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What’s Been Said and Done in Cloud This Week
Oracle has said it will offer free training and certification for its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Free certifications for OCI, Oracle Autonomous Database, and others, will be available exclusively from Oracle University through December 31 2021, while free OCI digital training will be ‘available ongoing.’ There are various live sessions throughout the rest of this year, from foundational learning to specific workshops and exam preparation. You can see more at the certification page here.
Google Cloud’s first Startup Summit launched this week. The company has had a strong focus on gaining enterprise market share – but it is also looking at the other end of the scale. On the biz side, there were partnerships announced with venture capital firms including Greylock (you may remember them from CloudProfs #6), Northstar and Sapphire Ventures. These will help ‘develop joint business plans, content and programming’ to enable Google Cloud deeper relationships with startups. Google Cloud is also beefing up internal resources for startups, from success teams to a community resource. You can read more here.
A report from Heavy Reading and DriveNets has explored how the dynamic between communication service providers (CSPs) and cloud providers is changing. The study, which polled 100 network operator respondents globally, found 35% of service providers on average were already in the process of adopting modern cloud-native or disaggregated networks. Only 7% of those polled were fully satisfied with their incumbent network providers. “The survey results clearly show that modern networks will be designed like clouds with complete disaggregation of hardware and software,” the report notes. “Those who ignore these trends do so at their own peril.” Learn more here (signup required).
Consultant Ned Bellavance, of nedinthecloud.com, tells the On Premise IT Roundtable Podcast about the value – or otherwise – of a service mesh to modern application stacks. “Typically, when we tried to segment out our network today, on premises, we’re doing that by segmenting it into subnets,” he explained, “and then putting a big honking firewall between all of our subnets. Then we got into ‘now we’re going to segment it down more into micro segmentation’, but that’s still not widely deployed everywhere.
“To a certain degree service mesh can help provide extreme micro segmentation all the way down to the application layer, almost the process layer. And by doing that, you can now apply the same security and networking model to your on premises network as you would to a cloud network as you would to a non network where you’re just consuming services as opposed to mapping out an IPv4 or IPv6 network. That’s where I see service mesh evolving to.” Listen to the podcast here.
5 Key Certifications for a Cloud Architect
In this article, Ed Jones explores the high-level role of a cloud architect, and the certifications needed to thrive. from beginner to more advanced.
The demand for cloud architects continues to rise exponentially, with the Bureau of Labour Statistics estimating an additional 12,000 positions required every year until 2024.
A cloud architect is ultimately responsible for the success of a company’s cloud technology deployment. Responsible for the initial scoping and design of cloud infrastructure solutions, right through to implementation and day-to-day management of the cloud deployment.
The role itself is highly technical and requires a wide range of expertise in different cloud technologies across infrastructure, networking, security, and even DevOps. With most organizations tied to one cloud provider, cloud architects will typically develop their knowledge and skill set aligned to one cloud platform.
One of the best ways to enhance and prove your skills as a cloud architect is to pursue a relevant certification. In addition to this, you will also become more employable and in time command a higher salary. To support you in this process, we have researched and identified 5 key certifications for the modern cloud architect.
Read the rest of this article here.
AZ-140: Configuring & Operating Azure Virtual Desktop – Exam Study Guide
By Shabaz Darr
This article is one of a number that will focus on Microsoft cloud role-based exams. I will cover my initial thoughts after taking the exam, the breakdown of the type of questions that were covered in the exam, and the learning resources I used as well as other helpful resources that you can use in order to prepare yourself for the AZ-140 exam.
My initial thoughts:
The following are some of my initial thoughts POST exam that I think will be helpful for others to understand:
Three things I am glad I learnt:
- FSLogix
- Identity & Access Management
- Virtual machine sizing
Thing I wish I had learnt:
- Azure Virtual Desktop PowerShell cmdlets
Most common question areas I got in my exam:
- Identity and Access Management (Azure AD, Azure AD Domain Services and Active Directory on-premises integration)
- Azure Networking (vNETs, DNS, Peering and VPNs)
- FSLogix
Least common question areas I got in my exam:
- Image Deployment
- Application Publishing
- Hostpool Deployment
Every exam is not the same and you will more than likely find that if you take this exam your own experience will be different, however from my experience and preparation for the Azure Associate Administration exam (AZ-104) helped me more when taking this exam as there is much more focus on Azure services that integrate with Azure Virtual Desktop, for example: Identity & Access Management, Virtual Networks, VM sizing and PowerShell commands.
