Dear Cloud Academy users,

I am thrilled to announce that Cloud Academy is now offering our Skills Readiness solution to individual users as part of your existing subscription.

As you may already know, Cloud Academy is reinventing the way that people and companies assess, train, and apply skills for a cloud-fluent world within the domains of Cloud Computing, DevOps, Security, and Programming Languages. Our outcome-based courses and labs empower professionals to master new skills in live cloud and coding environments while upskilling for key jobs in today’s complex cloud landscape.

By pivoting our solution to focus on Skills Readiness, we are unlocking smarter, role-based cloud and technology learning. Skills Readiness goes beyond traditional training, ensuring that our users are fully equipped to apply their knowledge in real-life business scenarios.

Through our AI-driven learning paths and hands-on labs, the new Skills Readiness features provide users with a dynamic learning experience that adapts to their unique needs and skill levels. For example, our Smart Job Roles enable users to assess, practice, and apply an expertly curated group of skills to get job-ready for the next role. Meanwhile, Smart Skills help users assess, practice, and apply a single skill. This innovative approach to learning ensures that our users are fully prepared to tackle real-world challenges and succeed in their careers.

Previously, only enterprise customers could access the Skills Readiness solution. Now, we are extending Skills Readiness to individual users as testament to our commitment to equipping the world with job-ready digital, cloud, and tech skills. We believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to learn and grow, regardless of their background or circumstance.

So whether you’re a seasoned professional looking to stay ahead of the curve or just starting your journey in the world of cloud technology, we invite you to explore Skills Readiness and start mastering new skills with hands-on, practical learning.

Thank you for choosing Cloud Academy as your skill development partner.

Sincerely,

Greg Schwartzkopf

Chief Customer Success Officer

The post An Open Letter to Cloud Academy Users on Skills Readiness appeared first on Cloud Academy.

With all that in mind, the specific question we’ll be trying to answer in this blog is: “Which certifications should I get?” You have only a set amount of time to spend on studying and professional development, and we’re going to help focus on the most important certifications in the cloud space.

To answer the question, it’s good to remind yourself about the general state of the cloud – let’s recall that its components and services are in everything from mobile computing to IoT and email campaigns. At the same time, there is still a large skills gap when it comes to finding the right competencies in the workforce. As companies embrace a hybrid or multi-cloud environment, there is a growing demand for fluency across a variety of platforms.

If you are a professional who wants to add cloud experience to your resume, or if you’re just starting out, you may be wondering which certifications to get. In this post, we’ll look at some of the most popular certifications across the three major platforms: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, as well as other certifications for Kubernetes, Security, etc.

Which certifications should I get? The major platforms

So, which certifications should you get? The answer depends on a range of factors, from your background and experience to the sector you’re working in (or plan to work in), and your long-term goals.

While many companies have already committed to a platform, there is an increasing trend for a multi-platform approach. In the beginning of your training, choosing a platform will help you focus your training efforts. However, it can’t hurt to have versatile cloud skills, especially if you look at how the cloud sector is growing.

As the most mature cloud platform, Amazon Web Services has a solid lead in the public cloud market and is continuing to grow. At the same time, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform are also ramping up and gaining market share. According to a report by Synergy Research Group for Q2 2019, AWS has 33% market share, with 16% for Microsoft Azure, and 8% for Google.

To know which certifications you need, let’s take a closer look at the cloud platforms and the certifications that they currently offer.

Amazon Web Services — 12 certifications

AWS started in 2006 and has grown to a leader with more than 70 services for everything from compute, storage, and databases, to analytics and IoT applications. Customers include Netflix, Intuit, Capital One, and GE. For some perspective, in 2016 AWS brought in $12B of revenue, and that number has jumped to over $25B.

AWS certifications stand out for their thoroughness and rigor for critical cloud engineering positions. They emphasize solid conceptual knowledge of the entire platform and hands-on experience with the AWS infrastructure and its many unique and complex components and services.

Simply put, an AWS certification shows that you have the skills and the knowledge to design, deploy, or manage applications on Amazon Web Services. If you’re AWS-certified, it tells potential employers that you have what it takes to build and manage AWS solutions for them. And, because they are so widely recognized, AWS certifications can open the door to cloud opportunities, even for other platforms. Also, the process of training and learning required to pass the exams allows you to strengthen your knowledge in a variety of areas and scenarios.

AWS introduced certifications in 2013 and currently offers 12 total certifications. The certification tracks have grown to cover four main levels: Practitioner, Associate, Professional, and Specialty. As of July 2020, these are the current AWS certifications:

1. AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
2. AWS Certified Developer – Associate
3. AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate
4. AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02)
5. AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
6. AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
7. AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty (DAS-C01)
8. AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty
9. AWS Certified Security – Specialty
10. AWS Certified Alexa Skill Builder – Specialty
11. AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty
12. AWS Certified Database – Specialty (DBS-C01)

If you’re already considering the AWS platform and thinking about which certifications you need to get started, the Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) wouldn’t be a bad choice. According to a survey of the 10 top-paying IT certifications for 2019 by Global Knowledge, the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate offers the fourth-highest annual salary on their list (and highest of the AWS certifications that made their top 10):  $132,840. Let’s take a closer look at this certification.

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate certification (the most popular of AWS’s certifications) is for those who design and deploy distributed applications. It covers network technologies; AWS-based applications; how client interfaces connect to the platform; building secure and reliable applications; and deploying hybrid systems (those with on-premises data centers as well as AWS components).

The exam domains include designing highly available and scalable systems (requires familiarity with AWS infrastructure and concepts), AWS implementation and deployment, related data security practices, disaster recovery techniques, and troubleshooting.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate certification is a pre-requisite for the professional-level certification, AWS Solutions Architect—Professional. This certification requires two years of hands-on AWS experience and covers network design, storage, security, scalability and elasticity, cloud migration, and hybrid architecture.

At Cloud Academy, we have a lot of great resources for learning everything you need to pass any of the AWS certification exams, as well as great study and preparation strategies on our blog.

Check our post to learn more about the different AWS certifications and discover which one is right for you.

