Making Cloud & DevOps Learning Simple, Affordable & Realistic

It's all started with my own learning journey, 5 years back when I felt the need to learn Cloud & DevOps and decided to learn it with my 100%.

Read till the end to know my plan towards Simple, Affordable & Realistic Cloud Learning

What Motivated Me to learn Cloud

5 Years back while working on a Full Stack JavaScript Application project, I was tasked with finding a Cloud Solutions Architect in order to scale our application, so it can serve our growing customer base.

I started searching and while reaching out 90% said "NO" and whoever said "YES" they ask for compensation that was 4X of my pay at that time, which was not possible for my client.

It triggers a thought inside me, "Wow cloud computing is soooo.. in demand ", "Cloud Computing looks interesting anyway plus looks like a lot of opportunities out there", "Pay is also very good it seems by looking at expectations of different Cloud Solution Architects", "Why not I do it myself, learn Cloud, DevOps and slowly implement for my own project, as I know the application I have made better than anyone else"

That was the start of my learning journey which made me, who I am now, holding over 6 AWS Certifications, one GCP Certification, having my own YouTube Channel teaching Cloud, DevOps, Programming to thousands of professionals, Students/freshers, worked on Cloud & DevOps projects for clients span over the world ??

How I learn Cloud & DevOps

Before revealing my cloud journey, I would like to explain what cloud computing is, what is DevOps, when to use the cloud, when to use DevOps, why Cloud + DevOps work best together, like a match made in heaven ??

What is Cloud Computing?

"Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale."

In Simple Words: You are just renting out someone else's computing resources via the internet

What is DevOps?

DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes. This speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and compete more effectively in the market.

In Simple Words: DevOps (a portmanteau of “development” and “operations”) is the combination of practices and tools designed to increase an organization's ability to deliver applications and services faster than traditional software development processes.

Now, that I have explained what is Cloud Computing & What is DevOps, let me tell you my learning journey ??

My first goal was to make my Full Stack JS Project into a fully and truly scalable application which mean if there are too many users requesting service then the number of server/instances should also increase accordingly and when the load is less the number of server/instances should decrease as well.

The challenges ware:

1) Having a single source of truth i.e. all the instances should run the exact same environment, dynamically creating the instances via auto-scaling. Using Cloud services, was easy to achieve (which was manually impossible for the small team), we use machine image in a lunch template along with autoscaling groups + load balancer to achieve this

2) When the code change happens, it must be deployed to all the instances slowly i.e. via the rolling method so that customers will not get affected and if any issue happens we must have the option to easily revert the changes

e.g. we are running 100 instances/server, changes must be deployed to all 100 servers

It was not too easy to achieve, for this we needed DevOps tools and services and best DevOps practices, with help of different tools and services we achieved as well.

3) Overtime due to many new feature requests or working on entirely new projects used required new services & tools.

You might notice now, how Cloud & DevOps both needed and work together to achieve business goals.

While working towards achieving the above professional goal, I did learn different Cloud & DevOps tools and technologies.

I tried to learn from free resources at first, at that time I felt so many pieces missing, for that reason I started looking at the paid alternative courses, but most courses are not for the Indian market, mostly US or UK focuses and the cost is so high, out of saving a big amount had to invest in these courses, and slowly over time learn many clouds, DevOps tools, and technologies, and also learned how to control cloud resources via programming using different Cloud SDKs, vendor tools and finally Infrastructure as code.

How did I start Teaching Cloud & DevOps?

While paying a huge amount for the courses, I decided once I gain knowledge and experience, I will start teaching for free or very less cost so that anyone can learn Cloud, DevOps. But that was not the only reason, I felt most of the explanations are complex and hard to understand, even simple things getting explained in a complex way, and a lot of Slides/PDF, people getting bored just watching the slides and dropping the interest.

I had decided then until unless absolutely necessary I will not use slides in my videos, and when even require slides I will make them as simple as possible so that any person who has zero knowledge on the subject can get started with the hands-on.

I initially started teaching Cloud, DevOps related topics in different local meetup groups, "Chirag Nayaar", a friend of mine was my inspiration in this, I gain the confidence to be in front of people and teach what I know to them, and wow I see people started appreciating what I do, slowing I started teaching Containerization, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS Cloud and many more other topics.

One day, I was browsing Facebook and saw a random person posted a tutorial in a JavaScript group, it was a tutorial on YouTube, I got impressed by the presentation and the teaching Style, his video make me feel that he is explaining simple way and to a massive number of people online, why not I teach online via YouTube, I can also teach thousand of people Cloud & DevOps technologies in a simple way, that certain person was "Akshay Saini", whose video inspired me to start my own youtube channel.

