Few years back Cloud was a word used to describe peak of joy in an idiom. For example, You are now on cloud 9!. Other use of the cloud was to refer to something which you do not have seen but who is almighty and controls lot of things in the world i.e. God or abode of God! Advancement in technology in recent years have changed the meaning of the word cloud. However, it still refers to something which no one has seen, it is almighty and controls all your data. That is cloud technology for you.
The highest paying certifications across all IT disciplines are in cloud computing and virtualization,as per Global Knowledge, with an average salary of $127,494 in 2019, up 12.8% from $112,955 last year.
Cloud computing refer to the massive IT infrastructure which is created and accessible anywhere in the world over internet. Beauty of this operation is anyone can take a pie of it on rent (subscription model) and you pay only for what you use. Another bid advantage of cloud computing infrastructure is its elasticity. It can scale up or scale down automatically based on user need. It would have been surprised if this would not have been popular. Today we have dominant players like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google GPC in the space of cloud computing.
If you want to pursue career in IT infrastructure or system administration domain, knowledge of cloud computing is a must. Let us try to understand development in space of cloud computing especially focusing on Microsoft Azure.
Microsoft Azure adoption grew from 45 to 52 percent to inch closer to AWS. Azure adoption has now reached 85 percent of AWS adoption, up from 70 percent last year.
– Rightscale state of cloud report 2019
Adoption of Microsoft Azure is growing in the industry. Demand for Azure skills are increasing day by day. Should you directly join a training course on Azure?
Cut the crap and start learning for MCSA certification
Let us look at typical IT infrastructure of a software company. It would have hundreds of windows desktops and few tenths of servers with operating systems like Windows Server, Unix, Linux etc. When someone wants to be a desktop engineer, knowledge of Windows desktops and some orientation of server administration is enough. However, with increasing complexity of systems, Server administrator must possess an in-depth knowledge of both the popular platforms: Microsoft Windows as well as Unix/Linux. Some servers, storage and services/applications would be installed and managed from cloud infrastructure.
As a system and network administrator, it is your responsibility to manage all these components mentioned above. It is obvious that one needs to know these infrastructure components well. One needs to know the basics of user management, rights & permissions, basic scripting, provisioning of resources, configurations, integration of various systems etc.
Once you are strong in the basics, cloud implementation is nothing but a different way of accessing these infrastructure services. Based on this foundation, you can learn and grow you career to become cloud administrator.
MCSA certification course would cover Windows server 2016 installation, storage, compute, monitoring and troubleshooting, core and distributed network solutions followed by user management, active directory and permissions. In Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure operation of these services and terminologies would remain the same. Hence it is very critical for someone who wants to be successful Azure cloud administrator, strong skills in Windows Sever with MCSA certification is must.