Microsoft Azure — 12 certifications

According to Microsoft, “80% of the Fortune 500 is on the Microsoft Cloud.” Microsoft Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. Its growth in adoption and the strength of its end-to-end hybrid cloud offering are good indicators for continued growth for Microsoft Azure, especially inside the enterprise.

Microsoft has grouped its certifications into a role-based structure, including fundamental, associate, and expert levels. Users have 12 exams to choose from:

1. Microsoft Certified: Azure – Fundamentals Exam AZ-900
2. Microsoft Certified: Azure AI – Fundamentals Exam AI-900 (beta)
3. Microsoft Certified: Azure Data – Fundamentals Exam DP-900 (beta)
4. Microsoft Certified Azure Administrator – Associate Exam AZ-103
5. Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer – Associate Exam AZ-203
6. Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer – Associate Exam AZ-500
7. Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer – Associate Exam AI-100
8. Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Scientist – Associate Exam DP-100
9. Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Engineer – Associate Exams DP-200 and DP-201
10. Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator – Associate Exam DP-300 (beta)
11. Microsoft Certified Solutions Architect – Expert Exams AZ-300 and AZ-301
12. Microsoft Certified: Azure DevOps Engineer – Expert Exam AZ-400

Google Cloud Platform — 8 certifications

Although it’s third behind AWS in the overall cloud market, GCP has made major strides, especially in providing solutions to help you integrate their services in multi-cloud deployments.

Customer wins have also helped raise the profile of the Google Cloud – Spotify announced that it was working with the Google Cloud Platform team to provide platform infrastructure. To scale with its huge volume of content, Spotify made numerous software architecture design changes to take full advantage of GCP. This includes replacing Apache Kafka with Cloud Pub/Sub for its more reliable persistent queue, and moving from batch processing to streaming with Dataflow to improve the end-to-end latency. As well, Apple announced that it would be using the Google Cloud to provide some infrastructure services for iCloud and other cloud-based services, in addition to continuing to use AWS.

Google Cloud Platform currently offers eight certifications, categorized by Associate and Professional:

1. Associate Cloud Engineer
2. Professional Cloud Architect
3. Professional Cloud Developer
4. Professional Data Engineer
5. Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer
6. Professional Cloud Security Engineer
7. Professional Cloud Network Engineer
8. Professional Machine Learning Engineer – Beta

DevOps and More

Lots more options exist for valuable certifications. Are you wondering how to become a DevOps Engineer? Then check out the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) and Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) certifications. If you’re into Security, you have some truly helpful (and marketable) options, such as the (ISC)² CISSP Certification, which is one of the most globally recognized certifications in the information security profession.

What’s next?

If you’re still wondering which platform or certification path is right for you, the Cloud Academy blog is a rich resource of insight from a variety of viewpoints, from new cloud users to developers and instructors who have experience on each of the cloud platforms referenced here. Just search the blog for the platform of your choice and see what our contributors have to say.

The post Which Certifications Should I Get? appeared first on Cloud Academy.

New content on Cloud Academy

At any time, you can find all of our new releases by going to our Training Library and finding the section titled “New this month in our library.” You can also keep track of what new training is coming for the next 4-6 weeks with our Content Roadmap.

• AWS
• Microsoft Azure
• Data Science/Artificial Intelligence
• DevOps
• Google Cloud Platform
• Programming
• Webinars
• Platform

Data Science/Artificial Intelligence

Learning Path: Wrestling with Data

In this learning path, we dive into the various tools and techniques available for manipulating information and data sources. We then show you how you can use this knowledge to actually solve some real-world problems.

Learning Path: Introduction to Data Visualization

This learning path explores data sources and formatting, and how to present data in a way that provides meaningful information. You’ll look at data access patterns, and how different interfaces allow you to access the underlying information. This learning path also provides a practical, real-world example of how all this theory plays out in a business scenario. 

Course: Data Wrangling with PANDAS

In this course, we are going to explore techniques to permit advanced data exploration and analysis using Python. We will focus on the Pandas library, focusing on real-life case scenarios to help you to better understand how data can be processed using Pandas.

Course: Wrestling With Data

In this course, we’re going to do a deep dive into the various tools and techniques available for manipulating information and data sources along with showing you at the end of it how you can actually solve some real-world problems. If you are trying to handle increasingly complex data sets and round out your experience as a professional data engineer, this is a great course to get a practical field-based understanding.

DevOps

Hands-on Lab: Installing and Running Applications with Docker Enterprise Universal Control Plane

In this lab, you will learn how to install UCP onto bare Docker hosts to create a multi-node installation from the ground up. You will also learn how to deploy applications onto the UCP cluster you create using the web interface.

Lab Challenge: Docker Swarm Playground

This playground provides a Docker swarm cluster comprised of one manager node and two worker nodes. You have full access to swarm nodes with, each having docker, docker-compose, and relevant command-line completions already installed and running. You have full access to the underlying host as well so you are not restricted compared to an environment that runs Docker in Docker (dind).

Hands-on Lab: Deploying Infrastructure with Terraform

Terraform is an infrastructure automation tool that allows companies to manage infrastructure through code. This provides many benefits such as greater recovery, predictability, and speed. In this lab, you will create a Terraform configuration to deploy a VPC in AWS.

Course: Tech Talk: Building Automated Machine Images with HashiCorp Packer

In this Tech Talk, you’ll watch a presentation on HashiCorp’s Packer and how it can be used to build automated machine images and then deploy the new image into a production environment with a CI/CD pipeline. You’ll follow virtually as a group of IT professionals discuss the tool and its uses. 

Google Cloud Platform

Course: Managing GCP Operations Monitoring

This course shows you how to monitor your operations on GCP. It starts with monitoring dashboards. You’ll learn what they are and how to create, list, view, and filter them. You’ll also see how to create a custom dashboard right in the GCP console.

Course: Managing and Investigating Service Incidents on GCP

Managing and investigating service incidents is an important part of the maintenance process. It is a necessity that can be laboring but with the right organization, understanding of the systems, the knowledge of processes, and the discipline to adhere to best practices, it can be optimized. This course will focus on the predominant parts of managing service incidents and utilizing Google Cloud Platform to aid in the endeavor.

