Cloud Academy Team

New Content: Terraform Labs, Azure AZ-220 & lots more

Cloud Academy August Content Update

In November, our team of expert certification specialists released seven new or updated learning paths, 20 courses, 14 hands-on labs, and five lab challenges!

New Content on Cloud Academy

November’s new content fell into these categories:

AWS

COURSE: Managing User Identities with Long-Term Credentials in AWS IAM

This course explains how to manage your user identities when using the AWS Identity and Access Management Service, commonly referred to as IAM.

COURSE: Managing your Instances using the AWS Systems Manager Run Command, Documents, and Parameter Store

AWS Systems Manager helps you automatically implement complex workflows related to your machine deployment, configuration, and life cycle. In this course, you will learn about AWS Systems Manager and how it allows you to manage your machine fleet at scale in AWS, your own data center, or even other cloud platforms.

COURSE: Loading data into Amazon Redshift

This course covers how to load your data efficiently using the COPY command in Amazon Redshift. You’ll learn how it can be used to load multiple or a single large file into Amazon Redshift, as well as the different features that the COPY command has to offer and what data upserting is.

COURSE: Amazon Redshift – Spectrum

This course is intended for people who want to learn more about Amazon Redshift Spectrum and how it can be used to perform SQL queries on data stored in Amazon S3.

COURSE: Protecting Your Web Apps Against Common Exploits using AWS WAF

The AWS Web Application Firewall Service, more commonly known as AWS WAF, is designed to help protect your web applications from external malicious activity. This course looks at the basics of the service before moving on to look at its components, followed by a demonstration of its configuration.

COURSE: Amazon Redshift Distribution Styles

Amazon Redshift is a cloud-native data warehouse from AWS. It has a Massively Parallel Processing framework that automatically distributes data and the query load across every node available in a cluster. This course explains how Redshift distributes table data, how keys are used inside tables, and the importance of distribution styles.

COURSE: What is an API and how do they work?

This course covers the basics of what an API is, how it functions, and why you would want to use one.

LEARNING PATH: re:Invent: LAB008 – Using data encryption on AWS

This learning path has been curated to allow you to gain the knowledge and understanding required to get the most from the LAB008 re:Invent session.

LEARNING PATH: re:Invent: CMP208 – Amazon Lightsail: The easiest way to get started on AWS

This learning path has been curated to allow you to gain the knowledge and understanding required to get the most from the following re:Invent session, enabling you to understand the insights and discussions during the talk at a greater level, and prepare you to ask some great questions for the speaker(s)!

LEARNING PATH: re:Invent: STG317 – Amazon EBS volumes and performance monitoring with Amazon CloudWatch

This is the 6th LP to support re:Invent and the chalk talk/breakout sessions being held by AWS. 

COURSE: Using Amazon Comprehend to Gain Valuable Insights from Text

Using natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, Amazon Comprehend allows you to gather valuable insights from text. This course explains how!

COURSE: Using Amazon Route 53 to Route End Users to Internet Applications

In this course, you will be introduced to the Amazon Route 53 service and learn how it helps you register a domain name and manage it worldwide.

HANDS-ON LAB: Using AWS Lambda Functions to Process Amazon SQS Messages

This lab teaches the student how to integrate AWS Lambda with Amazon SQS and should be of interest to students studying for the Solutions Architect Associate certification.

LAB CHALLENGE: Amazon SNS and Amazon SQS Challenge

This lab tests the student’s ability to create and configure Amazon SNS and SQS queues. It should be of interest to students studying for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate certification.

LEARNING PATH: Analyzing your data with Amazon Redshift

This learning path is ideal for anyone looking to learn more about the Amazon Redshift, its capabilities, and its features.

LAB CHALLENGE: Amazon Route53 Challenge

This lab challenge tests the student’s ability to use Amazon Route 53 to host DNS.

COURSE: Forecasting Business Outcomes with Amazon Forecast

This course looks at the Amazon Forecast service, including what it does and how it works importing datasets, training predictors, and generating forecasts.

Google Cloud

HANDS-ON LAB: Deploying Google Cloud Platform Infrastructure with Terraform

This is the first of many Terraform + GCP-style labs that will make up the Infrastructure Developer’s Guide to Terraform: GCP Edition Learning Path.

HANDS-ON LAB: Creating Terraform Configurations with Implicit Dependencies in GCP

This lab covers using implicit dependencies between GCP resources in Terraform. Also discussed are resource graphs and the WebGraphViz browser tool, which aid in the visualization of the GCP resource relationships.

COURSE: Google Cloud Pub/Sub – Advanced Topics

This course demonstrates Pub/Sub options including filtering and ordering messages, creating and enforcing schemas, as well as replaying previously delivered messages.

HANDS-ON LAB: Working with Terraform Configuration Variables in GCP

This lab will walk you through declaring and referencing input and output variables within a Terraform configuration.

Microsoft Azure

LEARNING PATH: MS-101 Exam Preparation: Microsoft 365 Mobility and Security (preview)

This learning path is designed to prepare the student for the MS-101 Microsoft 365 Mobility and Security exam.

COURSE: Introduction to Power BI

Power BI has changed the BI landscape forever, enabling BI professionals and regular excel users alike to work with big data and build insightful dashboards. This course gives you a solid foundation to begin your Power BI journey.

