New Content: AWS Data Analytics – Specialty Certification, Azure AI-900 Certification, Plus New Learning Paths, Courses, Labs, and More

This month our Content Team released two big certification Learning Paths: the AWS Certified Data Analytics – Speciality, and the Azure AI Fundamentals AI-900. In total, we released four new Learning Paths, 16 courses, 24 assessments, and 11 labs. 

New content on Cloud Academy

At any time, you can find all of our new releases by going to our Training Library and finding the section titled “New this month in our library.” You can also keep track of what new training is coming for the next 4-6 weeks with our Content Roadmap.


AWS

Learning Path: AWS Data Analytics Specialty (DAS-C01) Certification Preparation (Preview)

This certification Learning Path is specifically designed to prepare you for the AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty (DAS-C01) exam. It covers all the elements required across all five of the domains outlined in the exam guide.

Course: AWS Databases used with Data Analytics

This course introduces a number of different AWS database services that are commonly used with data analytics solutions and that will likely be referenced within the AWS Data Analytics Specialty certification. As such, this course explores the following database services: Amazon RDS, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon Redshift.

Course: Overview of Differences Between AWS Database Types

This course provides a high-level overview of the managed database offerings available from AWS. It covers relational and non-relational databases, how they work, their strengths, and what workloads are best suited for them.

Course: Backup and Restore Capabilities of Amazon RDS & Amazon DynamoDB

This course explores the different strategies that are available for when you need to both back up and restore your AWS databases across Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) and Amazon DynamoDB. During this course, you will learn about the different backup features that are available in Amazon RDS and DynamoDB, how to identify the differences between them, and when you should use one over the other. 

Course: Data Visualization – How to Convey your Data

This course explores how to interpret your data allowing you to effectively decide which chart type you should use to visualize and convey your data analytics. Using the correct visualization techniques allows you to gain the most from your data. In this course, we will look at the importance of data visualization, and then move onto the relationships, comparisons, distribution, and composition of data.

Course: Security best practices when working with AWS Databases

This course explores the security best practices when working with AWS databases, specifically looking at RDS and DynamoDB with some extra content related to Aurora. This course is recommended for anywho who is looking to broaden and reinforce their AWS security understanding, or anyone who is interested in creating secure databases in general.


Azure

Learning Path: AI-900 Exam Preparation: Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals (preview)

This learning path is designed to help you prepare for the AI-900 Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals exam. Even if you don’t plan to take the exam, these courses and hands-on labs will help you gain a solid understanding of Azure’s AI services.

Course: Implementing High Availability Disaster Recovery from Azure SQL Databases

This course examines the features that Azure provides to help you make sure your SQL databases, whether they are managed in the cloud or on-premises, are not the point of failure in your systems.

Course: Introduction to Azure Storage

This course is intended for those who wish to learn about the basics of Microsoft Azure storage, covering the core storage services in Azure and the different storage account types that are available. You’ll watch a demonstration that shows you how to create a storage account in Microsoft Azure, then move on to more detail.

Course: Designing for Azure Identity Management (update)

This Designing for Azure Identity Management course will guide you through the theory and practice of recognizing, implementing, and deploying the services on offer within your enterprise. Learn how to better the protection of your organization by designing advanced identity management solutions. 

Course: Managing Code Quality and Security Policies with Azure DevOps

This course explores how to manage code quality and security policies with Azure DevOps, and will help those preparing for Microsoft’s AZ-400 exam. 

Lab Playground: Azure Notebooks Machine Learning Playground

Azure Notebooks enables data scientists and machine learning engineers to build and deploy models using Jupyter notebooks from within the Azure ML Workspace. A full Jupyter notebook environment is hosted in the cloud and provides access to an entire Anaconda environment. The tedious task of set up and installing all the tools for a data science environment is automated. Data scientists, teachers, and students can dive right into learning without spending time installing software. 

Lab Challenge: Azure Machine Learning Challenge

In this lab challenge, you will take on the role of a data scientist and complete several tasks within the Azure Machine Learning service. You will train a machine learning model using an Azure Notebook or the Azure Machine Learning GUI. After the model has been trained and is ready for production, you will deploy it as a web service using Azure Container Instances.


Data Science/Artificial Intelligence

Learning Path: Wrestling with Data

In this learning path, we dive into the various tools and techniques available for manipulating information and data sources. We then show you how you can use this knowledge to actually solve some real-world problems.

Learning Path: Introduction to Data Visualization

This learning path explores data sources and formatting, and how to present data in a way that provides meaningful information. You’ll look at data access patterns, and how different interfaces allow you to access the underlying information. This learning path also provides a practical, real-world example of how all this theory plays out in a business scenario. 

Course: Data Wrangling with PANDAS

In this course, we are going to explore techniques to permit advanced data exploration and analysis using Python. We will focus on the Pandas library, focusing on real-life case scenarios to help you to better understand how data can be processed using Pandas.