Exam breakdown
The following table is a breakdown of the types of questions I got in my exam and the amount of time I spent on them:
| Order Section | Time Spent (minutes) | Difficulty out of 10 |
|
15 minutes | 6 |
|
30 minutes | 7 |
|
15 minutes | 5 |
| Total (minutes) | 60/120 | |
Learning resources
As with all Microsoft role-based certifications there is an abundance of resources and Microsoft docs which can help in your preparation for the AZ-140 exam. The following resources are what I used in my preparation:
- Dean Cefola does a great YouTube series on the AZ-140 certification prep which you can find here. This covered all aspects of Azure Virtual Desktop in short, easy to digest videos that explain the service in a good amount of detail
- Microsoft Learn as always has a great set of resources which I strongly recommend as a starting point as it’s free and gives a good mix of theory, video and lab exercises. You can find the Azure Virtual Desktop content here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/m365-wvd/
When it comes to preparation the only other advice I can give is: go through the steps on creating a demo environment of Azure Virtual Desktop in Azure including all the integrated Azure services like Azure AD Domain Services, Azure VNET, FSLogix with Azure Files, Windows 10 multi-session image creation and Application publishing. Having some hands on experience will allow you to use that to answer the questions, as well as the information you have learnt from other resources.
Learn from the CloudProfs Community!
The latest in a new series where we ask our readers – who are cloud professionals, architects and engineers like you, for best practices and ideas. We asked CloudProfs readers: “If you were to give one piece of advice to someone looking to learn about cloud computing for the first time, what would it be? Where/what topic should they start?”
Take a look at the answers below and see if you get inspired. Thank you to everyone who responded! Want to be part of the CloudProfs Community Content Builders? Email the editor!
Cloud Architect: Get familiar with the concepts. There are nice free courses on “Cognitive Class” which at the end provide social badges. There are lots of resources on YouTube for instance, but the advantage of following a course is that there are simple hands-on labs which help the learner to stay tuned. Where/what topic should they start? Begin with the concepts of infrastructure and the evolution of classical on-premise infrastructure to virtualized, then cloud based virtualized hosting. After that move to containers and clusters I’d say.
Senior Security Consultant: I think that essentials of cloud computing are important to start with (i.e. cloud computing models, service models, shared responsibility, essential service types – types of compute, storage, serverless, AI, cost planning and control, vinculation of service names in different cloud service providers -i.e. AWS EC2 = Azure VMs, AWS Lambda similar to Azure functions etc).
System Administrator: In my experience as a CIO I would say cost control. Make sure you have metrics in place to follow up. And put this in your original contract. Organisations always underestimate the cost of cloud-based solutions but the professionalism and unburdening might be well worth it. Also important are SLA levels and to know who and how you can reach somebody. Watch out for outsourcements.
Software Engineer: Should first understand basics of cloud computing, when the basics are clear the person can pick any cloud service and can learn from there, few basic services are: EC2, Lambda, storage, etc.
IT Officer, Head of Data Centre Unit: First, we need to know the difference between virtualization, container and cloud computing. People tend to confuse virtualization/cloud computing. A basic understanding on virtualization, cloud computing and technology around that topic [is required].
Automation Engineer: Cloud computing is mostly based on Kubernetes nowadays, and Kubernetes relies on containers, so the proper learning path that I would propose would be: Docker, kubernetes, cloud providers (GCP, Azure, AWS). And take into account that, while containers are relatively easy to understand for techy people, Kubernetes is a very huge ecosystem and it requires a mind shift.
Senior Software Engineer: To get Packt subscription and read all about cloud computing!
Hidden Gems and Secret Knowledge
A cool selection of recent (or recently updated) cloud repositories and tools across vendors and languages. Got a tip or are you working on a project you want the world to know about? Email the editor today!
BONUS! The Google Cloud Developer’s Cheat Sheet! Every product in the Google Cloud family described in four words or fewer by the Google Developer Relations Team. Check it out!
BONUS! The SQL Commands Cheat Sheet.
awesome-selfhosted: A list of free software network services and web applications which can be hosted on your own servers. Primary language: JavaScript (57.3%)
cloud-key-rotator: A Golang program to rotate AWS and GCP account keys. V0.27.42 released this week. Primary language: Go (87.1%)
eezhee: The easiest way to build a K3s (lightweight Kubernetes) cluster on various public clouds. Primary language: Go (98.8%)
steampipe: Use SQL to instantly query your cloud services (AWS, Azure, GCP and more). Open source CLI. No DB required. V0.8.0 released this week. Primary language: Go (63.3%)
tfd: A developer CLI tool for interacting with Terraform Cloud and Terraform Enterprise. Primary language: Go (96.3%)