Week of September 12th

Now they always say, ‘Congratulations'”  🎉🥳

Happy International🌎 Programmers’👩🏽‍💻day!

So last week we decided to get our Microsoft Azure fundies on. So naturally, it would only make sense to test out our knowledge🤓 and take the AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals certification exam 📝.

So, this week we decided to go down that road 🚙 and I am happy 😊 to report we passed.

“That’s what the flair is about… it’s about fun 😃!”  — Stan from Chotchkie’s

Ok, so besides picking up some additional flair to match our AWS Practitioner badge it does provide us with some additional street “Cloud ☁️ Cred” and we can also show lack of favoritism of one cloud ☁️ provider over another. The bottom line is all clouds☁️ are good 😊 and very powerful⚡️!

To help prepare for the exam📝, we turned to several resources. Fortunately, there is a lot of great content out there. For a quick primer we turned to John Savill 💪 who literally got pumped up 🏋🏻‍♂️ and delivered an excellent primer on Azure architecture and the Core Concepts through his AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals Hints and Tips Youtube video and to “Tech Trainer” Tim Warner who was happy 😊 to be our instructor 👨‍🏫 through his amazing Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Study Guide YouTube Series

Finally, just to get a feel for types of questions that might appear on the exam 📝 I purchased TestPrepTraining – Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) Practice Exam which provided over 1,000 Azure Fundamental-type questions. With that being said there were some similar questions I saw in the course’s practice tests but there were still many questions on my actual exam 📝 that I had never seen 👀 before. In fact, the questions were even in a completely different format then the courseware. Overall, I was quite impressed with how Microsoft structured this test. They made it quite challenging and with the expectations that you had to have practical experience using the Azure Portal and that you just didn’t memorize a bunch concepts and plethora of questions.

“My, my, my, I’m once bitten 🦈 twice shy baby”

For those who might remember when I first attempted to take the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam, it didn’t exactly go as planned. So perhaps now, I might be a little gun shy ☺️ or just proponent of having a highly available and fault tolerant environment (like the cloud ☁️ itself) to be used for taking these exams 📝. So, in preparation of the exam 📝, I prepared 2 Mac books 💻 and one Windows laptop to be available with the secure OnVUE browser hours ⏳ before the test to mitigate against any unforeseen circumstances.

“Hold your head up… Keep your head up, movin’ on”

Below are some areas I am considering for my travels next week:

  • SQL Server 2019
  • Google Cloud Certified Associate Cloud Engineer Path

Thanks –

–MCS

Week of August 28th

Taking care of business (every way)

Happy National Bow Tie 🎀Day!

So last week, we dusted ourselves off, climbed 🧗‍♂️ back up on our horse 🐎, and reconvened with our continuous learning adventures. To get ourselves warmed🔥 up we decided to renew our knowledge with PowerShell ⚡️🐚 but we still had some unfinished business to attend too. If you have been following our travels 🚀, you might remember earlier this month we hit a bump in the road. But just like the armless Black Knight 🛡🗡 from Monty Python and the Holy Grail  it was just a mere “flesh wound”. Ok, perhaps not. Actually, at the time 🕰️ it stung 🐝 pretty bad 😞  but after a two-week investigation by the good folks at AWS ☁️ it was deemed that my test on the 4th of August had indeed got corrupted. They offered their sincere apology for the inconvenience and more importantly provided me a voucher so I can reschedule the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam at no cost. Well, this week I decided to re-take the exam 📝 and I am happy 😊 to report I passed the exam 📝 without issue.

To help prepare for the exam📝  I purchased the Udemy – AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner 500 Practice Exam Questions. There were some similar questions taken from this course’s practice tests but it seems AWS☁️ likes to keep their certified professionals honest. So there were quite a few questions I have never seen before.

So it’s highly recommend that in addition to gaining practical experience working with AWS that you also review there courseware and fully understand the core concepts like the AWS Well-Architected Framework and have a good basic understanding of many of the AWS Products and services 

Despite the obstacle earlier this month, it was good experience preparing for the exam and ultimately passing and getting the certification. Now, we are even more well reversed in the cloud ☁️ and have street cloud ☁️ credit to back it up. 😎

“And I’m on my way… I don’t know where I’m going 🤷🏻‍♂️… I’m on my way… I’m taking my time … But I don’t know where?”

Below are some areas I am considering for my travels next week:

  • Azure Fundamentals Courseware

Thanks –

–MCS