Top 5 Cloud Certifications for IT Pros
Cloud certifications are extremely demanding for IT professionals to demonstrate their level of skills, expertise and knowledge in specific cloud architectures. As an IT professional, cloud certifications from reputed companies can help you grow your career, and gain an edge in the job market. You will stay updated with the latest happenings in the world of cloud, and you will in turn have improved job prospects & a higher earning potential.
In order to obtain a cloud certification from a reputed company, an investment of your personal time, dedication, money, resources, and of course, deep studies, is important. Overall, such an investment can pay off in the long run.
Are Cloud Certifications Available Remotely?
Thankfully, many of the cloud certifications can be availed remotely from any part of the world. Physical distance is typically not an issue. The exams are also conducted online. As long as you have a computer and a stable Internet connection, you’re ready to go.
Keep in mind, certain cloud certifications might not offer online flexibility for the examinations. They might require you to appear in person at their examination centers, and the availability of their centers in your country may be limited, especially in this post-pandemic era. If you’re living far away from the metro cities, it’s best to consider this key factor before applying for a cloud certification examination.
Top 5 Cloud Certifications for the IT Professionals
AWS Solutions Architect Certification
AWS Solutions Architect Certification is definitely worth it if you’re a software engineer, principal tech lead, full-stack developer, CTO or simply looking to make a career working as an AWS employee as part of a larger team.
The AWS Solutions Architect Certification gives you a deeper understanding in learning managed cloud services. You’ll learn about various sorts of AWS services including Amazon S3, Lambda, Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Relational Database Service (RDS), Simple Queue Service (SQS), Kinesis, etc.
If you’ve got experience working with databases, queues, serverless functions and message brokers, this course can help you plug gaps. You’ll also learn deeper about the best practices keeping in mind the overall security of data and managed cloud infrastructure.
Certification Exam Fee: $150
Practice Exam Fee: $20
Professional-level Exam Fee: $300
Google Cloud Platform Fundamentals (Foundational)
Google offers a range of certification courses under the cloud segment, each of them providing extensive relevant knowledge and hands-on skills for learning about Google’s cloud platforms. Although Google Cloud Platform has been a slightly late entrant into public cloud computing, it has been attracting everyone, thanks to its creative tools, performance benefits and innovations. It has gradually become a preferred platform for innovations and machine learning.
As the name describes, the Google Cloud Platform Fundamentals course gives you a better understanding of the core services that are part of the Google Cloud Platform. You’ll learn to choose the right Google Cloud Platform services for specific business scenarios. You’ll also learn how to secure your GCP projects while building blocks.
It must be remembered that while there is no shortfall for AWS architects in the market, the case with Google Cloud Architects is slightly different. Google Cloud Architects are shorter in number, which can be an amazing opportunity for you to make a career in Google’s cloud systems. Moreover, Google is offering a free credit of a whopping $300 for anyone interested in learning about the Google Cloud Platform.
Fundamentals (Foundational) Course Exam Fee: $99
Cloud Engineer Certification Exam Fee: $125
Professional Certification Exam Fee: $200
Free Credits: $300 (Subject to Google’s terms and conditions)
Microsoft Certified Azure Solutions Architect Expert
Microsoft Certified Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification is one of the most demanding certifications for IT pros. The certification covers a wide variety of subjects including cloud data storage, cloud infrastructure, identity management, backups and integrity, monitoring, and so on.
Microsoft has a simple and straightforward renewal program for its certifications. First, you will have to go through an exhaustive certification examination. Your certification will be valid for 1 year. Once expired, you will receive an email with a link to renew the certification by answering about two dozen questions that take approximately an hour. You’ll have up to 6 months to study and work on the renewal process.
Online Course: Free-of-cost
Instructor-led Course: $165
VMWare Certified Professional
VMWare has continued the tradition of providing a variety of certification levels for IT professionals rather than an all-in-one certification program. VMWare teams often visit college campuses for campus selection and recruitment.
Basic knowledge and understanding of the VMware system is essential if you’re looking to make a career in marketing, product demonstrations, executive or manager. VMWare Certified Professional is a worthwhile certification program designed for high-level information. Keep in mind, there’s really no technical learning in this course. Your course will provide you with exposure to VMWare and how things work. So if you’re looking for technicalities, look for other VMWare certifications.
VMWare Certified Professional: $250
Red Hat Certified System Administrator
Red Hat Enterprise, a renowned company behind Red Hat Linux, offers a certification course for IT professionals looking for the role of a system administrator on the Linux Red Hat servers.
In this certification course, you’ll get good command over the partitioning of logical volumes, and deal with a lot of scenarios of system troubleshooting. You’ll also learn about LDAP, Remote File System Access, adding users-groups & changing their privileges using various Terminal commands, resetting the password of your VM, enforcing the SELinux status, creating cron jobs and a new kernel. The certification exam checks your skills as a system administrator. It must be noted that Red Hat Certifications don’t expire over time.
Examination Fee: $400
Managing Cloud Files
Keeping data on the cloud has become a necessity. It’s an efficient and quick method to improve productivity as well as keep track of files. Sometimes cloud data becomes jumbled up and duplicate files appear. One way to keep cloud data clean is to use cloud deduplication utility, such as the Cloud Duplicate Finder, which saves the time and effort of IT Pros.
Raza Ali Kazmi works as an editor and technology content writer at Sorcim Technologies (Pvt) Ltd. He loves to pen down articles on a wide array of technology related topics and has also been diligently testing software solutions on Windows & Mac platforms.