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What to expect in 2020? Learning path…

With the new year it’s time to think what would we like to achieve and what’s the plan for it.

So let’s start with professional goals, mainly on the learning path… I look to certifications as a way to set specific goals and push myself to deep dive in technology. Here goes my list for this year….

Kubernetes Certified (CKA). In a cloud world, K8s has turned into the de-facto standard. Personally I think that K8s is the past and something new needs to come up. It’s a complex beast under the hoods and there are thousands of initiatives/projects around K8s which makes it difficult to decide what you really need. Just take the network component for example with multiple CNI ( Flannel, Calico, Weave, Cilium, Kube Router, Genie, DANM, Romana, Tungsten, Contiv, etc.).

But as I said, it’s the standard. You will need to really understand how it works if you plan to live in a cloud-native world.

There are lot of resource out there that will help in the journey. I’ve chosen to go with the official Linux Foundation training course and few other resources like Nigel Poulton’s Kubernetes book, Bret Fisher’s Mastery Kubernetes course in Udemy or Kelsey’s Kubernetes the Hard Way. Resources:

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Architect Professional. People might not even know that Oracle has a certification track for their Cloud platform (wait! are you saying that Oracle does even have a Cloud?). Yes. I joined Oracle 3 years ago because of what they were going to release (Gen2 now called OCI). At that time it was still in the oven but found quite amazing the way they designed the platform (will talk about that in a separate post) and it was something very different from existing offering. Over the years the platform has grown in number of services and capabilities, so a certification track was required. The Associate cert is bit tough compared to others I’ve done but it’s worth the try. Resource: https://www.oracle.com/cloud/iaas/training/certification.html

Cisco DevNet Associate and Professional Certification. I’ve been formerly Cisco Champion for the last couple of years. I couldn’t make it this year mainly because I am not Cisco certified anymore (yes, after 15 yrs all my certs expired). Did I do it intentionally? No. I forgot to update my corporate email in my Cisco profile and didn’t get aware that it was close to expiration. I was in South Africa when I looked to my cert status and OMG! It expired that week. Really painful. Nevertheless the DevNet certification is aligned to what I believe is the future for network people. Hank Preston and his team have been doing a great work preparing the new DevNet Datacenter and the sandboxes (for free!) to help people get ready. It’s worth a try. Resource: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/training-events/training-certifications/certifications/devnet.html

Hashicorp Terraform Certification. It is currently in the BETA phase, but Hashicorp has released a Certification program for Terraform and Vault. Infrastructure as a Code (IaC) is a common task in the Cloud space, so not surprised that we are going down the path 😉 Being part of the Hashicorp User Group team in Madrid also puts some pressure on our backs. Resource: https://www.hashicorp.com/certification/

VMware NSX . This one is the most challenging right now as I need to first upgrade my VCP-DCV version to 6.5/6.7 and then jump into NSX cert. However as we plan to release VMware on OCI (Oracle VMware Cloud Solution – OVCS) it will be fun to get back to the roots. Resource: https://www.vmware.com/education-services/certification/vcp-nv-tracks.html

Looks bit tough (and it is), however most of the things are part of our job. Let’s see how it goes and if we are able to achieve all of them. Wish me luck!

Take care!