There’s no doubt about it, customers love our hands-on labs! Our industry-leading labs give you practical experience in real cloud accounts on AWS, Azure, GCP, Docker, Kubernetes, and more. We provide step-by-step instructions to guide you through real-world scenarios, so you can learn the production-level experience you need to succeed in the cloud. 

While we’ve heard great feedback about our hands-on labs since launching them back in 2013, we understand it can be challenging if you don’t have two computer screens to use — one for the labs instructions that you’re following, and one for writing your code. Previously, if you didn’t have two screens available, you’d have to switch back and forth between tabs on your computer to complete your labs successfully. 

That’s why we’ve now made it possible to access the instructions directly from your phone!

Now, when you start a lab from the web platform, you’ll immediately receive a push notification to your phone when you’re logged into the app. By simply tapping on that notification, you’ll be able to access the exact lab you’re on from the Cloud Academy mobile app. There, you can easily follow the step-by-step lab instructions using your smartphone as a second screen. 

If you don’t have the Cloud Academy mobile app installed yet, you can download it using the “send to your phone” button that you’ll find at the top of the screen here.

This is a magic link, meaning that the link will automatically download the mobile app for you, log you in (without the need to insert your credentials), and bring you to the active lab you’re on — easy peasy!

Following the lab instructions from your smartphone should make your hands-on lab experience a lot more seamless. Now you can focus on what you’re building in the cloud, without having to change tabs every time you need to look at the instructions. 

We’re always seeking customer feedback, as it directly impacts our product roadmap! We’d like to know what you think about this feature. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to send an email to support@cloudacademy.com.

The post A Second Set of Hands: Access Hands-on Labs Instructions From Your Phone 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.

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.

Want to train in a real cloud environment, but feel slowed down by spinning up your own deployments? When you consider security or pricing costs, it can be costly and challenging to get up to speed quickly for self-training. To solve this problem, Cloud Academy created a new suite of lab-based practical environments: Lab Playgrounds.

These playground labs are a series of longer duration, low-friction sandbox environments. They’re like normal labs but with a generally quicker start-up time and an average duration of four hours. They offer the ability to get started without any third-party tools. For instances where SSH or RDP is required, we offer completely in-browser solutions for those as well. They feature environments for working with all kinds of platforms including operating systems, coding languages, DevOps tools, and more.

The goal is to provide you with sandbox environments where you feel free to run any command and experiment any way you like, without the guidelines of a typical lab. The end goal is to increase the amount of practical, real-world experience you gain in some of our most popular areas. You can also use these playgrounds to follow along with many of our learning paths and courses.

We even made it easier to find these newest lab playgrounds.

Lab Playgrounds: Get up to speed faster

Previously, we offered playgrounds for Kubernetes and Sagemaker Notebook. As of today, we now also offer playground labs for multiple distributions of Linux, Docker for Linux and Windows, Python, and Java. We’ll continue to look for opportunities to expand these and create more playground environments.

You do not need your own account credentials to use the playground labs. When you start a playground lab, the system launches all the necessary resources and starts the timer. The technology you are learning about appears on your screen.

We now have eight lab playgrounds where you can learn freely without concern for any of your real environments.

• Amazon Linux 2 Playground
• Ubuntu Playground
• Docker Playground
• Docker Windows Containers Playground
• Java Development Playground
• Python Development Playground
• Amazon SageMaker Notebook Playground
• Introduction to Kubernetes Playground

Other labs

Cloud Academy is constantly growing the number of hands-on labs to guide you in active learning, plus lab challenges to test you in real deployments without (too much) hand-holding.

What’s the difference between hands-on labs, lab challenges, and lab playgrounds?

Hands-on Labs

Lab Challenges

• Validate your technical problem-solving skills in a real environment
• Troubleshoot complex scenarios to practice what you learned
• Develop production experience that translates into real-world expertise

Lab Playgrounds

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 should 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.

• Explore and experiment in live environments without a set of objectives or checks to complete
• No software installations or account credentials needed — the system automatically launches all the necessary resources
• Use for an extended duration with an average duration of four hours

Go ahead, take a guided, hands-on lab, a non-guided lab challenge, or explore a lab playground, and tell us what you think in the comments below.

The post Introducing Our Newest Lab Environments: Lab Playgrounds appeared first on Cloud Academy.

More and more customers are relying on our technology and content to keep upskilling their people in these months, and we are doing our best to keep supporting them. While the world fights the COVID-19 pandemic, we wanted to make a small contribution to help you stay up-to-date with great cloud and technology skills.

We made a few courses and hands-on labs completely free for you. Feel free to share with your friends and colleagues. 

1. What is Cloud Computing?
2. Compute Fundamentals for AWS
3. Migrating Servers to Microsoft Azure
4. Building a Cloud-Native Application

All these courses are part of our Learning Paths, longer guided paths with a mix of videos, hands-on labs, quiz sessions, and exams. You can always start a free trial if you want to get a sense of the full experience. If you are interested in our unique technologies that are part of our Hands-on Labs and Lab Challenges, we’ve also made three of our 300+ labs available.

• Lab Challenge: AWS Developer Tools Challenge
• Hands-on Lab: Create Your First Amazon S3 Bucket
• Hands-on Lab:  Introduction to AWS Lambda

New content on Cloud Academy

In a single month alone, our Content Team published a new AWS Certification Learning Paths, 11  labs in real cloud environments, and 31 new courses! 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
• Programming
• Platform Features 

Google Cloud Platform has become one of the premier cloud providers on the market. It offers the same rich catalog of services and massive global hardware scale as AWS, as well as a number of Google-specific features and integrations. Getting started with GCP can seem daunting given its complexity. This course is designed to demystify the system and help both novices and experienced engineers get started.