Hands-on Lab: Scaling an Application Through a Google Cloud Managed Instance Group

In this lab, you will create an instance template, an instance group with the autoscaling enabled, and you will then attach an HTTP load balancer to the instance group to load balance the traffic to the VM group. You will also perform a stress test to check that the autoscaling is working properly.

Lab Challenge: Google Cloud Scaling Applications Challenge

In this lab challenge, you will need to prove your knowledge of highly available and scalable applications by creating infrastructure on Google Compute Engine. The objectives you will need to achieve represent essential skills that a Google Certified Associate Cloud Engineer and Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect need to have. 

Lab Challenge: Google Cloud SQL Challenge

In this lab challenge, you will need to prove your knowledge of Google Cloud SQL by creating a production ready Cloud SQL instance. The objectives you will need to achieve represent essential skills that a Google Certified Associate Cloud Engineer and Google Certified Data Engineer need to have.

Programming

Course:  Building a Python Application: Course One

One of the best ways to learn new programming languages and concepts is to build something. Learning the syntax is always just the first step. After learning the syntax the question that arises tends to be: what should I build? Finding a project to build can be challenging if you don’t already have some problems in mind to solve. This course is broken up into sprints to give you a real-world development experience, and guide you through each step of building an application with Python.

Hands-on Lab: Introduction to Graph Database With Neo4j

In this lab, you will understand the core principles of a graph database (especially a property graph) and you will install the Neo4j DBMS on an EC2 instance. This lab is intended for data engineers who want to switch to the graph data model or developers who need to build an application based on a graph database.

Hands-on: Lab: Constructing Regular Expression Character Classes

Regular Expressions are a tool for searching and manipulating text. In this lab, you will use the Python programming language to learn the basics of how to use a regular expression and you’ll learn about the different character classes available for matching different types of characters.

Hands-on: Lab: Working with Regular Expressions: Special Characters and Anchors

In this lab, you will learn how to use quantifiers to match sequences of characters in different ways, you will learn about anchors, and you will learn how to use capture groups. 

Hands-on: Lab: Using Regular Expressions Effectively in the Real World

In this lab, you will learn how to use quantifiers to match sequences of characters in different ways, you will learn about anchors, and you will learn how to use capture groups. 

Webinars

Office Hours: AWS Solutions Architect – Associate | Domain 1 of 4: Design Resilient Architectures

Take a deep dive on Domain 1: Design Resilient Architectures of the AWS Solutions Architect – Associate exam.

Office Hours: Decoupling Architectures Like There’s No Tomorrow

Learn all about decoupling architectures, how to set them up, and manage them, successfully with our experts.

Platform

Learn, Grow, Succeed: Introducing Training Plans for Individuals

We’re excited to announce that we’ve released a new game-changing feature for individual users that has already proven to help our largest enterprise customers increase newly acquired skills by 5x: Training Plans.

Stay updated

As always, we use Cloud Academy Blog to keep you up-to-date on the latest technology and best practices. All of our new blogs, reports, and updates go directly to our Cloud Academy social media accounts. For the latest updates, follow and like us on the following social media platforms:

• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter

The post New Content: AWS Data Analytics – Specialty Certification, Azure AI-900 Certification, Plus New Learning Paths, Courses, Labs, and More appeared first on Cloud Academy.

New content on Cloud Academy

At any time, you can find all of our new releases by going to our Training Library and finding the section titled “New this month in our library.” You can also keep track of what new training is coming for the next 4-6 weeks with our Content Roadmap.

• Alibaba
• AWS
• Microsoft Azure
• Data Science/Artificial Intelligence
• DevOps
• Security
• Webinars
• Platform

Alibaba

Learning Path: Alibaba Cloud Certified Associate (ACA) Preparation

Just starting out in the world of Alibaba Cloud? Let this learning path be the first step on your journey. It covers the essential aspects of this fast-growing platform, introducing you to the fundamental services you’ll need in order to build your own Alibaba Cloud infrastructure.

Course: Alibaba Server Load Balancer (SLB)

This course provides an introduction to Alibaba’s Server Load Balancer service, also known as SLB. The course begins with a brief intro to load balancing in general and then takes a look at Alibaba SLB and its three main components.

Data Science/Artificial Intelligence

Learning Path: The Beginner’s Guide to Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

This Learning Path provides an introduction to Machine Learning for beginners and​ is designed to be a gentle introduction, which means we’ll be starting at the ground up and focusing on giving students the tools and materials they need to navigate the space. 

Learning Path: The Basics of Data Management, Data Manipulation and Data Modelling

Take this learning path to get the basics of everything data-related. Learn about data sources, data formats, databases, SQL. This learning path focuses on understanding common data formats and interfaces. It explores some common data formats that you’ll encounter as a data engineer, and you’ll get a deep understanding of the pros and cons of storing your data in different ways.

Learning Path: Moving From Spreadsheets

This learning path gives you a fully hands-on introduction to machine learning with a focus on databases. It is comprised entirely of our interactive hands-on labs which means that you will get practical experience from the get-go.

DevOps

Hands-on Lab: Spinnaker Pipelines – Deploying Resources into Kubernetes

Spinnaker is an open source, multi-cloud continuous delivery platform for releasing software changes with high velocity and confidence. In this Lab scenario, you’ll first install and configure Spinnaker into its own dedicated Kubernetes cluster. As you advance, you’ll get into Spinnaker Pipelines, using Spinnaker with Kubernetes clusters, and extending the build and deployment even further.

Lab Challenge: Ansible Configuration Management Troubleshooting Challenge

In this lab challenge your Ansible configuration management skills are put to the test. You need to complete several tasks using Ansible to configure a host to serve a web application over HTTP and a web page over HTTPS. Use your knowledge of Ansible concepts and the command-line interface (CLI) to troubleshoot and resolve the issues in the provided configuration to pass all of the checks before time runs out.

Lab Challenge: Terraform Deploy AWS Resources Challenge

In this lab challenge, you will put your infrastructure development skills to the test. You will be tasked with developing an infrastructure solution using Terraform by modifying an existing Terraform configuration to include deploying a subnet and EC2 resource.

