Are you looking to learn how to get your first cloud architect job
and you have limited experience? Well, if so, this video is for you.
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Hi, my name is Michael Gibbs and I've been working in technology for over 25 years.
I've worked in networking, security, and cloud computing. And during all of these years,
I've mentored new engineers and new architects, and I've taught them how to find their first job,
and I'm going to share those experiences with you today.
So as I mentioned, we have coached countless number of individuals, and there's a process
that we've developed to help them find their first job. And a lot of times employers want experience,
especially now when the economy is tight. But why does the employer want experience? They
want experience because they want to know you're technically competent. And there's this chicken
and the egg situation where how do you get your first job if you have no experience? But then,
how do you get your experience if you have no job? So we're going to teach you how to get a lot of
experience at home. So when you finally get your interview, you'll not only win at the interview,
you'll wow them so much that you might not even take an introductory position. You might take
something a little more senior on your first job role. We've helped lots of people do this.
So the first part of getting you prepared is developing technical competency. And we're going
to help you and show you how to develop deep cloud knowledge. We're not talking just a little bit of
knowledge where if they ask you a question, you don't know how to describe it. But we're going to
talk about understanding how the Cloud works, what are the key components of the Cloud, and how those
underlying technologies work, because when you understand how the Cloud works and how it's built,
and maybe even build your own cloud which we're going to talk about soon, then configuring
something is simple and then designing the system becomes silly easy. Because really
you understand the whole global perspective. And that's what we're going to talk about.
So another thing that you're going to need to know as you're understanding cloud computing is Linux.
So my first recommendation for you, and lots of people hate me for this but I've done this with
most of my students and it's worked out well, is take your personal computer, the one that
you use every day and assuming you don't have a reason that you're required to use Windows,
switch your computer to Linux. I don't care if it's CentOS, I don't care if it's Ubuntu,
run Linux as your primary operating system.
Learn how to install things from the command line, but do everything on your Linux system.
And if you have a Windows-based application, find a way to make that Windows-based application work
on your Linux system, either with virtualization or with Wine on Linux or something to that effect,
but find a way to get used to Linux. And the best way to do that is to
immerse yourself by having that as the only computer you use. Kind of like when I met my
wife, I learned Greek in a few months because her whole family spoke Greek.
Well, this is really the same thing. If you immerse yourself in something,
it'll be around you, you'll just learn it. So simplest thing to do is basically set
yourself up with a Notebook, put Linux on it and use it for everything. And that's going to
be part of learning Linux, but now the Cloud, now it's time to get some real Cloud knowledge.
And if you do what we tell you, by the time you interview for your job, you'll know more than
many of the Cloud architects have been working for 5 or 10 years, because you're going to understand
the global picture. So we're going to teach you how to prep for that interview
and then how to dominate that interview in coming videos. But in this case,
this video is going to be about building your home lab and getting your experience.
So we're going to begin by telling you what to learn. And our learning is going to be based
about understanding all of the global components of the Cloud. Some from networking and some from
security. So there's no gaps in you by the time you apply for an interview. And we talk about
learning, we're not talking about how to configure something from the management console. Anybody can
do that, just playing with the management console isn't going to teach you what you need to know,
how things work, why they work, how to build them, how to talk about them, how to architect them.
The only thing that's going to help you with that is real knowledge, configuring things with the CLI
is easy, but we're going to teach you how it all works from a global perspective. So then
you know how to design it, you know how to fix it, and of course you'll be able to configure it.
So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to give you a list of about 16 things
to do. The first key underlying technology of cloud computing is virtualization. It's
kind of the foundation of everything. So we want you to get experienced with virtualization. Our
recommendation is the first thing you do is you start out with VMware and set up an ESXi server.
The reason I like the VMware ESXi server is it's super simple to set up. It almost does
it for you. You basically download it, you put it onto a USB drive, and it'll install it. And
you've got a beautiful menu that you can use to create your virtual machines and practice with
that and practice with it good. And after you've created a bunch of virtual machines for a month,
tailor that down and then set up a Linux KVM server.
