The Microsoft Azure Fundamentals certification (AZ-900) is an entry-level exam, introducing Azure to technical and non-technical people. The test covers a range of general cloud concepts and Microsoft products. This exam gives students a firm foundation to continue learning Microsoft Azure and to participate in the infrastructure shift from on-premises to the cloud.
The Azure Fundamentals exam is about 35 questions with a 60-minute time limit. They are a mix of drop-down, drag and drop, and multiple-choice questions.
2020 will go down in history as the year that changed the world. A global pandemic forced everyone to stay indoors, employers were forced to embrace work-from-home, and companies that supported employees had to respond. One industry that responded quickly was certification. Pearson Vue had already allowed some certification to be taken at home, but now most major technology vendors got on board. This opens up a new world of opportunity and a degree of accessibility that benefits everyone in the IT industry.
In my article about creating an Azure virtual machine, I walked us through the very basic wizard to create a VM. There is an entire segment of the virtual machine build process dedicated to optional features. These features allow new virtual machines to integrate a VM into an existing Azure environment. When we created our first machine we accepted the default settings, which created new network and storage accounts. That works perfectly for a first look but it wouldn’t be appropriate for use in a real life Azure Infrastructure.
One of the most basic tasks a VMware administrator will perform is deploying a virtual machine. Whether it is creating a VM from scratch or using a template, we’ve all worked through the wizard.
As I dig deeper into Azure I can’t help but bring my experience with vSphere along with me. The Azure Resource Manger is a very different experience from the vSphere Web Client but there also quite a few similarities.
I recently created a blog post about Getting Started with AWS. I like what they do and think they’re a great platform but there is more than one horse in the public cloud race. Microsoft Azure is a close second to AWS and getting better every day. Microsoft has many advantages that AWS doesn’t: They are probably already in your datacenter and you probably have an ELA with them. If you do, check and see if there are Azure credits in there.
Discussion of the cloud seems to be popping up around me daily. Part of it is my own instigation but other people are starting the discussions as well. It is always a lively debate with three sides. There’s very pro-cloud, cloud for specific use cases, and there are the totally anti-cloud people. A member of that political faction contributed the following quote to the meeting’s chat:
Cloud n. /Kloud/ def.
About two years ago I just happened to read an article in CIO magazine about “The Cloud”. I’ve always been a huge fan of virtualization and getting the most computing for my money. Reading about AWS in particular really excited me. I thought of Amazon as a fantastic retailer and this article and the research done afterward really opened my eyes.
I’m all about infrastructure and approached my studies from that perspective.