Course: Introduction to Kubernetes – refresh

Kubernetes is a production-grade container orchestration system that helps you maximize the benefits of using containers. Kubernetes provides you with a toolbox to automate deploying, scaling, and operating containerized applications in production. This course will teach you all about Kubernetes including what it is and how to use it.

Hands-on Lab: Webserver Creation using Pulumi to Manage Infrastructure

Pulumi is an Infrastructure as Code tool that supports multiple cloud providers. The key feature of Pulumi is that it allows you to describe your infrastructure using any of the popular programming languages it supports. In this lab, you will learn how to install and configure the Pulumi command-line tool, and you will learn how to use it to create a web server.

Security

Hands-on Lab: Cryptanalysis of Substitution Ciphers

Monoalphabetic ciphers are simple substitution ciphers where only one alphabet is used to substitute the characters from the plaintext and replace them one-for-one, where each character in the plaintext is always substituted with the same character in the ciphertext. This means that these ciphertexts are susceptible to frequency analysis. In this lab you will explore this by decrypting a classical cipher, the Caesar cipher.

Hands-on Lab: Asymmetric Encryption RSA Demonstration

RSA is a modern asymmetric encryption standard used in public key cryptographic schemes to share secret values and electronically sign documents. The algorithm works by using modulo mathematics to share numbers between parties, encrypting a value with a public key which only the holder of a separate, secret, private key. Each key pair is generated is calculated using several mathematic functions and equations. You will explore the RSA encryption algorithm in this lab by encrypting and decrypting a message.

Hands-on Lab: Dictionary Attacking a Web Application with Hydra and Burp Suite

In this lab, you will be attacking a Linux machine named Metasploitable, running the Damn Vulnerable Web App (DVWA). The DVWA is an open source web app written to be vulnerable to a host of different security exploits, designed for security professionals to practice their skills and conduct research.

Hands-on Lab: Cracking Hashes with John the Ripper

This lab is part of a series on cyber network security. You will be looking at different hashing algorithms, each of which were commonly used to store passwords on Windows and UNIX systems. You will be using John the Ripper to crack some password files.

Hands-on Lab: Configuring Active Directory Group Policies

You will be using the AD environment to create a new Group Policy Object (GPO) and apply it to a user account in order to enforce some security settings. Group Policy Objects are technical definitions of a user’s permissions and rights within a domain. GPOs are a powerful tool that enable a domain administration team to apply the principle of least privilege across thousands of users quickly and efficiently.

Hands-on Lab: Configuring IPsec on a Windows 2016 Server

IPsec is a framework of open standards for ensuring private, secure communications over IP networks through the use of cryptographic security services. The Microsoft Windows implementation of IPsec is based on standards developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) IPsec working group. You will configure IPsec on a Windows Server 2016 machine in this lab. 

Hands-on Lab: SSL Handshake Analysis using Wireshark

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a protocol which allows web HTTPS applications to exchange information securely. Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer that security professionals can use to filter and search through in order to understand traffic that has been logged using tcpdump or a similar tool. You will be analyzing a network traffic capture of an SSL handshake and then using a private key to decrypt and extract a file from the capture.

Hands-on Lab: Exploiting the Heartbleed Bug using MetaSploit

The Heartbleed bug is a serious vulnerability that was discovered to exist on web servers using the OpenSSL cryptographic library, a popular implementation of the TLS protocol for web servers. This exploit will work on any unpatched web servers running an OpenSSL instance in either client or server mode. You will exploit the Heartbleed bug in this lab.

Hands-on Lab: Configuring Access Control Lists on Cisco Routers

Standard ACLs allow a network security technician to control the traffic moving through their network and limit its propagation based on the kind of traffic and the source address. Cisco devices use a proprietary Command Line Interface (CLI) called the Internetworking Operating System (IOS) to configure and manage them. You will be using a Cisco virtual network simulator called Cisco Packet Tracer to learn networking and protocol functions.

Hands-on Lab: Using Snort to Detect a Brute Force Hydra Attack

pfSense is a FreeBSD based router/firewall that can be configured with various plugin modules which can enable network operations and defend a network from malicious behavior in the form of an IDS/IPS module called Snort. You will be conducting a dictionary attack on the Metasploitable DVWA using Hydra and Burp Suite in Kali Linux and attempting to detect it on the router using Snort and the community ruleset. 

Hands-on Lab: Using the Man-In-The-Middle Framework (MITMf) to Bypass HTTPS Strict Transport Security (HSTS)

This exercise will familiarize you with the Man-In-The-Middle framework (MITMf) and how an attacker might use this toolset to attack clients on your network. The particular attack we will be performing in this exercise will be bypassing the HSTS policy. You will use MITMf to bypass HTTPS Strict Transport Security (HSTS) in this lab.

Hands-on Lab: Using the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) to Perform Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks

Denial of service can take many forms, but the basic purpose of an attack is to disrupt the availability of a service and to prevent normal operations from occurring. The most common method of attacking availability is network-based. The LOIC tool you will be using in this lab was made famous during Anonymous’ attacks on the church of scientology during Project Chanology.

Hands-on Lab: Performing FilePwn Using the Man-In-The-Middle Framework (MITMf)

The MITMf is a collection of tools, written into an easy-to-use framework by byt3bl33d3r, which an attacker can use to simplify the construction and execution of Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attacks. The MITM attack you will be carrying out will be utilizing a feature called “FilePwn”, where the attacker can inject a malicious payload into or fully replace a file that the victim is downloading from an HTTP website.

Webinars

Stop Messing Around and Start Passing Your AWS Exams

Preparing for a cert can be stressful, we know it. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could gather key insights on how to tackle and pass an AWS exam from someone who has already gone through a bunch of them? Look no further! In this on-demand webinar, our AWS Certification Specialist, Stephen Cole, will guide you through some general strategies that you can apply when taking your first AWS exam, from home or on-site. 