Course: Managing Google Kubernetes Engine and App Engine

Google Cloud Platform has become one of the premier cloud providers on the market. It offers the same rich catalog of services and massive global hardware scale as AWS, as well as a number of Google-specific features and integrations. Mastering the GCP toolset can seem daunting given its complexity. This course is designed to help people familiar with GCP strengthen their understanding of GCP’s compute services, specifically App Engine and Kubernetes Engine.

Course: Introduction to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Kubernetes has become one of the most common container orchestration platforms. It has regular releases, a wide range of features, and is highly extensible. Managing a Kubernetes cluster requires a lot of domain knowledge, which is why services such as GKE exist. Certain aspects of a Kubernetes cluster vary based on the underlying implementation. In this course, we’ll explore some of the ways that GKE implements a Kubernetes cluster. Having a basic understanding of how things are implemented will set the stage for further learning.

Hands-on Lab: Host a Static Website Using a Cloud Storage Bucket and Cloud CDN

Using a cloud storage bucket instead of a server for your website offers many advantages. It allows you to deep-handle the security of the objects you upload, pay only for the storage space you use (thus avoiding a standard monthly fee), and distribute your content within a single region, dual-region, or multi-region. In this lab, you will create a regional cloud storage bucket and upload the files of your static website to it. You will then create a load balancer and a CDN distribution, allowing you to have an efficient caching and file serving approach.

Hands-on Lab: Balance the Traffic to Compute Engine Instances Through a Load Balancer

In this lab, you will create an instance group and attach to it two Compute Engine instances that you will find in your GCP environment. Then, you will create a load balancer that will be associated with the instance group. This will allow you to create a single entry point for your virtual machines and balance the traffic directed to them.

Hands-on Lab: Monitor Compute Engine Resources Through Cloud Monitoring

In this lab, you will work with an existing Compute Engine instance in a GCP environment. You will install the Cloud Monitoring agent and then start practicing with Cloud Monitoring. You will create an uptime check and an alert policy triggered when the uptime check fails. You will also create a chart with the CPU metrics of your Compute Engine instance.

Programming

Hands-on Lab: Web Development Fundamentals – HTML and CSS

You’ll begin at square one, learning how the Web and web pages work, and then steadily build from there. By the end of the course, you’ll have the skills to create a website that is responsive to the device it is being viewed on and that contains features needed for good website development. Learn how to use the latest techniques, best practices, and current web standards — including HTML5 and CSS3.

Hands-on Lab: Web Development Fundamentals – JavaScript

This hands-on lab teaches the basic skills of web development in JavaScript. Using the latest version of JavaScript and developer tools, this lab starts with the basics needed to write simple scripts, and builds on this to prepare you for using modern JavaScript frameworks and libraries such as React and Angular.

Hands-on Lab: Developing Applications Using ReactJS

This lab is designed to show you how to create user interfaces using the ReactJS library. It will discuss how ReactJS can be used to create reusable, interactive UI components; single-page applications using React Router; and an introduction to Flux and Redux. The aim of the lab is for delegates to develop their skills, knowledge, and understanding so that they can confidently use ReactJS to create user interfaces.

Hands-on Lab: Programming with TypeScript

In this lab, you will learn the core and advanced topics related to TypeScript. TypeScript is a superset of the JavaScript language that introduces type safety to the language. This programming lab will introduce you to scalable, safe and maintainable JavaScript code that can be used with any modern framework including Angular2+ and ReactJS.

Hands-on Lab: Using Node.js and the MEAN Stack

In this lab, you will learn how to leverage JavaScript in end-to-end application development. Using Node.js and the MEAN stack (MongoDB, Express, Angular, Node.js), you will learn how to build open-source modular and component-based web applications to build service-driven applications with a single web page user interface.

Platform updates

Chat with Customer Support

Have a question? You can now chat directly with a live Customer Support representative. Simply go to our new pricing page and click the “Support” button on the bottom right. You can navigate through top questions or start a chat with a live representative. As always, you can still email support@cloudacademy.com if email is more your style.  

Purchase new or additional licenses online

1. To purchase new enterprise licenses, go to our new pricing page and click “Buy Now.” You can now purchase up to 15 licenses online — all without a single sales call. You can always explore a demo or contact sales to speak with one of our solution specialists. 
2. To add additional licenses, go to the member panel (you must be the account admin), mouse over “Licenses left” and click “Add more licenses.” 

Check out the new Training Plan features

As you may know, the Training Plan feature is a powerful tool that gives you centralized control of the training experience for your entire team on the Cloud Academy platform. You can assign content to your team, set a clear goal, set a due date, and keep your team on track.

We’re happy to announce that you can now assign a Training Plan to a single user. Check out our blog, Announcing New Training Plans, for a complete list of the new and improved features. Here are the additional highlights:

• Easy planning: Assign multiple training plans in a sequence.
• Skill improvement graphs for teams: Know your team is ready with newly acquired skills.
• Expanded monitoring: Set up notifications for any members in your Cloud Academy ecosystem.
• Improved filtering and searching for Training Plans: Find the content you need easier and faster.
• Simplified creation and customization of Training Plans: Customize your training plans on the spot.
• Fine-grained control: Assign plans to a single member, not just an entire team.

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 on Cloud Academy: AWS Solutions Architect Exam Prep, Azure Courses, GCP Engineer Exam Prep, Programming, and More appeared first on Cloud Academy.