And with the KVM server, I want you to get real creative test a bunch of different environments.
And then I want you to learn how to do some of the called PCI passthrough.
So in a cloud environment, if you're going to buy a GPU optimized instance,
they've got to pass the GPU's from the physical hardware into the virtual machine,
and that's called PCI passthrough. So that'll be some underlying key critical component
for virtualization in the Cloud that I want you to know. Cause that's how the Cloud is built. Now,
also, while you're at it, I want you to set up high performance networking just like Amazon would
do with something called Single Root I/O. And with PCI passthrough, you have the opportunity to pass
a physical network card into your virtual machine instead of the logical ones that are there,
increasing performance. So we should build that too, but why don't we want you to do these things?
You've already learned 30% of the Cloud and the underlying technologies by just these
two projects, but that's not it. Now. I want you to get a perspective of a whole Cloud,
and we're going to recommend that you build your own Cloud. And you can get it, download OpenStack.
It's a free open source. You can basically build your own Cloud and you can learn how all the
components of the Cloud work on your own Cloud. So now you have real cloud computing knowledge,
you get the virtualization and all the way the Cloud even works. So you're now in a really good
place, but you know, if you want bonus points and I'm always about getting better every day,
now connect your cloud with the VPN to AWS or the Google cloud or both.
So now create a multicloud environment and you can do this all from your home.
Now I'm telling you, most of the people that are going to go on job interviews to be a cloud
architect. They're not going to have any of this knowledge, especially if they're new and by having
this, you're going to have a huge advantage, but we want you to set up more. So as you're a cloud
architect, RAID becomes very important, but you know what? You can do that too on your own. And
we're going to tell you how to get a computer that's going to do all this very cheaply later,
but on this system set up RAID. Set up RAID 0 for performance, set up RAID 1 for ultimate
redundancy, set up RAID 5, even though AWS doesn't recommend it for a hybrid of speed and redundancy,
and set up RAID 10 or RAID 1 plus 0 so you've got the ultimate of speed and redundancy, do it all.
Now on your server, I want you to set up some containers.
Learn how to manipulate containers, optimize them, and build a bunch of containers.
And then when you're done that, set up an Apache web server and play with the features
and functionality of the Apache web server. And then when you're done that, create the equivalent
of a NAT instance, do it on a Linux machine or a Linux virtual machine. It's not that hard to do,
but now you'll learn about NAT. And when you're learning about NAT, you'll be able to see the
address things change, especially if you want to use something like a sniffer or tcpdump,
which can actually show you what's going on with all the packets on your network.
So now you're going to get real understanding of how a NAT instance works, for example. And
when you've done that, set up a proxy server set up a Squid proxy server, you can do it for free.
And now you learn about proxy servers, and proxy servers are often used to create high
security environments, when you need to have a certain number of IP addresses attached to
something on the Cloud. So learn how to do that. Now, set up a MySQL server, get your hands dirty,
really build it. It's much easier to do these things on the Cloud. You click a couple buttons,
but learn how to do it for real. And when you're done that, set up an NFS share, cause you know
what? An NFS share and an EFS share are nearly identical. So when you're building your NFS share,
mount your Notebook computer to it and test that and see how it works. Now set up a Samba share to
a Windows virtual machine that you have running on your virtualization server or your cloud surface.
Make sure they connect. Then learn some security, set up a Firewall on one of these
virtual machines, ideally a Linux instance, but learn how to do it in a lot of different ways.
And then install a VPN server and learn how remote VPNs work. And then when you're done all of this,
I want you to get to learn security. So install Kali Linux in a virtual machine and hack your
cloud. Kali Linux is a security Linux, it's got an incredible number of hacking tools.
I want you to hack your own personal cloud, not anybody else's, but your lab test cloud,
and it's called penetration testing. And I want you to find the weaknesses.
And then as you learn how to hack them, learn how to secure them by different layers of
security. Because if you can learn this while you're in a position, not only understand how
the Cloud works and you understand all the underlying technologies, but you can secure.