Office Hours: Nail the Google Associate Cloud Engineer Exam

This is your chance to take your career a step further. How? By preparing for the Google Associate Cloud Engineer Exam and passing it, of course! Join Guy Hummel, Google and Azure Content Lead, and Tom Mitchell, Google and Azure Trainer, in this on-demand webinar to learn all of the secrets behind this exam. Our Google experts will break down the five subject areas assessed in the exam, and using samples, explain how to analyze questions to determine the correct answer.

Platform

Introducing SCORM to Create Custom Content With Ease

Your infrastructure is custom-built to fit your organization’s unique needs. Shouldn’t your tech training be, too? Capturing all the nuances of your production environment within your cloud training helps teams perform with accuracy and precision in the real world. With SCORM, you can quickly create personalized training that’s also highly interactive, easy to manage, and easy to scale across teams.

Stay updated

As always, we use Cloud Academy Blog to keep you up-to-date on the latest technology and best practices. All of our new blogs, reports, and updates go directly to our Cloud Academy social media accounts. For the latest updates, follow and like us on the following social media platforms:

• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter

The post New Content: Azure DP-100 Certification, Alibaba Cloud Certified Associate Prep, 13 Security Labs, and Much More appeared first on Cloud Academy.

New content on Cloud Academy

At any time, you can find all of our new releases by going to our Training Library and finding the section titled “New this month in our library.” You can also keep track of what new training is coming for the next 4-6 weeks with our Content Roadmap.

• Alibaba
• AWS
• Microsoft Azure
• Google Cloud Platform
• Data Science/Artificial Intelligence
• DevOps
• Programming
• Webinars

Alibaba

Course: Alibaba Object Storage Service

This course is an introduction to the fundamental aspects of Alibaba’s Object Storage Service (OSS). It starts off by explaining the features and advantages of the service, before moving on to the concepts of OSS and security. You will then watch two demos that use real-life examples from the Alibaba Cloud platform to guide you through storage buckets and object operations.

Data Science/Artificial Intelligence

Hands-on Lab: Handling Variable Data in DynamoDB with Grace

Data can come in all varieties which can be a major drawback of having a fixed schema. NoSQL allows for any type of data to be stored, allowing your schema to evolve. In today’s world with IoT and increasing data complexity, NoSQL is becoming a standard part of many technology stacks. This lab is aimed at students with a basic understanding of Python who want to learn about Amazon DynamoDB. Students will explore programmatically and using the DynamoDB Console interface to insert and scan data.

Hands-on Lab: Reviewing Product Inventory in a Cloud SQL Database

This lab is aimed at beginners who want to move beyond spreadsheets and migrate their data into a database. After completing this lab, students will be able to use a MySQL Database in Google Cloud SQL and populate it from a CSV file. Additionally, students will learn how to use basic queries against their data.

Hands-on Lab: Visualizing Data in Amazon QuickSight

Amazon Quicksight can help you visualize, embed, and share data quickly. These valuable insights allow for users to look at quick summaries of aggregated information to make better business decisions. This lab is aimed at beginners who want to understand how to import and make their first insight.

Hands-on Lab: Working With Complex Rest APIs

The foundation of many applications involves Representational state transfer (REST) API, which is a way of structuring an API so that, through the use of HTTP verbs, one can get data. This lab will dive into understanding GET, POST, DELETE, and PATCH services. Students will learn how to use Python to interact with an API to view, create, update, and delete data.

Hands-on Lab: Dealing With Schema Changes in a Data Service

Databases are extraordinarily powerful in managing sets of data, but what do we do when management wants to add/remove/modify something that code does? This lab is aimed at students with a moderate understanding of data engineering and Python who want to understand how to update schemas to handle new features. We will walk through the changing requirements of a bug tracking application and how to handle them.

Hands-on Lab: Capturing New Knowledge from Your Data

This lab is aimed at students with a moderate understanding of data engineering and Python who want to understand how to perform aggregates on data such as COUNT(), SUM(), and AVG(). We will also look into advanced statements like CASE, and functions like DATEDIFF() and CONCAT(). We will walk through the changing requirements of a bug tracking application and how to handle them.

Hands-on Lab: Using Python to Drive Insights in BigQuery

In today’s world, we have to deal with ever-growing datasets. These often require specialized computer solutions to handle the extremely large volume. Google BigQuery makes it easy to query, process, and visualize large datasets. In this lab, we will get started with BigQuery to analyze a large public dataset.

Hands-on Lab: Drawing Insights with BigQuery ML

Machine learning is proving to be very powerful in gathering insights with your data. BigQuery ML allows the user to perform Machine Learning training, evaluation, and prediction on large sets of data. This lab will explain some of the basic concepts along with an example of training a linear regression and binary logistic regression model.

Hands-on Lab: Performing K-Means Clustering With Python

K-Means learning is a machine learning technique used to divide a dataset into clusters to analyze its results. This classification algorithm divides a large group of data into smaller groups to maximize the similarity between data points. We will walk through applying and analyzing the K-Means clustering algorithm on a set of data using the Python libraries: pandas, scikit-learn, and matplotlib.

DevOps

Learning Path: Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Foundation

This learning path will provide you with an introduction to the principles and practices that enable enterprises to reliably and economically scale critical services. Adopting SRE into your own organization requires re-alignment, with a new focus on engineering and automation, and the adoption of a range of new working paradigms. The SRE learning path consists of eight courses, each focusing on a particular aspect of SRE.

Course: Introduction to Helm

Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes, used to simplify and enhance the deployment experience for deploying resources into a Kubernetes cluster. This training course explores Helm 3, which is the latest version of Helm building upon the successes of Helm 2. During this course, you’ll learn the fundamentals of working with Helm3, its features, and the key differences between Helm 3 and Helm 2.

Programming

Hands-on Lab: Python 3 Programming

This is a technical lab that introduces the Python 3 programming language. Python has enjoyed popularity in a variety of fields for its large scope of application and its ease of use. With Python 2 having moved to end-of-life status on January 1, 2020, there are also large amounts of legacy code that need porting to Python 3.

Webinars

Crush Mediocrity: 3 Steps to Unleash Your Team’s Cloud Potential

Learn about the main challenges that companies face and how to overcome them with an efficient and business-oriented tech training program.

