advanced program, Internet2’s advanced cloud training tailored for research IT, begins April 3, 2023. This two-week intensive learning experience empowers the research and higher education community to leverage cloud platforms for research workflows. Participants will learn how to effectively build and manage cloud computing resources for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). CLASS Advanced is unique in that it offers vendor-neutral training to solve for common solutions!
- How is CLASS Advanced different from training programs offered through cloud providers?
CLASS Advanced is a program developed with leadership from some of the top research universities in the country in partnership with leading cloud providers. Simply put, CLASS Advanced is a learning experience built by research professionals for the research community.
CLASS Advanced is also the one of the only learning programs existing that offers a well-rounded overview of tools and services from three public cloud-providers: AWS, GCP, and Azure. In two intensive weeks, you will learn how to compare cloud services and tools, the pros and cons of each cloud provider, and insights that can help you advocate, design, and maintain research workflows for a particular cloud.
Further, CLASS Advanced builds camaraderie through cohort-based learning: You will meet other like-minded participants from the research community and work together on projects using tools such Terraform, Kubernetes, and serverless computing.
- Is CLASS Advanced right for me?
The program is geared towards users with at least one year of experience using any public cloud. If you have experience with architecting and maintaining a service or workflow on any public cloud provider (e.g. AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.), and work with supporting researchers in moving their workloads to the cloud, then this course is for you! Take the self-assessment to ensure you have the prerequisite skills.
If you are not ready for the extensiveness (and intensity) of CLASS Advanced and need more foundational skills, CLASS Essentials may be right for you!
- What’s next after CLASS Advanced?
When you “graduate” from the program, you automatically become part of the CLASS community of practice. Alumni of the program have access to exclusive webinars, collaborative engagements with cloud providers, the first look at new cloud services, and opportunities to work together with members of the community to develop Research IT tools and playbooks. The CLASS community has been and remains a robust network of research computing professionals committed to raising the Cloud IQ at their institutions.