As a cloud architect career coach, I get asked every day, "What labs can I do to get real-world
cloud computing experience?" I typically have the same answer. I typically say, "Build your
own cloud." Then, people laugh as if I'm saying a joke and they say, "You don't really mean
that." I say, "No, I really mean it. If you want to get great cloud architect experience,
build a cloud." Then, I say, "Let me tell you more about it."
The reason why I tell people if they want to be a great cloud architect to build a cloud
is because when you understand the cloud, the way it's designed, the technology it uses,
how it works, you are in a great position to now meet with a client, find out their
business, technical and legal requirements, and their goals, and design an architecture
that's going to solve those problems. Why does it make you so much better? Because when
you know how everything works only then can you design a solution?
Think about it logically. If all you know are the services that were available in your
certification exam, and you know what they are, you know what kind of compute instances
exist, what kind of container options you have, what type of firewalls load balancers,
but you don't know how they all work together in an ecosystem and how they all play together,
how could you possibly understand how to take a customer's requirements and design a solution?
The answer is you can't.
Because of that, that's why organizations are looking for five and 10 years of infrastructure
experience. The only reason they're looking for infrastructure experience is they want
to know that you're competent and capable that you can do the architectural job. So
if you want to know how to get a real world cloud computing experience in your home, build
a cloud.
When you build the cloud, you'll start with the bare metal server and on the bare metal
server, you'll install Linux. Then, then after you installed Linux, you'll install your cloud
computing environment, which will set up your hypervisors, your containers, your databases,
you'll set up your block storage. When you do all of this, you've effectively built your
own little mini-data center, which is a cloud.
Then, once you build this cloud and you start playing with the cloud, it's going to feel
like the AWS cloud or the GCP cloud. Why? Because you've done it with the same technology.
If you want to be a great cloud architect, build a cloud. Once you build a cloud, you
know all about the cloud. Everything else just becomes very simple. When you move from
one cloud to the next cloud and you pick up another vendor's documentation, it'll be simple.
It's not going to be a challenge. It's not like you're trying to learn technologies that
are all new to you. In this case, once you've learned it all, you can go from one cloud
to the other anywhere, anytime.
Don't be like the rest. Become strong, become capable, get incredibly competent. Take your
goals and your dreams and focus them on that cloud architect career and build yourself
a cloud. Get better every day is the go cloud architect's way.
Let me tell you about some free offerings we have to help people in their cloud computing
careers. Every Monday and every Thursday, we have a free How to Get Your First Cloud
Architect Job webinar. On this webinar, we talk about things like how to be the hiring
manager's dream hire, ways you can leverage your life experience to get hired, thing to
do on a job interview, ways to improve your resume, how to be noticed, and how to avoid
the HR for your first job so you can get your resume directly in the hands of the hiring
manager. We do that every Monday and every Thursday.
On every Tuesday at 9:00 A.M. Eastern time, we have a meeting where we talk about how
to get real cloud architect experience in your home. We will tell you our process, how
to build the, grow the cloud from the ground up, how to learn all the technologies that
enable the cloud. Then, from after you learn the cloud and all the technologies that enable
the cloud, that's when you start doing architecture work. We can talk about what that is on that
call. Any questions that you have about how to get real cloud architect experience, you
can ask that on that Tuesday call.
I also wanted to let you know that we have a free AWS Certified Solution Architect Associate
e-book. If you're working on the AWS Certified Solution Architect Associate exam, or passing
that exam, you can download our free e-book. It's everything you need to pass the exam
and it's completely free. The link is in the description below. Thank you so much for watching
this video and I look forward to seeing you in another video very soon. Take care. Have
a wonderful day.