Increase Big Data Application Throughput and Save up to 90% on Compute Costs

Are you running big data workloads on frameworks such as Spark or Hadoop? Join Chad Schmutzer, AWS Principal Developer Advocate, and Stuart Scott, Cloud Academy AWS Content & Security Lead, in this on-demand webinar as they explain how you can accelerate your big data application performance and lower costs by using Amazon EC2 Spot Instances with Amazon EMR.

Office Hours: Unraveling the AWS Technical Essentials

Are you getting ready to take your first steps into the AWS cloud? Are you considering the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam? Cloud Academy can help you. If you want your first steps to have impact and focus, watch this on-demand webinar with our experts, Stephen Cole — AWS Certification Specialist and Will Meadows — Senior AWS Trainer, to learn about AWS’s foundational services: Compute, Databases, and Storage.

Stay updated

As always, we use Cloud Academy Blog to keep you up-to-date on the latest technology and best practices. All of our new blogs, reports, and updates go directly to our Cloud Academy social media accounts. For the latest updates, follow and like us on the following social media platforms:

• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter

The post New Content: Alibaba, Azure AZ-303 and AZ-304, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Foundation, Python 3 Programming, 16 Hands-on Labs, and Much More appeared first on Cloud Academy.

As you may know, we have three very different types of labs: hands-on labs (guided), lab challenges (non-guided), and our newest lab playgrounds (sandbox). Depending on your technical level, you’ll want to start with the right lab for you.

• Hands-on labs are guided experiences to learn in live cloud environments with step-by-step guidance to practice your skills without getting stuck. 
• Lab challenges are non-guided skill validation to demonstrate problem-solving skills — basically, hands-on labs with the gloves off.
• Lab playgrounds provide a safe and secure sandbox environment for you to explore your own ideas, follow along with Cloud Academy courses, or answer your own questions — all without having to install any software on your local machine. You can feel free to take risks and try unfamiliar tools and commands to learn more about working in a live environment — even if it means running into a dead end and needing to start the lab over.

New training justification letters

Since our training platform helps build the real-world experience you need before “testing” your skills in your company’s live environment, it helps mitigate major production issues and significantly adds value to your organization. To help you streamline your company approval process, we created new training justification letters. Whether you’re looking to get a personal plan for yourself or an enterprise plan for your team or a few co-workers, we have a template to help you showcase the value of using our training platform.

New content on Cloud Academy

At any time, you can find all of our new releases by going to our Training Library and finding the section titled “New this month in our library.” You can also keep track of what new training is coming for the next 4-6 weeks with our Content Roadmap.

• AWS
• Microsoft Azure
• Google Cloud Platform
• Machine Learning
• DevOps
• Programming
• Security
• Webinars

Machine Learning

Hands-on Lab: Moving From Spreadsheet to Database

Databases are essential to organizing and understanding your data. Databases allow you to ask questions or query your data to find exactly what is needed. This lab is aimed at beginners who want to move beyond spreadsheets and migrate their data into a database.

Hands-on Lab: Handling Variable Data with Grace

Data can come in all varieties, which can be a major drawback of having a fixed schema. NoSQL allows for any type of data to be stored, allowing your schema to evolve. In today’s world with IoT and increasing data complexity, NoSQL is becoming a standard part of many technology stacks. This lab is aimed at students with a basic understanding of Python who want to learn about Amazon DynamoDB. Students will explore programmatically and using the DynamoDB Console interface to insert and scan data.

Hands-on Lab: Acquiring and Storing Data in Python

Utilizing APIs to query and store data is the heart of most web applications. This lab is aimed at students who have a moderate understanding of Python, who want to understand how to query an API, manipulate the data, and store that data into a database with a more advanced schema. This lab walks through complex processing of JSON data into multiple tables, and shows how powerful Python is for data processing.

DevOps

Lab Challenge: Docker Basics Challenge

In this lab challenge, your basic Docker skills are put to the test. You need to complete several tasks using a real Docker host to complete the challenge. Use your knowledge of Docker concepts and the Docker command-line interface (CLI) in unison to pass all of the checks before time runs out.

Programming

Learning Path: Typescript: Zero to Hero

This learning path is a complete guide to building applications using Microsoft’s popular JavasScript superset TypeScript. The learning path starts with an overview of TypeScript, and how to get the TypeScript toolset installed.

Hands-on Lab: Understanding the Java Spring Framework

Spring is a popular Java-based framework for developing large-scale enterprise-level applications both on and off the web. It is based on the dependency injection design pattern and allows for building decoupled applications. It has grown in popularity over the years due to this nature and the number of supported projects that are still ongoing. Spring also provides support for connection to databases using both JDBC methods and object-relational mapping libraries such as Hibernate.

Security

Learning Path: Preparation for the (ISC)² CISSP Certification (UPDATE)

The Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) continues to be the most in-demand information security professional certification currently available. This certification learning path is suitable for anyone wanting to become certified as a CISSP.

Updated content to this learning path includes the following:

• Domain 6 Exam
• Domain 7 Exam
• Domain 8 Exam

Webinars

Office Hours: Mastering the Azure Administrator Certification

Do you want to take a really impactful step in your technical career? Join Guy Hummel, Azure Content Lead, and Tom Mitchell, Azure Trainer, to learn how to attain the Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate certification, one of the most sought after Azure certs around.

Reducing Costs for Your Containerized Workloads on ECS

In this webinar with Spot.io, we discussed how to optimize infrastructure for containers at 3 different stages:

1. The instance life cycle – should it run as an RI, a Spot Instance, or plain On-Demand?
2. The instance type and size – as we deploy many different ECS services, how do we best pick a mix of instances for our containerized applications?
3. The Container Utilization – how do we make sure our services and tasks are optimally sized for their needs and aren’t oversubscribed for resources?

Stay updated

As always, we use Cloud Academy Blog to keep you up-to-date on the latest technology and best practices. All of our new blogs, reports, and updates go directly to our Cloud Academy social media accounts. For the latest updates, follow and like us on the following social media platforms:

• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter

The post New Content: AWS, Azure, Typescript, Java, Docker, 13 New Labs, and Much More appeared first on Cloud Academy.

