It’s been a while since I posted and I’ve noticed, over time that my Facebook page has started to gain some likes (thanks to those that liked the page). So I thought I’d post a quick update to say what I’ve been up to on this journey.
Big Idea… Scaled Back a Little Bit
In the last post I talked a lot about learning software development with the goal of being a full stack web developer. Over time I have mainly been learning React.js and GraphQL. Two great technologies.
Also, my “big idea” has been scaled back a bit. I have another idea I’m working on little by little as I learn web development. This idea will be much easier to implement for a newbie like me. Now even though I’m scaling my idea back a little bit, the idea I’m working on is still a great idea, in my opinion. It’s one that I believe has a great potential to make great passive income through ads such as Google Adsense, affiliate links, etc… So more to come on that. Hopefully, I can have something up within the next two to three months.
Spending Most of My Time In the Cloud
Learning full stack web development is great. But what I’ve decided to spend more time on is updating my skills that are more pertinent to what I currently do. In addition to that, and more importantly, I’m spreading out into the cloud. In January I obtained two certifications. The Network+ and the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner. My hopes are to shift into a cloud based career. I’m studying for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect certification and will also study for the MCSA in Windows 2016 and MCSE in Azure. Also, CompTIA just recently came out with a new Cloud+ certification exam in February that I’m excited about as it looks like it’s just what I’m looking for. So, needless to say, I’m geeking out on the cloud and all kinds of other technologies such as Docker, Chef, and more.
I’m a big fan of the Amazon This Is My Architecture page. If you want to be a solutions architect then these videos are great to watch. I also purchased the ACloudGuru course on Udemy and am thinking of purchasing a membership to the ACloudGuru site after I do my taxes. I also have a membership at PluralSight. I will admit, I like the ACloudGuru course the best when it comes to learning for the Solutions Architect certification. But Plurasight is the go to place for everything else. Excellent quality videos and I’m only paying $29/month. For the amount of content you receive and the quality of the courses, it is very well worth it. If you sign up using the referral link I provided, I get a free month.
Idea For a Cloud Course
When it comes to learning AWS something I think would be very beneficial is to have a course that walks you through actually being a solutions architect. This course would not train you to pass the certification. Instead, it would teach you how to architect real-world solutions from beginning to end using the Well-Architected Framework and then building the solution. The course would also show you how to do it a couple different ways and remain vendor neutral (serverless vs non-serverless, AWS vs Google vs Microsoft, etc…). It’s easy enough to understand what a service is for and its use-cases for a test but it’s a completely different thing to have to piece together multiple services in order to architect a real-world solution. I think a course like that could be a HUGE money-maker for someone if done properly.
I love innovating, creating, building and that is what solutions architects do. My favorite part my my current job is when I’m able to innovate, coming up with solutions to improve our data center. As a solutions architect you do this all the time. It seems like a very fulfilling career. It seems to me, as a solutions architect, you’re involved in many layers of the application stack as opposed to many jobs where you’re only involved in one layer such as the physical layer, network layer, application layer. Since security is top priority in the cloud you also become a security analyst. Not to mention you also become a financial analyst too, figuring out the estimated costs for the environment.
The Cloud Seems To Be Where Everything is Going
On top of that, it seems to me the cloud is where everything is going. It makes me wonder, 20 years from now, how many existing data centers are going to be eliminated due to cloud migration? I’m sure the numbers will go up. No buying hardware, racking it, cabling it up, having to keep track of warranties, monitoring the hardware, upgrading firmware, responding to hardware issues, disposing of decommissioned servers, etc…
With the cloud there are many advantages. You pay for it as an operating expense (which has better tax advantages). You only pay for what you use, never under-provisioning or over-provisioning. When you do reserved pricing you pay less for that instance than you would purchasing a physical server. Then there’s spot instances which are insanely cheap. Financially, cost-justification to go to the cloud is there. Furthermore, with managed services (such as AWS Lambda), we take the management of servers out of the picture all together! It’s an amazing time we’re living in. The list of advantages goes on and on but I’ll stop for now.
