My 2020 Learning Journey
Background
On January 6th 2020, I will be starting a new role as a Cloud Engineer as part of the rotational program I am in. I am extremely excited to continue my education in Cloud Services having recently finished a 9 month rotation as a Cloud Operations & Systems Analyst. This role taught me a few things:
The Roadmap
The roadmap I am following comes from this website: https://roadmap.sh/devops
1. Learn a programming language: I learned python in my last rotation and will be looking to build upon that with some Linux Academy courses as well as whatever I can pick up from the more experienced cloud engineers on my new team.
2+3. Understand different OS concepts + Learn about managing servers: I'm putting these together because of the resources I will be using. I will start out with the book "How Linux Works" to learn OS concepts and some administration basics in Linux. Then I will move onto "Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud" which will teach me more advanced OS concepts, computer architecture (which I lack a formal background in), and advanced system administration concepts.
4. Networking and Security: I will be using the book "Internet Infrastructure: Networking, Web Services, and Cloud Computing" for this part. The first 6 chapters are devoted to networking and includes case studies with BIND,
5. Web Servers: I will be using Internet Infrastructure for this part again. Chapter 7 is an introduction to web servers, chapter 8 is a case study where you run and configure an Apache web server. Chapter 9 goes over web caching and chapter 10 is a case study where you set up a Squid proxy server.
6. Infrastructure as Code: For this part I will be using "Infrastructure as Code: Managing Servers in the Cloud". This book will give me the basics and best practices when it comes to infrastructure as code. I will supplement this book with some courses on Linux Academy, primarily the ones that deal with implementing a full CI/CD pipeline and the one that teaches you how to manage your AWS infrastructure with Terraform.
7. Learn how to monitor software and infrastructure: The Systems Performance and Infrastructure as Code books will both cover monitoring, but I will use a course on Linux Academy to learn some new monitoring tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and the ELK stack.
8. Cloud Providers: The last 2 chapters of the Internet Infrastructure book cover cloud computing basics and a case study with the AWS ecosystem. I will also be using AWS at work so this will serve as a nice refresh/introduction to some services I may have not used yet.
9. Big Data and Databases: This one wasn't on the roadmap but I am adding it in myself. I really want to read the book "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" to learn about building and maintaining big data systems.
How I will stay on the path
The hardest part of a learning journey like this is staying on course. It's easy to look at this amount of reading and studying and get overwhelmed. To prevent this from happening, I set up a JIRA board for myself and will tackle everything in small increments (2 week sprints). Breaking it down like this will make the whole process seem a lot more manageable. I will also publish articles on here that go over the interesting material I learn and any thoughts I have in general that are related to this journey.
On January 6th 2020, I will be starting a new role as a Cloud Engineer as part of the rotational program I am in. I am extremely excited to continue my education in Cloud Services having recently finished a 9 month rotation as a Cloud Operations & Systems Analyst. This role taught me a few things:
- I would rather be doing technical work than primarily engaging with stakeholders (so basically I just want to sit in my room and code).
- Computer science is really interesting, but I still have a lot to learn about computing and need to fill in the gaps I missed with just a computer science minor.
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| Source: https://www.nextgov.com/ideas/2019/08/accelerating-cloud-computing-government-requires-new-management-approach/159202/ |
The Roadmap
The roadmap I am following comes from this website: https://roadmap.sh/devops
1. Learn a programming language: I learned python in my last rotation and will be looking to build upon that with some Linux Academy courses as well as whatever I can pick up from the more experienced cloud engineers on my new team.
2+3. Understand different OS concepts + Learn about managing servers: I'm putting these together because of the resources I will be using. I will start out with the book "How Linux Works" to learn OS concepts and some administration basics in Linux. Then I will move onto "Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud" which will teach me more advanced OS concepts, computer architecture (which I lack a formal background in), and advanced system administration concepts.
4. Networking and Security: I will be using the book "Internet Infrastructure: Networking, Web Services, and Cloud Computing" for this part. The first 6 chapters are devoted to networking and includes case studies with BIND,
5. Web Servers: I will be using Internet Infrastructure for this part again. Chapter 7 is an introduction to web servers, chapter 8 is a case study where you run and configure an Apache web server. Chapter 9 goes over web caching and chapter 10 is a case study where you set up a Squid proxy server.
6. Infrastructure as Code: For this part I will be using "Infrastructure as Code: Managing Servers in the Cloud". This book will give me the basics and best practices when it comes to infrastructure as code. I will supplement this book with some courses on Linux Academy, primarily the ones that deal with implementing a full CI/CD pipeline and the one that teaches you how to manage your AWS infrastructure with Terraform.
7. Learn how to monitor software and infrastructure: The Systems Performance and Infrastructure as Code books will both cover monitoring, but I will use a course on Linux Academy to learn some new monitoring tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and the ELK stack.
8. Cloud Providers: The last 2 chapters of the Internet Infrastructure book cover cloud computing basics and a case study with the AWS ecosystem. I will also be using AWS at work so this will serve as a nice refresh/introduction to some services I may have not used yet.
9. Big Data and Databases: This one wasn't on the roadmap but I am adding it in myself. I really want to read the book "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" to learn about building and maintaining big data systems.
 | |
| Source: https://www.rd.com/culture/bestselling-books-of-decade/ |
How I will stay on the path
The hardest part of a learning journey like this is staying on course. It's easy to look at this amount of reading and studying and get overwhelmed. To prevent this from happening, I set up a JIRA board for myself and will tackle everything in small increments (2 week sprints). Breaking it down like this will make the whole process seem a lot more manageable. I will also publish articles on here that go over the interesting material I learn and any thoughts I have in general that are related to this journey.
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