Category: Certifications

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end – a quick review of 2023

Today is a bit of a “dud day” – post Xmas, post birthdays (me and my son) , but before the start of a New Year and the inevitable return to work.

So, its a day for planning for 2024. And naturally, any planning requires some reflection and a look back on what I achieved over the last year.

Highlights from 2023

If I’m being honest my head was in a bit of a spin at the start of 2023. I was coming off the high of submitting my first pre-recorded content session to Festive Tech Calendar, but also in the back of my mind I knew a change was coming as I’d made the decision to change jobs.

I posted the list of goals above on LinkedIn and Twitter (when it was still called that…) on January 2nd, so lets see how I did:

  • Present at both a Conference and User Group – check!
  • Mentor others, work towards MCT – Mentoring was one of the most fulfilling activities I undertook over the last year. The ability to connect with people in the community who need help, advice or just an outsiders view. Its something I would recommend anyone to do. I also learned that mentoring and training are not connected (I may look at the MCT in 2024) – mentoring is more about asking the right questions, being on the same wavelength as your mentees, and understanding their goals to ensure you are aligning and advising them on the correct path.
  • Go deep on Azure Security, DevOps and DevOps Practices – starting a new job this year with a company that is DevSecOps and IAC focused was definitely a massive learning curve and one that I thoroughly enjoyed!
  • AZ-400 and SC-100 Certs – nope! The one certification I passed this year was AZ-500 but to follow on from the previous point, its not all about exams and certifications. I’d feel more confident have a go at the AZ-400 exam now that I have nearly a year’s experience in DevOps, and its something I’ve been saying for a while now – hiring teams aren’t (well, they shouldn’t be!) interested in tons of certifications, they want to see actual experience in the subject which backs the certification.
  • Create Tech Content – check! I was fortunate to be able to submit sessions to both online events and also present live at Global Azure Dublin and South Coast Summit this year. It was also the year when my first LinkedIn Learning course was published (shameless plug, check it out at this link).
  • Run Half Marathon – Sadly no to this one, I made a few attempts and was a week away from my first half-marathon back in March when my knee decided to give up the ghost. Due to work and family commitments, I never returned to this but its back on the list for 2024.
  • Get back to reading books to relax – This is something we all need to do, turn off that screen at night and find time to relax. I’ve done a mix of Tech and Fiction books and hope to continue this trend for 2024.

By far though, the biggest thing to happen for me this year was when this email landed in my inbox on April Fools Day …..

I thought it was an April Fools joke. And if my head was spinning, you can imagine how fast it was spinning now!

For anyone involved in Microsoft technologies or solutions, being awarded the MVP title is a dream that we all aspire to. It’s recognition from Microsoft that you are not only a subject matter expert in your field, but someone who is looked up to by other community members for content. If we look at the official definition from Microsoft:

The Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVP) program recognizes exceptional community leaders for their technical expertise, leadership, speaking experience, online influence, and commitment to solving real world problems.

I’m honoured to be part of this group, getting to know people that I looked up and still looked up to, who push me to be a better person each and every day.

Onwards to 2024!

So what are my goals for 2024? Well unlike last year where I explicitly said what I was going to do and declared it, this year is different as I’m not entirely sure. But ultimately, it boils down to 3 main questions:

  • What are my community goals?

The first goal is to do enough to maintain and renew my MVP status for another year. I hope I’ve done enough and will keep working up to the deadline, but you never really know! I have another blog post in the works where I’ll talk about the MVP award, what its meant to me and some general advice from my experiences of my first year of the award.

I’ve gotten the bug for Public Speaking and want to submit some more sessions to conferences and user groups over the next year. So plan to submit to some CFS, but if anyone wants to have me on a user group, please get in touch!

I’ve enjoyed mentoring others on their journey, and the fact that they keep coming back means that the mentees have found me useful as well!

Blogging – this is my 3rd blog post of the year, and my last one was in March! I want get some consistency back into blogging as its something I enjoy doing.

  • What are my learning goals?

