Azure Certifications: Where to Start in a Post MCSA Era

now that the MCSA is gone it's time to shift our sights towards Azure but what are the jobs that we can get with an azure certification what are the certifications that are available to us and how do we get started that's what this video is all about and at the end we'll talk about that 3k giveaway let's go [Music] so we've gone through the stages of grief we're in acceptance now the MCSA is dead and it's time to shift towards as your certifications and those role based certifications so how do we start with these things who is it for what are the jobs that's what this video is all about but if this is your first time visiting my channel I'd like to encourage you to click that subscribe button it's all about growing your IT skills in your IT career okay as your certifications let's pretend we were all just focused on our MCSA in Windows Server 2016 or the NCSD how do we now shift out of that mindset and into cloud based technologies how do we even get started with Azure certifications check this out let's bring up the website so Microsoft has a website for browsing their role-based certifications and it's designed to help you get to the role-based certifications that you care about so the first thing that we need to assess is what is our skill level and our familiarity with working with Azure we can get to that right clicking on this little certification level right here now if you're completely brand new to Azure you're gonna want to start off with a fundamentals exam well there's a lot of little certifications here what we can also do is we can drill down into the azure technology now we've got the azure fundamentals this is the a-z 900 exam Network Chuck taught this for CBT Nuggets it's a great exam it's a great course to and I'd highly encourage you to check this out if you're brand new to agile let's explore the certification you can see real quick what we're talking about here so taking this exam get you certified and as your fundamentals and you can kind of see the skills measured here is it's really just trying to get you to understand the concepts of what it means to work with the cloud what are the core as your offerings these are going to be your infrastructure as a service offerings like VMs and V Nets as well as the platform as a service offerings this is going to be like function apps and logic apps but then also understanding the basics to securing and complying with Azure as well as how to understand as your pricing that's a pretty big deal too so again if you're brand new to Azure or cloud technologies in general the AZ 900 is going to be a great starting point for you now let's hop back and let's dig into it a little bit more because once we break of fundamentals this is where we start talking about the jobs themselves and what exams you should take based on the job once you get done with fundamentals we jump into the associate level exam with the associate level exam selected I'm gonna change back to Azure again well and there's quite a few associate level exams here the one that I'm gonna draw your attention to first is right here the Microsoft Certified Azure administrator this exam is most like the MCSA for Windows Server 2016 this is the exam that systems administrators are going to be most interested in so let's explore this exam a little bit you can see right here it currently says the exam code is AZ 103 but that's retiring soon and it's going to become the AZ 104 actually have a video on what the changes are truthfully there's not very many changes they remove some Active Directory stuff they added backup and monitoring effectively but you can see the bullet points here the main stuff is we've got implement and manage storage we've got implement and managed virtual machines configure and manage virtual networks and manage identities this is a lot of infrastructure as a service which includes VMs virtual networks which azure calls V Mets and a lot of storage there is also some Azure Active Directory and if you're curious about the difference between Active Directory and Azure Active Directory I also recently released a video on that if this is the exam that you're interested in this is what you really want to click on here download the certification skills outline when you give that a click you'll see the exact things that are covered on this exam like automating the deployment of virtual machines and then managing virtual machines so AZ 104 that's going to be the one for systems administrators who are shifting toward Azure and passing this exam will get you the azure administrator associate certification but what about people who aren't systems administrators I mean there's a lot of stuff in Azure that's not covered under the azure administrator exam in fact I would argue that the majority of Asher's offerings are not covered in the azure administrator exam really azure shines for developers really one of the big purposes of the cloud was to of applications that can easily be scaled and deployed so developers who are developing apps that use Azure resources like serverless hosting whether that be an app services function apps logic apps communicating in a pub sub architecture using the event hub really the azure offerings here are phenomenal so while systems administrators definitely have their hands full and they've got a lot to learn about the azure administrator exam the azure developer exam is a whopper because it's gonna cover all of these major platforms like function apps logic apps sequel server hosting cosmos DB no sequel hosting integration with event hub leveraging Azure Active Directory for supplying authentication processes for your own apps I mean it's it's massive let's take a look at the AZ 203 and now the AZ 204 from here I'm gonna change my job role to be developer if I scroll down just a hair I see the Microsoft Certified as your developer associate I recorded the AZ 2 of 3 for CBT Nuggets recently now the AZ 204 has been announced and you can see it's currently in beta and effectively what the differences between the AZ 2 of 3 + AZ 2 of 4 are is that they removed some topics from the AZ 2 of 3 previously the AZ 203 was