I make videos for a living teaching almost every aspect of Microsoft Azure to anyone who wants to learn it. And I really enjoy doing that. Just the other day, I finished recording a new course. And at the end of it, I was feeling a deep satisfaction about what I had created.
I won’t lie though. Part of the fun I have is using Azure itself. As a teacher, I have an excuse to create new compute, networking, and storage services repeatedly. I create them, I play with them, and I delete them.
I say all this to encourage you to do the same.
You should be in the Azure Portal (or command line) – creating, playing with, and deleting resources. Do it once, and then do it again.
You learn so much by using Azure hands-on.
I can’t count the number of times where I go to do something, and it doesn’t work. Why didn’t it work? Why is Azure returning an error? Why can’t I find the exact feature or function that I am looking for?
That’s when learning happens!
That’s when I become a better teacher. I become a better teacher by playing with Azure myself and discovering the little hidden secrets.
Isn’t It Expensive?
Yes, it can get expensive. I sometimes pay $100s of dollars per month for my Azure bill.
That’s a true copy of my Azure subscription invoice history for one of my subscriptions.
What usually happens is that I leave a service running longer than I expected to.
Like recently, I started an Azure Bastion service. So I was using Bastion to access a private virtual machine running on one of my Azure Networks.
Bastion runs at $0.19 per hour. That’s $4.80 per day. Or $150 per month.
Needless to say, after a couple of weeks, I relented and deleted Bastion. I’d need another solution to access that machine.
How Do You Play With Azure Without Spending $100s?
One option for you is to use a Free account. Azure gives you $200 to spend in the first 30 days. That costs you nothing, and you can learn a lot in 30 days.
But the time runs out after 30 days, and you can only have one free account. Or you’re only supposed to have one free account.
So what else can you do?
You can purchase a lab package with access to Azure hands-on labs that come with the Azure resources you need to learn.
My site, getcloudskills.com, sells packages of labs that include the time on Azure required to use them.
What are Hands-on Labs?
Hands-on labs allow students to practice what they’ve learned on their own time without having to rely on instructors or other resources. Students can use these labs as an opportunity to test out new skills before applying them in the classroom. In addition, it gives students more control over how much time they spend practicing each topic.
How Does Your Hands-On Lab Package Work?
When you buy the All Labs package, you get over 700 labs to choose from. That’s a lot! You can find labs on almost anything that you want to learn.
Each lab has an expected amount of time to complete. So let’s say that we think it will take you 1 hour to finish a single lab. We give you an hour of Azure time (included in the price) to complete that lab.
You can try each lab up to 3 times. So that means, you can spend up to 3 hours practicing the same skill, in this example.
And there are over 700 labs. So this means that there are THOUSANDS of potential hours you can be spending learning Azure, AWS, Linux, and other skills.
I can’t say it’s an unlimited number of cloud hours, but I can’t imagine anyone doing every lab and running out of attempts. (In order to make 2,100 attempts in a year, you need to be completing 7 labs per day!)
Buy One Year of Labs for Azure, AWS, Linux, Cybersecurity and More!
What I can offer you is a pretty good deal.
For less than the cost of what I pay for Azure services in one month, you can get a whole year to play with Azure.
This package comes with over 700 pre-built labs that you can follow along with. Some are basic labs, intermediate labs, and some are expert labs with very little guidance.
For only $125, you get 700 labs with 1 year of cloud services to test them with.
Check out my site, https://getcloudskills.com/all-labs/ for the deal.
I also have individual exams if you’re looking for more focused labs to specific learning requirements, that can be bought individually. Check out the site for more details.