D782 Network Architecture and Cloud Computing is banner number ITSW 5106 and three competency units in the School of Technology. The catalog describes it as state-of-the-art cloud technologies, the business trends driving cloud adoption and the foundational systems of modern data center computing. Notice that business trends sits in the middle of that sentence, between two technical clauses. The competency being built is bilingual: enough network and data center understanding to design something that works, and enough commercial understanding to say why an organization would pay for it.
Two languages, one deliverable
Most students arrive fluent in one half of this course. Technical students describe an architecture beautifully and cannot say what it costs or why the business would choose it. Students with a business background make the commercial case and leave the network design vague enough that no engineer could build it. Graduate aspects in this course tend to require both in one document, which is why the planning matters more than the writing.
The network side starts with fundamentals that cloud services rebuild in software: addressing and subnetting, routing between segments, the difference between a public and a private address space, and what a firewall rule actually expresses. A virtual network in any cloud is those same ideas with different names, and students who skip the fundamentals end up describing a diagram they cannot defend.
Segmentation is where network thinking meets security. Public-facing components in one tier, application logic in a private tier with no route from the internet, data in a third tier reachable only from the application tier. That layering answers questions about defense in depth, blast radius and compliance simultaneously, and it is the structure evaluators look for in a topology diagram.
The data center foundations the catalog names are what makes cloud economics work: virtualization separating workload from hardware, storage tiers with different durability and speed, and regions and availability zones as physical facts with latency and failure consequences. Deploying across zones is a resilience decision with a cost, and being able to state both sides is the graduate move.
Turning scored aspects into a topology and a word budget
Every aspect is scored on its own at WGU and each needs a 2. Here the aspects usually split into design aspects and business aspects, so sort them into those two groups before planning, because they draw on different evidence.
Budget the writing. Suppose ten scored aspects and a document near 2,000 words with a topology diagram. Ten into 2,000 is 200 each. Sort them. Two aspects are diagram aspects answered by the topology, needing 120 each of reading text, which is 240 and releases about 160. Three are design justification aspects covering segmentation, resilience and service selection, at 300 each, or 900. Two are business aspects covering adoption drivers and cost model, at 280 each, or 560. One is security or compliance at 200. A short context section and a conclusion take 60 each, which is 120. That totals 240 plus 900 plus 560 plus 200 plus 120, which is 2,020, on target, with design and business argument holding three quarters of it.
Build the cost model as a table before writing about economics. Component, pricing basis, assumed volume, monthly figure, and what happens to that figure when volume doubles. Aspects about cost are answered by that table plus a paragraph, and they cannot be answered convincingly without it.
On the D782 cloud deliverable?
Send the aspects and the workload description. You get a tiered topology, a cost model structure and the business case framing.
Cloud decisions and what each one commits you to
| Decision | Buys you | Commits you to |
|---|---|---|
| Virtual machines | Full control of the operating system and runtime | Patching, scaling and monitoring you now own |
| Managed platform services | Less operational work, faster delivery | Provider-specific behavior and a harder exit |
| Serverless functions | Paying only for execution, scaling to zero | Cold starts, execution limits and a different debugging model |
| Containers with orchestration | Portability and dense packing of workloads | Cluster operations, which is a skill set the team must have |
| Multiple availability zones | Survival of a facility-level failure | Duplicate capacity and cross-zone data transfer cost |
| Multiple regions | Survival of a regional failure, closer users | Data replication, consistency decisions and a large cost increase |
| Reserved or committed capacity | A materially lower unit price | A term commitment that assumes stable demand |
The right column is the graduate half of the table. A recommendation that lists benefits without commitments reads as a brochure, and a justification aspect will not accept it.
Diagrams, cost evidence and what to cite
A topology diagram is read before your prose is. Show the trust boundaries, mark which subnets are public and which are private, show the direction of allowed traffic rather than drawing undirected lines, and put the zone or region boundaries on the picture. Every component you discuss in the text should be findable on the diagram with the same name.
Cost claims need arithmetic behind them. State your assumptions openly: how many instances, how many hours, how much storage, how much data leaving the network. Data transfer out is the line students forget and the one that surprises organizations. Show the calculation rather than a total, because an evaluator can check a calculation and can only accept or doubt a total.
For sources, provider documentation is authoritative for what a service does and its pricing structure, and it changes, so cite with a retrieval date in APA where your program requires it. Established networking and distributed systems texts support the fundamentals. Analyst reports and vendor case studies can evidence a business trend and should be identified as commercially produced when you rely on them, which is a judgment graduate evaluators reward.
What clears, and what returns
WGU records Competent or Not Competent with no letter grades and no ordinary grade point average, and a performance assessment that misses an aspect returns for revision without penalty. In a six month flat rate term the cost is the days, so a first submission that answers both halves of the course is the target.
Deliverables that clear have a topology somebody could build from, with segmentation that reflects a threat model rather than a habit. They have a cost model with assumptions stated. They connect the business drivers in the scenario to the technical choices, so that a stated need for elasticity produces an architecture that actually scales rather than a fixed set of larger machines.
Returns come from imbalance. A strong architecture with a cost section that says the cloud reduces capital expenditure and nothing else. A strong business case with a diagram that shows three boxes and no boundaries. Resilience claimed without saying which failure it survives. And service selections listed by name with no statement of what each commits the organization to.
Six mistakes that cost D782 students time
- Naming services instead of designing. A list of managed services is not an architecture until traffic paths and boundaries are drawn.
- Forgetting data transfer costs. Egress is the line item that turns an attractive estimate into a surprise, and omitting it weakens the whole cost model.
- Treating zones and regions as the same thing. They protect against different failures and cost very differently. Say which one your design uses and why.
- Public subnets everywhere. If the application and data tiers are reachable from the internet, the segmentation aspect is failed regardless of what the firewall rules say.
- Ignoring the exit. Managed services trade operational work for coupling. A graduate paper should say what leaving would take.
- Business trends without evidence. Adoption claims need a source, and the source should be identified when it is produced by someone selling the thing.
How we work on this course
Support for D782 covers both halves. Send the scored aspects and the workload description and you get a tiered topology with boundaries and traffic directions decided, a service selection with commitments named, a cost model structure with the assumptions that make it checkable, a business case framed from the drivers in your scenario, and a model document in the register WGU graduate evaluators expect. Where a section of your course is assessed by an objective assessment, our work is preparation only, and objective assessments are proctored: we never sit or assist during one and never ask for or use portal credentials.
Terms are six months at a flat rate, so what a course costs is the share of the term it takes. Deliverables that require two kinds of expertise are where planning saves the most.
Three questions D782 students ask
Is D782 the same course as ITSW 5106?
Which cloud provider should I design for?
Do I need hands-on cloud experience for this course?
Where D782 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 5 current WGU programs. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.