COURSE: Loading Data into Power BI

In this course, we’ll review the Power BI Desktop interface. Then we’ll show you how to load data into Power BI Desktop and how to save your file. We will also explain data profiling and look at the various data profiling options in Power Query like column quality, column value distribution and column profiling, and the benefits of using these.

HANDS-ON LAB: Implementing Governance using Resource Tags

This lab focuses on cloud governance pillars and covers the tagging concepts for Azure resources.

LEARNING PATH: AZ-220 Exam Preparation: Microsoft Azure IoT Developer (Preview)

This learning path is designed to help you prepare for the AZ-220 Microsoft Azure IoT Developer exam. Candidates who pass the AZ-220 exam will earn the Microsoft Certified Azure IoT Developer Specialty certification.

HANDS-ON LAB: Introduction to Azure Sentinel

This lab targets the Azure Sentinel Security offering that’s part of AZ-500 exam requirements, while also covering the gap in the library for uncovered Azure services.

HANDS-ON LAB: Investigating Security Events using Azure Sentinel

This lab guides students on using the Sentinel service to detect and investigate security incidents.

HANDS-ON LAB: Continuous Integration using Azure Pipelines in Azure DevOps

This lab guides you through building pipelines to enable continuous integration using Azure Pipelines (Azure DevOps).

LAB CHALLENGE: Azure Sentinel Incident Triage Challenge

This challenge tests users’ knowledge on the Sentinel Incident Triage process.

LAB CHALLENGE: Azure Pipeline Continuous Integration

This hands-on lab challenge will test your practical ability to implement continuous integration using Azure DevOps and an IDE.

HANDS-ON LAB: Automating Threat Response using Sentinel Playbooks

In this hands-on lab, you will understand how to configure automated responses to security incidents in Sentinel using Playbooks.

Data Science & AI

HANDS-ON LAB: PySpark – Preprocessing

In this lab, you will learn how to create a dataset using the PySpark library, and to manipulate it using standard filtering and slicing techniques.

HANDS-ON LAB: PySpark – How to build a Machine Learning Pipeline

In this lab, you will learn how to create a machine learning pipeline using the PySpark library, and to perform metric evaluation and model tuning.

Programming

LEARNING PATH: JavaScript for Beginners

This learning path covers the fundamentals of JavaScript through 8 courses, 7 labs, 6 exams, and 1 lab Challenge.

LAB CHALLENGE: Javascript for Beginners Challenge

This lab challenge will test your ability to use functions and conditionals to complete a calculator app.

HANDS-ON LAB: Working with HTML Text Elements

This lab has the learner work with different text elements.  In the lab, learners will create paragraph and heading elements.  They will use inline elements to semantic meaning to specific sections of text within paragraph elements.

COURSE: Introduction to HTML Text Elements

This practical course explores HTML text elements and covers the difference between block and inline text elements. This course also covers how some text elements help with user accessibility.

HANDS-ON LAB: Working with Semantic HTML

In this lab, you will create several semantic elements to build a semantic web page.

COURSE: Introduction to Semantic HTML Elements

This course explores semantic HTML elements and covers the difference between block and inline text elements. This course also covers the meaning and purpose of some commonly used semantic elements.

COURSE: Introduction to JavaScript Template Literals

This course explores ES6 JavaScript Template Literals.  This course teaches how to use template literal strings and string expressions.

COURSE: Introduction to JavaScript Destructuring

This course explores JavaScript destructuring, which is a JavaScript expression that unpacks values from arrays and objects.

HANDS-ON LAB: Working with JavaScript Destructuring

This is a companion lab for the Introduction to JavaScript Destructuring Course. In this lab, learners will gain the skills to destructure objects, arrays and use destructuring as part of function parameters.

DevOps

COURSE: Ansible Automation for SAP

This course is intended for anyone who wants to learn how Ansible automation can be used with their SAP workloads.

COURSE: Running Containers with Red Hat

This course covers a range of techniques to help you run your own containerized applications using Red Hat.

COURSE: Ansible Basics – Automation Technical Overview

This course is intended for anyone who wants to learn more about the Ansible Automation Platform in order to operationalize and put their Ansible workloads into production.

Webinars

Check out the complete list, including links to sign up for future webinars and watch recordings of past ones, on our Webinars page.

Upcoming — click to register

Recent — click to view recording

New Product Features

Changes to the way the product looks or works appear in the Cloud Academy Release Notes page.

In November, we released the Useful Links feature. This new tab, which appears below the video player in a course, contains clickable links to resources mentioned in the course content.

Technical Bulletins

Changes that can affect your API code or automations you have set up for reports appear in the Technical Bulletins article in the Cloud Academy help center.

Discontinue using the Training Plan Consumption Report API endpoint by January 10, 2022

The Training Plan Consumption Report, and the API endpoint that triggers its generation, were deprecated in October 2021. On January 10, 2022, they will be removed from the API. Any code that uses this endpoint will fail starting on that date. Instead, update your automations to use the Training Plan Progress report.

Update SSO Configuration by January 31, 2022

If you haven’t already updated your SSO Configuration, you must do so before January 31, 2022. See How the New SSO Configuration Is Different for instructions, or contact your CSM for more information.

Stay updated

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