Then you’ll want to mark your calendar. Starting Monday, June 22 at 12:00 a.m. PDT (3:00 a.m. EDT), Cloud Academy is offering FREE access to our industry-leading Training Library.

Register here for immediate access to our free week.

During this free time period, you’ll have seven days of unlimited access to:

• Certification prep learning paths for AWS, Azure, GCP, and more
• Our entire Training Library of interactive, video-based courses
• Exams and quizzes to identify knowledge gaps
• Practice certification exams to build confidence
• Our Tech Skills Training Camp Playbook to guide your learning journey

You’ll also get access to our most popular Cloud Academy labs that help you build practical experience by using live cloud environments:

• Hands-on labs: learn step-by-step using actual accounts on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform
• Lab challenges: troubleshoot complex scenarios without guidance using live environments
• Lab playgrounds: explore and test your own ideas in sandboxed environments — without installing any software

Get certification training in real cloud environments

Want to make the most out of your free week? Jump into a certification learning path and test drive the labs.

Why get certified?

Getting certified shows that you have some of the most in-demand and profitable skills in the industry, though there are countless certifications to choose from. Cloud providers — such as AWS and Azure — offer foundational certifications, which are designed to validate a candidate’s overall understanding. Foundational cloud certifications for beginners include AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification and Microsoft Azure Fundamentals.

What’s the most effective way to learn for a certification?

Theory is great, but there’s nothing like getting reps on real deployments to make you ready to ace the next cert exam — and as you might know, more and more exams have lab components.

Check out some of our most popular certification learning paths:

• AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification Preparation
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect Certification Preparation
• Preparation for the (ISC)² CISSP Certification
• AZ-500 Exam Preparation: Microsoft Azure Security Technologies
• AZ-900 Exam Preparation for the Microsoft Azure Fundamentals
• Google Professional Cloud Developer Exam Preparation
• Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) Exam Preparation

And try out a learning path to get a solid start on coding, general cloud, DevOps, and more, helping you operate across any cloud ecosystem:

• Introduction to Python
• Introduction to Java
• Advanced Java Programming
• Practical Machine Learning
• Fundamentals of AWS 
• DevOps Playbook – Moving to a DevOps Culture
• Google Cloud Platform for Solutions Architects

How to get started

1. Register with an email address

Sign up on our free week registration page. No credit card or paid account required.

2. Get the app

Download the app to help you study anywhere. You can even start on our website and transition to your phone within the same course seamlessly.

Believe it or not, there is no credit card required to gain full access to our mobile app and training library that delivers the theory, technical knowledge, and hands-on practice to get certified on industry-leading cloud platforms and technologies. We’re so confident that you will love our training platform and our mobile app, that you’ll want to stick around for a while.

Our training library is open from Monday, June 22 at 12:00 a.m. PDT and will be locked down on Sunday, June 28 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. Make sure you sign up now to create your free account in advance!

About Cloud Academy

At Cloud Academy, we’re customer- and product-obsessed. It’s our mission to understand what our users want and need, so we can help to empower their learning goals. Our goal is to assist both personal and enterprise users to build hands-on technical skills that drive measurable results. With our enterprise-grade platform, you can assess, develop, and validate technical skills with structured learning paths that provide the theory and hands-on practice to master the skills you need in the real world.

Our training library — loaded with 10,000+ hours of technical content — is helping users build tech skills at the core of innovation.

• Technology training material that’s trusted by the world’s most distinguished organizations
• Crafted by leading industry experts who love to train
• Training content is always fresh and up-to-date

You can explore what’s new on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, containers, security, IoT, data science, programming, machine learning, big data, and more.

Cloud Academy for enterprise

We built Cloud Academy around the needs of our Fortune 100 clients. From demonstrable security to fast, flexible deployments of thousands of seats, we provide total control and predictability in up-leveling your organization’s skills and enabling you to deliver on challenging technical projects.

Cloud Academy is the leading digital skills development platform that enables every enterprise to become a tech company through guided Learning Paths, Hands-on Labs, and Skill Assessment. Cloud Academy delivers role-specific training on leading clouds (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform), essential methodologies needed to operate on and between clouds (DevOps, security, containers), and capabilities that are unlocked by the cloud (big data, machine learning).

Companies like Turner, Cognizant, SAS, and ThermoFisher customize Cloud Academy to contextualize learning and leverage the platform to assign, manage, and measure cloud enablement at scale.

*Free access starts Monday, June 22 at 12:00 a.m. PDT and ends Sunday, June 28 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. This promotion cannot be combined with any other promotions or applied in any way to existing personal or enterprise licenses. After free access ends, you will be given the option of upgrading your account to a paid subscription. To see what people are saying about us, read our reviews on G2.

The post Kickstart Your Tech Training With a Free Week on Cloud Academy appeared first on Cloud Academy.

New Content on Cloud Academy

At any time, you can find all of our new releases by going to our Training Library and finding the section titled “New this month in our library.” You can also keep track of what new training is coming for the next 4-6 weeks with our Content Roadmap.

• AWS
• Microsoft Azure
• Google Cloud Platform
• Machine Learning
• DevOps
• Programming
• Webinars
• Platform Updates

Machine Learning

Learning Path: Practical Machine Learning

This learning path is an intense deep dive into the world of machine learning. In it, you’ll learn how to implement different machine learning models, validate their quality, and how to implement them practically.

Hands-on Lab: Getting Started with Natural Language Processing

Natural Language Processing is a form of computer learning that can understand human speech and text to drive insights. This lab is aimed at machine learning beginners who want to gain familiarity with Natural Language Processing (NLP) concepts. After completing this lab, you will be able to classify text and gather insights. Additionally, you will gain familiarity with the Amazon Comprehend UI and basic Python concepts for interacting with NLP APIs.

Hands-on Lab: Machine Learning – Training Custom Models

This lab is aimed at machine learning beginners who want to understand how to train custom models. After completing this lab, you will understand how to create a machine learning model based on a categorized set of images. Additionally, you will gain familiarity with Amazon Rekognition and basic Python concepts for interacting with the sample model.