I think like everyone, the last 12 months have been a whirlwind of Copilots and AI. I plan to immerse myself in that over the coming year, while also growing my knowledge of Azure. Another goal is to learn some Power Platform – its a topic I know very little about, but want to know more! After that, the exams and the certs will come!

  • What are my personal goals?

So unlike last year, I’m not going to declare that I’ll do a half marathon – at least not in public! The plan is to keep reading both tech and fiction books, keep making some time for myself, and to make the most of my time with my family. Because despite how much the job and the community pulls you back in, there is nothing more important and you’ll never have enough family time.

So thats all from me for 2023 – you’ll be hearing from me again in 2024! Hope you’ve all had a good holiday, and Happy New Year to all!

100 Days of Cloud – Day 65: AZ-204 Exam Day!

Its Day 65 of my 100 Days of Cloud Journey, and today I sat Exam AZ-204: Developing Solutons for Microsoft Azure.

This was using up my Exam Voucher that I earned for completing the Cloud Skill Challenge from Microsoft Ignite Fall 2021.

The reason I chose this exam was because it was a bit of a challenge – coming from a pure Infrastructure background, the idea of taking a Developer exam was something I never would have thought about a year ago. I’d heard of some of the concepts that were covered in the objectives, and the other exam options were either on the Cloud Infra or Security side, so I decided to go outside of my comfort zone and take on the challenge.

The skills measured list reads like this:

  • Develop Azure compute solutions (25-30%)
  • Develop for Azure storage (15-20%)
  • Implement Azure security (20-25%)
  • Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize Azure solutions (15-20%)
  • Connect to and consume Azure services and third-party services (15-20%)

Looks like any other Infra-based exam we’ve seen before, right? Well, think again ….

Giving an NDA-friendly review, the exam goes deep into topics such as serverless compute, application and database development, authentication and monitoring. Again, all of this seems very infra focused, but the way I look at it is this – if you’ve done the Infra side of things like AZ-104 where you learn about how the infra works and how to put it together, AZ-204 approaches that from a far deeper dive, looking deep into the concepts and showing how we can programmatically manage these technologies.

And I’m delighted to say I made it out on the other side and passed the exam!

So does this make me an expert in Azure Development or turn me into a devloper? Well no, not overnight but its a big step in that direction. The thing with this exam is that even though I passed, I feel there is LOADS more content, demos and lab scenarios that I can look into – the exam itself will only scratch the surface, but not that I’ve gotten into this and started to go down the rabbit hole, its given me loads of ideas of how to use the content and technologies that I learned!

For learning paths on this one, I used the following:

Hope you enjoyed this post, until next time!

100 Days of Cloud – Day 47: AZ-800 Exam Day!

Its Day 47 of my 100 Days of Cloud Journey, and today I sat Exam AZ-800: Administering Windows Server Hybrid Core Infrastructure (beta).

AZ-800 is one of 2 exams required for the new Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate certification, which was announced at Windows Server Summit 2021. The second exam is Az-801 (Configuring Windows Server Hybrid Advanced Services), which I’m taking next week so will write up a post on that then!

This certification is seen by many as the natural successor to the retired MCSE certifications which retired in January 2021, primarily because it focuses in some part on the on-premise elements within Windows Server 2019.

Because of the NDA, I’m not going to disclose any details on the exam, however I will say that it is exactly as its described – a Hybrid certification bringing together elements of both on-premise and Azure based infrastructure.

The list of skills measured as their weightings are as follows:

  • Deploy and manage Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) in on-premises and cloud environments (30-35%)
  • Manage Windows Servers and workloads in a hybrid environment (10-15%)
  • Manage virtual machines and containers (15-20%)
  • Implement and manage an on-premises and hybrid networking infrastructure (15-20%)
  • Manage storage and file services (15-20%)

Like all beta exams, the results won’t be released until a few weeks after the exam officially goes live so I’m playing the waiting game! In the meantime, you can check out these resources if you want to study and take the exam:

Hope you enjoyed this post, until next time!