Who is running a test lab in azure or amazon

I have had a pretty nice set up at home and need to start learning cloud tech - I am starting to watch/read cloud based content and am thinking about getting some hands on - is anyone here expirementing with cloud based tech if so any tips on keeping costs down/what types of set up are you running?

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DoubleNNs

I have a free-tier AWS account I play around with. I only use micro instances (which are essentially free) since it's just a test lab. When your instances are shutdown, you stop incurring costs. However, you continue to get charged for persistent volumes and snapshots, even when the instance is offline.

Even tho my account is "free-tier" I've still racked up minimal costs before. (This last month it was only 1 dollar haha).

I haven't been using my account as much or as extensively as I should have. But eventually I'll start using it to play around w/ Salt / Salt-cloud, Terraform, and learning more about AWS in general. Within the next year I'm hoping to get a few AWS certs in addition to Red Hat certs. When I start studying for those certs, I'll start using my account more once I start studying for those certs.

What are you planning on learning? The current tech in Cloud / "Devops" seems really interesting.

bgold87

I've setup a free 30 days azure trial. Pretty cool stuff.

DoubleNNs

Cloud and "Devops" seems so interesting to me. I wish I saw more people on the forum that were heavily involved.

gc8dc95

We are jumping pretty heavily into cloud stuff at work as of late. I have some free tier stuff on AWS, but mostly play in Azure. We get an "allowance" through MSDN and a larger one if you are a MS Partner with the cloud parnter competency.

As far as home, I have done a couple trials on Azure, but it is not a cheap home lab platform.

NightShade03

DoubleNNs wrote: »

Cloud and "Devops" seems so interesting to me. I wish I saw more people on the forum that were heavily involved.

Current day job = Director Cloud Security...so very heavily involved. If you ever have any questions feel free to ask

NightShade03

rockstar81 wrote: »

I have had a pretty nice set up at home and need to start learning cloud tech - I am starting to watch/read cloud based content and am thinking about getting some hands on - is anyone here expirementing with cloud based tech if so any tips on keeping costs down/what types of set up are you running?

This is the best place to start - https://linuxacademy.com/

Not only does the $25/month get you training, but they provide full blown labs which will allow you to get some experience/exposure. Once you have the basics under your belt, then join AWS on the free tier and you can use most of their services free for a year to build up your skill set.

Chinook

^^

I have a full AWS network configured which I just power up when I need it. There was one time I forgot to turn things off & got a huge bill (over 300 dollars) but normally it's around 25 bucks including storage.

I agree with NightShade03. Linux Academy is an excellent product & has great AWS training. The training is very in-depth. They claim if you watch the videos and read the assigned notes, you will pass. To give you an idea, their Linux Essentials course is over 17 hours. I'm proficient on Linux and I was impressed with the training.

NightShade03

Chinook wrote: »

There was one time I forgot to turn things off & got a huge bill (over 300 dollars) but normally it's around 25 bucks including storage.

For shame! Where are your alerts to notify you of idle instances/resources

Chinook

NightShade03 wrote: »

For shame! Where are your alerts to notify you of idle instances/resources

Well for reasons unknown, a while back I thought "why don't I give up this corporate career thing and go be a SMB IT Consultant". The slogan for working in an MSP should be "more headaches, less money and no free time". So, lol, I just haven't go around to it yet.

I'm actually hoping to take my Security & Linux experience & combine it with Cloud stuff & move into something more interesting career wise.