Hello Cloud!

Welcome to my little space documenting my journey tackling the Cloud Resume Challenge - a thorough, engaging, and - most importantly - beneficial project created by Forrest Brazeal that teaches participants the cloud skills they need to enhance their careers.

I came across the CRC back in March of this year as I was desperately searching for ways to jumpstart what felt like a stalling career. Although I’ve had a pretty storied career in IT over the past 22 years, I felt like I had hit the top of what I could do with the experience that I had: Job searches for roles that fit my job experience all tended to look the same. I knew I had to make a change, but I had no idea where to start or what to do. I spent a few late nights googling how to break into software development, or what it would take to level up my skillset if I wanted to get into DevOps, or how to contribute to an open source project - you could see that I was lost at sea. Then, one night I came across a Reddit thread where the author appeared to be in the same boat I was. They asked something along the lines of, “What’s a good way for me to do something that’ll teach me the skills I need and also give me something to show for it?” A commenter responded that, in their experience, the only real deal out there was something called the Cloud Resume Challenge, and to check it out.

So I did.

And here I am. :-)

I’m writing this blog not only because Brazeal himself includes reminders in each section you complete that you should write about what you’ve learned and what you’ve done. I also want to put something up on the internet that people can find when they’re looking for ways to tackle the challenge if they go the Azure route (You can pick your poison when it comes to attempting the CRC in AWS, Azure or GCP).

Although Microsoft has a lot of documentation out there on how to use their numerous cloud services, tutorials and samples on how to accomplish some of the tasks in the CRC are sparse. There is also some pretty outdated material out there - something to expect given the pace at which cloud services update and/or remove services.

For example, Microsoft released the Azure Functions V2 Programming Model for Python in April 2023. However, many of the tutorials I found on creating Azure Functions in Python either use the V1 model or, if they mention V2 at all, fail to explain that some triggers haven’t been implemented in V2 yet, which can affect whether your triggers work at all.

My goal with this blog is to capture some of those pitfalls and how I solved them. I also plan on taking what I’ve built and seeing if I can convert it to the V2 model, documenting the journey from start to finish.

With all that, welcome to my blog. I hope you find something useful here to help you on your challenge journey!