just a massive exam but that's because Asher has some really incredible offerings and personally I think the true power of a sure shines in this exam let's actually bring up the skills outline here and you can see when I'm talking about well immediately we're getting in the azure of containers and vm's that's part of it so a little bit of overlap with the azure administrator but nowhere nearly as robust you don't need to know about like v-net peering and building site-to-site VPN now app service web apps this could be a website or an api that's your hosting in a surveillance architecture function apps another incredibly robust and somewhat affordable offering here with an azure cosmos DB no sequel storage developing apps that leverage blob storage so maybe you're creating an app where you can upload files and it targets an azure blob storage I really like this one to implement secure cloud solutions using key vault so that way your code doesn't actually store any secret it can retrieve it from the a jerk evil caching solutions like CD ends and Azure Redis cache you get the idea like it's it's really really incredible when we talk about all of these different Azure services here and then actually developing code in applications that use them all now we can develop full-blown monolith applications or micro services and still deploy it all in truly service architecture and really the best part about this is that Asscher and these services are usually pretty affordable they can auto scale so we only use what we need when we need it tear it down when we're done and it saves us a ton of money in time so that's the azure developer associate for developing applications that use code that leverage all the resources in Azure but what happens if say I'm both an administrator and a developer then what are we talking about well that's when we start shifting into the expert level certifications if I scroll down here we see we've got the Microsoft Certified Azure Solutions Architect expert Solutions Architect in Azure terminology is the expert level certification exam and it's someone who can do both administration and development if we take a look at the azure architect technologies exam right here with the AZ 300 soon to be replaced by the AZ 303 and we download the certification skills outline you can see that the majority of these topics were combining the content on the AZ 103 or AZ 104 with the AZ 203 but it also takes those skills just one layer deeper too so now we can talk about things like implementing storage replication and implementing storage account failure on top of just deploying storage accounts we still have things like automate the deployment of VMs and creating connectivity between virtual networks but new things that now show up or implement and manage hybrid identities using Azure ad Connect to synchronize your on-premise Active Directory with Azure ad and you can scroll down and see create web apps by using platform as a service well now we're talking about the azure developer exam when we were talking about the azure apps service web apps and even develop for the cloud and azure so now we're seeing things like the event grid the event hub service bus cosmos DB down here so you can see this is the combination of an administrator and a developer and it makes sense that they would call that a Solutions Architect because they can architect any solutions they want they can deploy the resources they understand monitoring and security user permissions and so on the things that the administrator would do but then they can also develop their own application on the fly if they need to it makes sense to me that that person is called a Solutions Architect and it also makes sense that that's an expert level exam so your next steps how do you get started will first assess how comfortable you are with Azure are you going to be starting with the fundamentals exam the AZ 900 are you going to be moving into the associate exams the AZ 104 the AZ 204 or are you ready to go straight for the architect exam because you already know a lot about administration and development explore that as your website because it's gonna be really helpful for you in dig deep into those exam outlines check out those bullet points and make sure those are the things that you really want to cover I got to tell you that in my experience working with Azure for several years now it was amazing to begin with but they continue to improve it and continue to make even more incredible offerings and as you're compared to other cloud resources to me personally is the easiest to work with so if you've got any questions about your Azure journey just comment below and I'll be happy to respond with my thoughts all right now the 3k giveaway I did clear 3000 subscribers and I promise I'm giving away some cool stuff stuff like switches stuff like firewalls and even for my international people we've got Raspberry Pi kits to get away so check out the description below contest is going to be running for a week must be 18 or older to win international participants can participate in the Raspberry Pi giveaway US only for the other networking gear because it's very heavy and it's very expensive to ship but sincerely thank you all for your support and your help in growing the channel I've still got a lot of ideas and I've still got a lot to say so I'm gonna keep rolling out the content but if you have ideas if there are questions that you have just comment below I try to read all the comments and respond to all the questions whenever I can alright y'all thanks for subbing bye

Channel: Data Knox

Views: 7,630

Keywords: Server, Systems, Networking, Azure, AWS, microsoft azure, microsoft azure training, azure certification, azure cloud certification, azure certification training, azure certifications, microsoft azure certification path, az-103, az-104, az-103 microsoft azure administrator, az-203 developing solutions for microsoft azure, azure training fundamentals, az-303 exam, az-104 exam, azure getting started, azure cbt nuggets, azure training for developers, mcsa azure, mcsa

Id: M3PG8ohTyxc

Length: 11min 27sec (687 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 16 2020