DevOps

Courses: AKS Networking

This course explores AKS, Azure’s managed Kubernetes service, covering the fundamentals of the service and how it can be used. You’ll first learn about how as a managed service it takes care of managing and maintaining certain aspects of itself, before moving onto the core AKS concepts such as cluster design and provisioning, networking, storage management, scaling, and security. After a quick look at Azure Container Registry, the course then moves on to an end-to-end demonstration that shows how to provision a new AKS cluster and then deploy a sample cloud-native application into it.

Course: Introduction to Knative

Knative is a general-purpose serverless orchestration framework that sits on top of Kubernetes, allowing you to create event-driven, autoscaled, and scale-to-zero applications. This course introduces you to Knative, taking you through the fundamentals, particularly the components Serving and Eventing. Several hands-on demonstrations are provided in which you’ll learn and observe how to install Knative, and how to build and deploy serverless, event-driven scale-to-zero workloads.

Programming

Hands-on Lab: The C# Programming Language

This lab concentrates on the C# programming language itself, to fully prepare delegates in readiness for using the .NET Framework/Core. No object-orientated knowledge is assumed—the course provides a suitable OO primer. From basic procedural syntax to sophisticated object-oriented programming techniques, delegates will learn how to write .NET applications with code that is robust and maintainable. The lab is presented as a mixture of instructional guides and hands-on exercises.

Hands-on Lab: Programming in C

C is one of the most widely-used languages for systems software and workstation application programming, largely due to its power and flexibility. This lab will provide you a highly effective, structured approach to learning the C language.

Hands-on Lab: C for Experienced Programmers

This lab for experienced programmers is outstanding because of its emphasis on writing style, pitfalls to avoid, and techniques to use that make the code clear, concise, and maintainable. It is designed to accelerate through the foundations of C programming as appropriate to the skill level.

Hands-on Lab: Understanding the Java Spring Framework

This lab starts with how to set up simple Spring projects and define beans. We then move on to web-based MVC projects. Persistence and transactions are covered, looking at both JDBC and Hibernate ORM implementations. Finally, we cover how to secure an application, including authentication methods and user roles.

Webinars

Office Hours: Acing the AWS Solutions Architect Associate Certification 

Do you want to take a really impactful step in your technical career? Watch this on-demand webinar with our experts, Stuart Scott, AWS Content & Security Lead, and Stephen Cole, AWS Certification Specialist, to learn about how to attain the AWS Solutions Architect Associate certification, a.k.a. the most sought-after AWS cert around.

Platform updates

New enterprise plan invoicing

Our enterprise plan customers can now complete a purchase by invoice and have instant access to our platform. Our new accepted payment methods for the invoice include:

• Wire transfers
• ACH

How it works:

• There is a new “invoice” payment method option on the checkout page for enterprise customers
• If you select the new invoicing option, you can immediately start the enterprise onboarding without waiting for the invoice to be paid
• All enterprise members of that account have full access to content but limited labs sessions

Note: Member limitations are removed once the invoice is paid or when phone verification is completed

Stay updated

As always, we use Cloud Academy Blog to keep you up-to-date on the latest technology and best practices. All of our new blogs, reports, and updates go directly to our Cloud Academy social media accounts. For the latest updates, follow and like us on the following social media platforms:

• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter

The post New Content: AZ-500 and AZ-400 Updates, 3 Google Professional Exam Preps, Practical ML Learning Path, C# Programming, and More appeared first on Cloud Academy.

New Content on Cloud Academy

At any time, you can find all of our new releases by going to our Training Library and finding the section titled “New this month in our library.” You can also keep track of what new training is coming for the next 4-6 weeks with our Content Roadmap.

• Alibaba
• AWS
• Microsoft Azure
• Google Cloud Platform
• Data Science
• Programming
• Business Transformation
• Security
• Platform Updates

Data Science

Learning Path: Practical Data Science with Python

This learning path provides two learning experiences in one: it explores the world of data science while at the same time giving you hands-on, practical tutorials on how to use Python at an advanced level.

Programming

Learning Path: Fundamentals of R

This learning path introduces the fundamental concepts and knowledge you need to use the programming language R, a mathematical and statistical modelling language used extensively in data analysis and big data.

Business Transformation

Course: Simple Explanations to Technical Topics

Want some simple explanations to some of the technical terms and concepts about the cloud that everyone else seems to know already? This course is here to help!

Security

Learning Path: Introduction to Ethical Hacking Tools

• Nmap network scanner
• Netcat network utility
• Metasploit vulnerability exploitation tool
• Nikto web app scanner
• SQLmap SQL injection tool
• Burpsuite web app proxy
• Dirbuster vulnerability scanner
• Droopescan vulnerability exploitation tool

Learning Path: Preparation for the (ISC)² CISSP Certification

The Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) is one of the most globally recognized certifications in the information security profession. The following content was added to this learning path.

DOMAIN 8 – Software Development Security

Module 1:

• Understanding and applying security in the software development life cycle
• Enforcing security controls in the development environment

Module 2:

• The database environment
• Software development and the world of the web

Module 3:

• Considerations or secure software development
• Assessing the effectiveness of software security
• Assessing software acquisition security

Platform updates

Multi-year plans

You can now purchase two- or three-year plans at a significant discount. The two-year plan provides a 15% discount and the three-year provides an amazing discount of 25%!

How it works for non-customers

1. Choose either the enterprise plan or personal plan.
2. Use the drop-down field to select the subscription length.

How it works for personal plan customers

1. 1. Go to https://cloudacademy.com/pricing/update/
   2. Select the subscription length.
   3. Your plan will be pro-rated based on the number of months you have left in your current plan.

Note: Current enterprise customers must contact us at support@cloudacademy.com to upgrade to a multi-year plan.

Stay updated

As always, we use Cloud Academy Blog to keep you up-to-date on the latest technology and best practices. All of our new blogs, reports, and updates go directly to our Cloud Academy social media accounts. For the latest updates, follow and like us on the following social media platforms:

• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter

The post New Content: Alibaba, Azure Cert Prep: AI-100, AZ-104, AZ-204 & AZ-400, Amazon Athena Playground, Google Cloud Developer Challenge, and much more appeared first on Cloud Academy.