If you are like me, you have used cloud services in a limited fashion to create VM’s for testing or perhaps you have used them extensively. You’d also like to gain an understanding of the broader group of services offered by cloud providers. In my situation, this was due to the recent attainment of an Engagement Manager position and my desire to help AIS expand our business through the development of new opportunities. I realized that I needed to have at least a top layer understanding our offerings in order to realize potential use cases AIS could present to solve problems, more cost-effective options to current solutions, and develop completely new solutions to improve client business. It was obvious to start with Microsoft’s Azure and Amazon’s AWS platforms, being that these are the top focus of AIS and the industry as a whole.
What was not obvious, was where to start. Both platforms are not only extremely broad but also moving targets. I needed to find a way to dip into this process without drowning in all the information, in addition to holding the responsibilities in my day job. I looked at classroom training options, YouTube videos, and continued researching until I stumbled upon two paths. These paths not only provided a nice prepackaged set of materials, but I could complete at my own pace, at home, and they resulted in certifications. I will get to the details, but first a word about certifications.
I am sure many of you will be rolling your eyes when you read the “certifications” aspect of that second to the last sentence. Yes, certifications are not as valuable an indicator of a person’s skills and knowledge in an area as real-world experience. However, they provide the following benefits in order of least to most important:
- Provide a good starting point for someone that has no current projects in an area.
- Fill knowledge gaps that even a person with experience in an area has, especially in those services or techniques that are not used often.
- Provide value to AIS in maintaining various statuses.
- Provide a potential client with proof that you at least have an understanding of the basics.
- Most importantly, they result in a $500 bonus from AIS, and reimbursement of testing and training costs!
The paths I found are the Microsoft Azure Fundamentals learning path and certification and the Amazon AWS Cloud Practitioner training and certification. The training for both of these includes videos with the Azure path including an estimated ten hours of content and the AWS training about five hours. The Azure path estimates were spot on, and the AWS training took a bit longer, due to my complete lack of experience with the platform.
Microsoft Azure Fundamentals
This path included videos, reading, hands-on experience, and quick knowledge checks. It can be completed with an Azure account that you create just for the training or an account linked to the AIS subscription if you have one. Both the reading and videos provide just enough information, but not get bogged down in the minutia. The only thing I had done with Azure prior to the training created a few VM’s to set up SharePoint environments. I had done that years ago, but I didn’t do that much within those environments.
For me, most of the content was new. I believe if I had a more in-depth experience, the training would have filled in gaps with specific details.
These were the topics I found either completely new or helpful in understanding how to look at and/or pitch Azure services to clients:
- Containers, app services, and serverless options and how they work
- Reducing latency with the traffic manager
- Azure policies and tags to enforce standards
- Review of data centers, region pairs, geographies, availability zones
- Various was to predict costs and manage costs such as calculators, Cost Manager, and Azure Advisor
The training took me probably two-thirds of the estimated time, after which I went through the knowledge checks for each section once more. After that, I spent maybe an hour reviewing some things from the beginning. From there, I took an exam and passed. The exam process was interesting and can be done from home with some software that enables someone to watch you. Prior to the exam, you are required to show the person the entire room and fix anything that might enable you to cheat.
After I completed the certification process, I submitted the cost of the exam ($100) as an expense as well as submitted my request for a certification bonus. I received both in a timely manner. See links at the end of this post for materials concerning reimbursements and bonuses. Don’t forget approval from your EM/AE prior to incurring any costs for which you might want reimbursement and to submit your updated certifications spreadsheet to the AIS PI Team.
AWS Cloud Practitioner
This path exclusively contains videos. In my opinion, the content is not as straight forward as the Azure Fundamentals content and the videos cannot be sped up, which can be very frustrating. The actual content was a bit difficult to find. I have provided links at the conclusion of this post for quick reference. Much of the video content involves Linux examples, so Putty and other command-line tools were used. This added a further layer of complexity that I felt took away from the actual content (do I really need to know how to SSH into something to learn about the service?).
As far as content, everything is video, there is no reading, hands-on examples, and knowledge checks. I felt the reading in the Azure path broke things up. The hands-on exercises crystalized a few things for me, and the knowledge checks ensured I was tracking. I would like to see Amazon add some of these things. That being said, the videos are professionally done and included helpful graphics. With zero experience with AWS, I am still finding that I am able to grasp concepts and the videos do a decent job of presenting use cases for each service.
My biggest complaint is the inability to speed up videos that are obviously paced for the lowest common denominator and I find admittedly ADD attention waning often. Something I found that helps is taking notes. This allowed me to listen, write and not get bored.
Amazon provides a list of recommended prep (see links below) that includes self-paced training, a one-day classroom option, exam guide, a list of four base white papers and links to many others, practice exams, as well as a link to the schedule certification exam. I scanned the whitepapers. They all looked like they were useful, but not necessary to knock out the exam. I say this with confidence as I was able to pass the exam without a detailed review of the whitepapers. My technique was to outline the videos, then review them over the course of a couple weeks.
Summary
Whether you are a budding developer or analyst wishing to get a broad overview, a senior developer that wants to fill gaps, or a new EM like me who wants a bit of both, the Microsoft Azure Fundamentals learning track/certification and Amazon AWS Cloud Practitioner training/certification is a good place to start. AIS will cover any costs and provide you with some additional scratch for your effort. Obtaining these certifications also improves AIS standings with providers, clients, and the community as a whole. It also greatly improves your value to clients, meets the criteria of certain AIS Career Paths and Competencies, and who knows, you might learn something!
Links:
- Azure Fundamentals Learning Path: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/azure-fundamentals/
- Azure Fundamentals Cert: AZ900 Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Exam.
- AWS Cloud Practitioner Preparation and Cert: AWS Recommended Prep
- Training Reimbursements and Certification Bonuses: https://appliedis.sharepoint.com/sites/HR/Pages/Additional-benefits.aspx
- Submitting certification inventory to PI Team: Reach out to AIS – Process Improvement Team (ais-pi-team@appliedis.com) for more info.
