Microsoft Azure Cloud DevOps On Udacity

Up until now, the Nanodegrees offered by Udacity’s School of Cloud Computing have related to Amazon Web Services. Now there’s a program focused on the alternative big cloud platform, Microsoft Azure.

The DevOps Engineer for Microsoft Azure Nanodegree program, which focuses on teaching principles for deploying and managing cloud infrastructure with Microsoft Azure starts its inaugural presentation on September 2, 2020.

We reported on the partnership between Udacity and Microsoft when it was announced in June when the emphasis was on Azure Machine Learning. This new Nanodegree is more about mainstream cloud computing and will teach students to deploy cloud infrastructure, use Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) for cloud infrastructure management, and create test environments to run automated testing. All of this learning will be done in a Microsoft Azure environment, using Azure pipelines and Azure App services.

Another reason for considering this program is that by completing the it you’ll be prepared for Microsoft’s AZ-400 DevOps Engineer Expert certification exam.

Cloud DevOps Engineers are the key link between development and deployment, leveraging agile methodologies to ensure efficient and reliable release cycles. This means working on deployment, integrations, services, and testing. DevOps Engineers are an essential part of getting code written by developers verified and released to customers. Often, DevOps Engineers are responsible for the reliability, scalability, and security of a company’s systems. While the work is not simple, it is extremely rewarding for those who enjoy tinkering and problem-solving.

Even if you don’t consider yourself a DevOp engineer, this Nanodegree will be useful for for people with programming backgrounds who are interested in the Cloud Computing field or gaining familiarity with Microsoft Azure and for software engineers who wants to learn more about deploying applications securely and efficiently.

Students will use Terraform to deploy IaC and Packer to create reusable virtual machine images for deploying custom web applications. This project will help students become familiar with resource creation and management in Microsoft Azure using the portal and command-line interface (CLI), as well as solidify security best-practices in the Azure Security Center.

Deploy a Flask Machine Learning app by building a Continuous Delivery pipeline with Azure Pipelines and using Azure App Services to deploy Platform as a Service (PaaS). After this project, students will have experience leveraging Agile methodologies and tools, including Trello, to integrate Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) with Continuous Delivery of application to Azure.

Learn to create disposable environments to run automated tests using Terraform and apply IaC concepts to make different environment tiers for more comprehensive testing. This project covers performance, function UI, and integration testing. Students will also monitor app behavior and perform root cause analysis by observing log files.

Prior to enrolling on this course students should have at least one year of experience working with Python and have a fundamental knowledge of scripting and Linux shell commands. They should also understand cloud computing, including core cloud components (like databases, virtual machines, etc). For a primer on cloud computing, Udacity offers a free, beginner-level Intro to Cloud Computing course lasting 2 months.

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