Cloud Study Notes

I'm at the end of my study week - only today and tomorrow left. I managed to get quite a lot accomplished but not everything completed as fast as I wanted.

The official study guide came. It arrived on Wed afternoon. It's different from the other study materials, so I'm glad I'm using multiple sources for my studies. There is some overlap, but with using multiple sources, you don't miss out on anything. It's about 300 pages and written fairly well. I started a second notebook to keep notes specifically from this book. My other notebook has multiple sources in it. I took some time to start into it (to get a feel for the book) and got to page 69 in one day.

The book comes with a download of links to certain sections of the documentation. As I go through the material in the book, I pause to go to the link and read the relevant documentation. It makes the completion of the book slower, but I feel it gives a more solid footing within the material. Once I got a good feel for the book, I went back to complete the Udemy course.

The Udemy course has its good and bad points. There are a lot of things they point out (in the 20+ hr course) that I can see as possible test items. One of the things Microsoft is known to test about are conflicting settings and the results of those settings. People actually _do_ this ... and I'm actually glad they want you to know it. When you have "x" set at a higher level and the opposite set at the local level - what result will you get? That is the plus of that course.

The downside of the course is that a lot of "workarounds" are used. The instructor goes into painstaking detail (step-by-step) about how to use Azure to simulate an on-prem environment in order to configure some things (like connecting to Azure). I guess this is good for those who want to set up a lab and play with configurations, but I can also see where that may confuse quite a few people. Not to mention, someone wanting to actually DO this in a real environment wouldn't have a clue where to start. No, you don't connect your on-prem environment to Azure by creating a VM in Azure. You have to talk to the network team and use a REAL ROUTER.

Which also leads me to the frustration with the certification itself. A LOT of it is more focused on the security part of engineering. It focuses more on how to configure this and that in the cloud. It does not cover which configurations are more secure than others (and why). It doesn't cover how misconfigurations can be exploited or services can be abused (and how to prevent that abuse). It's more focused on cloud personnel implementing security rather than security personnel performing cloud governance or securing the environment. But this is what exists at this moment, and it's more relevant than any of the other Azure certifications.

And now it's time to get back to the Udemy videos.....

Posted by BlueWolf | Permalink

Since it's expensive and not really flexible on dates, I decided to create my own bootcamp for the AZ-500. I took a little more than a week off work and scheduled it between sessions at CTU. I handed in all my assignments for the CTU session a week early to give myself a week break between sessions. I took an extra Friday at the beginning of my vacation week to clear up whatever I needed to around the house (cleaned the yard), so there weren't any distractions there. I spent the weekend wrapping up what I was doing at the summer home so I could skip a weekend. And now it's Monday and I begin.

I started with finishing up the INE course for AZ-500 that I was working through (about halfway through) and read the Microsoft Azure Security Center book that has been begging me to read it for much longer than it took to read. That one is less than 200 pages and I read through it like a novel. I didn't want to get hung up on the details since the book is a little dated. But it's read. The official Microsoft AZ-500 Study Guide is on its way (2nd edition). I'll pay closer detail to that once it arrives since it's more current.

My plan is to work on all the training for this that I started and didn't finish. I finished the O'Reilly course with Tim Warner. Now I need to finish the INE course, the Udemy AZ-500 course (halfway through that too) and read the pile of 5 books that I have been waiting to read. After Azure Security Center, I have "Microsoft Azure Security Infrastructure" that has also been waiting in the pile. It is another 200-page book that I will read like a novel (and take with a grain of salt). It may also be dated, but if you read through that stuff first, you get very familiar with the vocabulary (naming conventions) and you see what came before what may actually be in the updated material.

The three other books are a little thicker, but again will be read like novels. Modern Authentication with Azure Active Directory for Web Applications is scheduled for after I finish the Udemy course. I had started reading that and it's really good. It does go through the history of authentication and show what problems people were trying to solve and how the different methods solve those issues. An interesting read and I'm looking forward to getting back to that.

The other two books in my pile are The Azure Cloud Native Architecture Mapbook and Mastering Azure Security (2nd Edition). Not really sure how useful they will be for this exam. Once I get to them and start reading, I'll evaluate and update.

Depending on when the official study guide arrives and how far I get with the backlog ... I am considering checking out Acloudguru and their courses. I've seen a number of "practice exams" available for AZ-500 in various places. If I'm doing well on those, I'll skip it. If I'm not comfortable with my results, I'll definitely use it.

Posted by BlueWolf | Permalink