Course: Wrestling With Data

In this course, we’re going to do a deep dive into the various tools and techniques available for manipulating information and data sources along with showing you at the end of it how you can actually solve some real-world problems. If you are trying to handle increasingly complex data sets and round out your experience as a professional data engineer, this is a great course to get a practical field-based understanding.


DevOps

Hands-on Lab: Installing and Running Applications with Docker Enterprise Universal Control Plane

In this lab, you will learn how to install UCP onto bare Docker hosts to create a multi-node installation from the ground up. You will also learn how to deploy applications onto the UCP cluster you create using the web interface.

Lab Challenge: Docker Swarm Playground

This playground provides a Docker swarm cluster comprised of one manager node and two worker nodes. You have full access to swarm nodes with, each having docker, docker-compose, and relevant command-line completions already installed and running. You have full access to the underlying host as well so you are not restricted compared to an environment that runs Docker in Docker (dind).

Hands-on Lab: Deploying Infrastructure with Terraform

Terraform is an infrastructure automation tool that allows companies to manage infrastructure through code. This provides many benefits such as greater recovery, predictability, and speed. In this lab, you will create a Terraform configuration to deploy a VPC in AWS.

Course: Tech Talk: Building Automated Machine Images with HashiCorp Packer

In this Tech Talk, you’ll watch a presentation on HashiCorp’s Packer and how it can be used to build automated machine images and then deploy the new image into a production environment with a CI/CD pipeline. You’ll follow virtually as a group of IT professionals discuss the tool and its uses. 


Google Cloud Platform

Course: Managing GCP Operations Monitoring

This course shows you how to monitor your operations on GCP. It starts with monitoring dashboards. You’ll learn what they are and how to create, list, view, and filter them. You’ll also see how to create a custom dashboard right in the GCP console.

Course: Managing and Investigating Service Incidents on GCP

Managing and investigating service incidents is an important part of the maintenance process. It is a necessity that can be laboring but with the right organization, understanding of the systems, the knowledge of processes, and the discipline to adhere to best practices, it can be optimized. This course will focus on the predominant parts of managing service incidents and utilizing Google Cloud Platform to aid in the endeavor.

Hands-on Lab: Scaling an Application Through a Google Cloud Managed Instance Group

In this lab, you will create an instance template, an instance group with the autoscaling enabled, and you will then attach an HTTP load balancer to the instance group to load balance the traffic to the VM group. You will also perform a stress test to check that the autoscaling is working properly.

Lab Challenge: Google Cloud Scaling Applications Challenge

In this lab challenge, you will need to prove your knowledge of highly available and scalable applications by creating infrastructure on Google Compute Engine. The objectives you will need to achieve represent essential skills that a Google Certified Associate Cloud Engineer and Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect need to have. 

Lab Challenge: Google Cloud SQL Challenge

In this lab challenge, you will need to prove your knowledge of Google Cloud SQL by creating a production ready Cloud SQL instance. The objectives you will need to achieve represent essential skills that a Google Certified Associate Cloud Engineer and Google Certified Data Engineer need to have.


Programming

Course:  Building a Python Application: Course One

One of the best ways to learn new programming languages and concepts is to build something. Learning the syntax is always just the first step. After learning the syntax the question that arises tends to be: what should I build? Finding a project to build can be challenging if you don’t already have some problems in mind to solve. This course is broken up into sprints to give you a real-world development experience, and guide you through each step of building an application with Python.

Hands-on Lab: Introduction to Graph Database With Neo4j

In this lab, you will understand the core principles of a graph database (especially a property graph) and you will install the Neo4j DBMS on an EC2 instance. This lab is intended for data engineers who want to switch to the graph data model or developers who need to build an application based on a graph database.

Hands-on: Lab: Constructing Regular Expression Character Classes

Regular Expressions are a tool for searching and manipulating text. In this lab, you will use the Python programming language to learn the basics of how to use a regular expression and you’ll learn about the different character classes available for matching different types of characters.

Hands-on: Lab: Working with Regular Expressions: Special Characters and Anchors

In this lab, you will learn how to use quantifiers to match sequences of characters in different ways, you will learn about anchors, and you will learn how to use capture groups. 

Hands-on: Lab: Using Regular Expressions Effectively in the Real World

In this lab, you will learn how to use quantifiers to match sequences of characters in different ways, you will learn about anchors, and you will learn how to use capture groups. 


Webinars

Office Hours: AWS Solutions Architect – Associate | Domain 1 of 4: Design Resilient Architectures

Take a deep dive on Domain 1: Design Resilient Architectures of the AWS Solutions Architect – Associate exam.

Office Hours: Decoupling Architectures Like There’s No Tomorrow

Learn all about decoupling architectures, how to set them up, and manage them, successfully with our experts.


Platform

Learn, Grow, Succeed: Introducing Training Plans for Individuals

We’re excited to announce that we’ve released a new game-changing feature for individual users that has already proven to help our largest enterprise customers increase newly acquired skills by 5x: Training Plans.


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