Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who headed up Microsoft’s cloud division before he became CEO, has been vocal about converging the Azure cloud platform with Linux. In fact, he has noted that about a third of the Azure platform is Linux-based. Moreover, Microsoft has made clear that more than 60 percent of Azure Marketplace images are Linux-based, as ZDNet has reported.
The convergence of Linux and the Azure platform spells big opportunities and is giving rise to many new jobs. On this front, The Linux Foundation has announced the availability of a new training course, Administering Linux on Azure (LFS205). It is more important than ever for Linux and Azure professionals to make sure they know how to manage Linux workloads in an Azure environment, and this $299 course provides the requisite knowledge.
“As shown by The Linux Foundation and Dice’s Open Source Jobs Report, cloud computing skills are by far the most in demand by employers,” said Linux Foundation General Manager for Training & Certification, Clyde Seepersad. “This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, as the world today is run in the cloud. Azure is one of the most popular public clouds, and a huge portion of its instances run on Linux. That’s why we feel this new course is essential to give Azure professionals the Linux skills they need, give Linux professionals the Azure skills they need, and train new professionals to ensure industry has the talent it needs to meet the growing demand for Linux on Azure.”
Not only are many Linux workloads running in Azure environments, but you can choose from most popular Linux distributions to run in this context. Distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise, CentOS, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Debian, Ubuntu, CoreOS, RancherOS, FreeBSD, and more are in the Azure Marketplace.
The new LFS205 course covers how to deploy virtual machines in Azure, discussing different deployment scenarios. Once the VMs are available in Azure, students need to know how to manage them in an efficient way, which is covered next. The last part of the course teaches how to troubleshoot Linux in Azure, and how to monitor Linux in Azure using various open source tools. Importantly, the course also delves into container management.
As noted here, experience with cloud infrastructure tools and open source technologies can make a substantial compensation difference for everyone from sysadmins to c-suite technology leaders. Dice data scientist Yuri Bykov has said, “as businesses have begun relying more upon open source solutions to support their business needs…employers are looking for individuals with cloud computing and networking experience and a strong working knowledge of configuration management tools.”
The new LFS205 course is taught by Sander van Vugt, author of many Linux-related video courses and books as well as course developer for The Linux Foundation. He is also a managing partner of ITGilde, a large co-operative in which about a hundred independent Linux professionals in the Netherlands have joined forces. The $299 course fee provides unlimited access to the course for one year and to all content and labs materials.
To find more open source focused training and certification opportunities, check out this post for ways to fast-track your education and certification. The Linux Foundation also offers much coursework for extending your Linux-specific skills, ranging from Developing Applications for Linux to Linux Performance Tuning.
Learn more about the Administering Linux on Azure (LFS205) course and sign up here.