And security will become more and more and more critical the more of our life is online. And
while you're at it, doing your practice, don't limit yourself to just one company.
Learn some things from Cisco. They're going to have great documentation on networking. So will
Juniper networks. Cisco and Juniper will have good security documentation, but Palo Alto networks has
some great documentation that you can find for free. If you want to learn to develop databases,
go to the Oracle website, then you can also learn about their cloud and other offerings. Go to the
F5 website and learn about low balancers and DNS. Learn about virtualization from VMware. So now
you've got a perspective to build deep, deep, deep, holistic knowledge. You're going to know
every component of the Cloud. So while everyone else is learning how to click boxes in the
management console, you understand the Cloud. You know the Cloud, you are in a league all your own.
So how are you going to get this experience cheaply? Because it's your first certification,
you don't have a great job and spending $40,000 in a data center to practice is not an option.
So I'm going to tell you what I've done for me, what I've recommended numerous students and what
they've done and how it's been enormously helpful to them. I want you to buy a used Xeon server or
workstation, it doesn't matter. Ideally 16 or more cores and at least 128 gigs of RAM.
Now to keep this inexpensive, I'd like you to find something that's at least three years old,
but not more than seven years old. And I want you to order it with four identically sized
hard drives because you're going to need at least four drives to create some of the RAID
volumes I want you to use, plus you're going to have lots of storage and it'll be fast.
And you can typically buy these systems for good 90% off of what they originally were purchased.
And this becomes your lab. You know, the great thing about buying something that's used,
where all the depreciation occurred, play with it, use it, learn everything
that you need and then sell it and you can recover 80-90% of your costs in most cases.
So really you're basically renting a lab and it doesn't need to cost that much. You won't
need this computer equipment forever. It's just temporary. Having a lab is a good thing. If you're
like me, you've got multiple servers around the house and you're always testing some or creating
a learning environment, but you really don't need this for your first job all you really need
is one really good server, maybe two, and buy them cheap, sell them as soon as you're done with them.
Now, I've had some students, and I'm not recommending this, but what they do is they
get some type of a 12 month, same as cash financing, on one of these things
that buy a server for 1500 bucks, they use it for six months. They sell it for
1300 bucks and then they pay off the loan and then they didn't pay basically any interest.
And they only basically paid a small amount. I am never going to suggest using credit.
I can tell you that I've had some students that suggested it to me and they told me it
worked out well for them. So people do do these things, bottom point is in order to get that job,
that job that's going to really be your first place, your first good experience,
you're going to have to be better than the rest. The environment is fairly congested right now,
the economy is not great. And the better you are, not only the better your chances of getting a job,
but you'll get a better job, you'll get a higher starting salary. You might have a
job that you're going to like much more than the introductory jobs people typically do. So really,
as we're talking about getting experienced, we're teaching you how to be a fantastic cloud architect
with global knowledge, how to understand how everything works because you've done it all.
While others are clicking boxes on a webpage, you're building a Cloud
and there's no comparison in the kind of knowledge that you have.
One of the services that we offer is a lot of free training to help people become cloud architects.
We have a free AWS certified solution architect associate ebook. The link is
in the description below. Please download it if you're working on that certification,
it's got everything you need to know and a free eBook. Every Monday we have some
free AWS certified solution architect associate mentoring. And during these mentoring sessions,
people come from around the world, they ask us AWS certification related questions related to the
AWS certified solution architect associate. We answer the questions and then we're hearing
from people that they're taking these exams and they're passing them and it's so much easier.
So some of the free services, we also do offer our online virtual classroom for the
AWS certified solution architect associate. And it is real video and not screen recorded video,
but real live video. We've hired graphic artists to create some diagrams to make things
easier. We have free mentoring and we provide eBooks and everything that goes along with the
package. So you can have a single source for your training experience. Thank you so much
for watching this video. We look forward to seeing you in another video next week. Thank you so much.