How I am Planning to Make Cloud & DevOps Learning More Affordable & Realistic:

The most common problem of current tutorials in most of the place is, it's not so practical or realistic, the tutorial has to be something that one can learn and apply to own project, or might be useful in interview real use-case scenarios and not even have to mention the cost of such courses plus explanations are sometimes hard to understand and go above head most of the times and they already assume and technology master watching those tutorials.

Here comes my plan to make Cloud & DevOps learning more affordable, I am planning and already started a training program for 100 Freshers for free (Details Here), and similarly have two more free training plan as below and click on the register now button you can register for the program and first 100 people will get chance, rest of the person will get change in next training sessions:

1) Career Switch Training Program: Those are in separate career path e.g. test, finance, marketing, customer support, finance, non-tech, etc (any other path) and want to move towards Cloud & DevOps career can register in this program, a training plan will be shared after 2-3 week along with start date (tentatively after 2 months). Register Now

2) Career Growth Training Program: Those who are already working in Cloud, DevOps, Programming, want to learn more and grow in their career in Cloud & DevOps, can register in this program, a training plan will be shared after 1 month along with start date (tentatively after 3 months). Register Now

Now, you might be wondering why only 100 persons, and here's the reason:

For free versions it's for the video training software are only 100 persons, that's why!

So, here's my plan for future growth and increasing the program to a massive scale, via YouTube Channel Membership Program

All the training videos post-training will be available for only YouTube Members with any membership level.

Now you might be wondering what's the cost?

I said it's affordable isn't it ??, so let me tell you, it will cost you just Rs59.00/month (less than $1), so for only that small amount you will be able to get all the training videos in upcoming months.

I don't expect the member's number growth in a single day, but over time, maybe in one year I am expecting it to be at least 1000 YouTube Channel member, and then I will have enough finance to support training for more than 500 people a month, I know although it sounds simple, it's not simple at all and I love the challenges and so be it, I have already accepted this challenge to teach freshers, working professional's Cloud & DevOps, so that they can become job-ready and achieve professional growth.

Let me explain a bit more about the YouTube Membership plans and the membership benefits in more depth:

Note: All future live training class videos via the above schemes member-only videos and will be available for all below membership level

and After you join the membership teach out to me via Youtube Members Contact Forms, so that I can add you to the dedicated member-only Discord server

Rapid Learner Rs 59 (Less than USD $1)

• Access to members-only live chat via Discord
• Special Emojis

Serious Learner Rs 159 (USD $2)

• All Benefits of Rapid Learner
• All video comments will get a priority reply
• Member-only live stream access, so that month I will do a dedicated live session via Youtube live just for you so that you can clear any queries you want.

Extreme Learner Rs 799 (USD $11)

• All benefits of Serious Learner
• Private Discussion & Guidance: TOTAL 60 mins/month, one private one-to-one session where you can ask any questions related to Cloud, DevOps, Programming, Career and clear any doubts you might have

Super Extremene Learner Rs1,999 (USD $27)

• All Benefits of Extreme Learner plan
• Private Discussion & Guidance: TOTAL 30 mins/week: So each week we can have one video meeting, you can clear any doubts, any issue related to Cloud, DevOps, Programming, Career

Super Fan Ultra Learner Rs 7,999 (USD $110)

• All the above benefits plus you are SUPER, so the benefits are SUPER TOOO
• Wild Card Free Entry For Training Program, so in any training program be it Free or Paid program, if you want to join, you are welcome to join COMPLETE FREE OF COST, even if all slots are filled, still you can join ??
• Private Discussion & Guidance: REGULAR BASIS/week, one-to-one live video meeting once/week no time limitation, you can ask and clear any query related to Cloud, DevOps, Programming, Career
• Exclusive Collaboration Option: If you have any topic or have expertise on a particular topic and want to teach the world via my channel, we can do a collaborated video and present it to the world ??
• Suggest video topics: Suggest any tech-related video topic, and I will try to make the video within few weeks
• Cloud/DevOps/Programming help 2 times /month: If you are stuck in any issue or need help in bug fixing related to Cloud/DevOps/Programming, I can help you personally 2times/month

Do like ?? this article and share this article ?? with your friends & other connections so that they will also get a chance to learn Cloud & DevOps simple and affordable way.

Also do let me know in comments what you think about this initiative, would love to get others feedbacks ??

About the Author:

Sandip Das works as a Sr. Cloud Solutions Architect & DevOps Engineer for multiple tech product companies/start-ups, have AWS DevOps Engineer Professional certification, also holding the title of "AWS Container Hero",

He is always in "keep on learning" mode, enjoys sharing knowledge with others, and currently holds 5 AWS Certifications. Sandip finds blogging as a great way to share knowledge: he writes articles on Linkedin about Cloud, DevOps, Programming, and more. He also creates video tutorials on his YouTube channel.