Start cloud in the right order.
The Cloud Starter Path is a free 8 page kit: four weeks of free material, one page a week, in the order I give students who are starting from the beginning.
- 8 page PDF
- 4 weeks
- 2 free labs, no card
8 pages. One a week, with boxes to tick.
Every week is a to-do list with the time each step takes and a link to the free material. Print it or tick it on screen.
In the kit
In the kitIn the kit
In the kit
In the kit
Do these in order.
About 8 hours a week. Each week builds on the one before, so don't skip ahead.
- 18 hours
The order and the language
Read the roadmap first, then the first AZ-900 learning paths. Keep one list of every term you don't know.
- 28 hours
Your first two labs
Build in a real Azure environment, with no subscription and no card. Write down what you clicked, and why.
- 38 hours
A resource from the terminal
A resource group and one storage account from the CLI. List them, delete them the same day, then do it again from memory.
UseAzure CLI - 48 hours
Put it on GitHub
One repo with your commands and a README a stranger could follow: what it is, what broke, how to delete it.
I started on a helpdesk.
I was on a helpdesk in 2015, a sysadmin by 2017, and got my first cloud role in 2020. Most of the time I lost went to learning things in the wrong order. These four weeks are the first part of the order I'd follow today.
The honest timeline
With no IT background, the road to a cloud role is longer than 12 months, and the first step is usually an IT support job. That's not a detour. It's where most cloud engineers started.
You're ready for the next step when:
- You've created a resource group and one resource from the CLI.
- You have one GitHub repo with a README that explains it.
- You've held 8 hours a week for 4 weeks.
Not there yet? Repeat the week you're on. A month more now is cheaper than a year in the wrong order.
Cloud Career Starter Kit, $19
The 12 month order in 49 pages: what 61 real job postings ask for, the roadmap, three Azure builds, a resume template and 45 interview questions with model answers.
Azure mentorship, one to one
A 60-minute call every week, me on Teams between calls, the full CloudLearn lab catalog and the Discord.