Pros and Cons about Github Foundations cert

Herbert Fernandez Tamayo — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 02:13:25 +0000

Disclaimmer:

I'm sure there's a ton of resources out there about Github certification, I'm not intend to write an extra one or to change your mind about take it, these lines are focus on IT college students, self taught devs or any other IT workforce self qualified as "juniors":

The Context:

I have a Github Student Pack subscription so it's totally free.
You only have one attempt, I guess if you pay for it you will have at least to attempts.
I use everyday Git and Github, this fact in particular was the key to take the decision and take it.
I thought it will be just a "walk in the park", I was totally wrong.
I studied for around 2 weeks at least 1 hour daily.

Study resources:

All you need to know for take and pass the Github Foundations exam - By Rossana Suarez, this was my first stop - it is written in spanish - so I got my first overview about the areas of this cert and how to study for it, the bellow resources were also a recommendation from Rossana.
Practice test - so I went directly to take the practice test, the first time I got a score under my expectations, moreover, I realized it was necessary to take it seriously because it covers different features about Github
Microsoft Learn's Github Foundations Path - definitively it was a good idea to take this learning path, I learned new concepts as well as details about services I previously knew o used, I got double price: to learn and get ready for the test.

The exam:

You have two hours to finish it.
This is not a race so go at your own pace.
At the end you get your score and they send the notification if you pass or fail it to your email.

Pros:

Since this is an entry level cert don't get confuse: entry level does not mean easy, if you want to learn and pass it invest time to study for it.
I discovered things I did not know Github offers: specifically the project administration part.
is it worth it? yes it is.
if you're beginning your IT career specially if you aspire to become a dev go and take the exam.
am I planning to take another Github cert? perhaps the one related to Github Actions.

Cons:

I use GNU/Linux as my primary and only one OS since 2000, it was a deception to have to use Windows OS in order to take the exam, indeed, I had to use my wife's laptop and take the exam during the evening, definitively this was an uncomfortable situation, even thought this situation is not an issue from Github - PSI is the responsible of the exam platform - it would be great to fix this ASAP.

Conclusion:

Surely this cert won't be the key to get a 6 figure job but it would give you the foundational skills every developer should have, this cert is not for your employer, it will benefit the foundational process of your career.

Good luck

DevOps4Devs: set a budget

Herbert Fernandez Tamayo — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 14:29:51 +0000

Intro:

I'm pretty sure the term DevOps is in your to-do or doing list, topics such as kubernetes, containers, serverless and CI-CD are common skills requested for open possitions or in your day to day work environment, after sign up for any of the cloud providers I think you should pay attentions to these steps: how to get founded and how to set a budget.

Get Founded:

The fact is you will need to invest time and effort during your first steps, of course, this include the use of a series of services from your cloud providers, please take a in count that additional objects will be created during your exercises (network gateways for example) and for that you will need founds, please consider the bellow alternatives:

Use your @edu domain email account: cloud providers have either special discounts or free tier for active students, in the case of Microsoft Azure you have $100 if you have a Github Student Pack subscription; about Amazon AWS I understand they still have a free tier for students, in both cases using free tier has its limitations but it is a good starting point, feel free to get more details from the official documentation.
Get credits from your local / online meetup groups: in the case of AWS this has been very effective for me, I take part of online sessions or meetups from AWS Ambassadors, in the most of the meetings at the end there are rafles where you can participate and win credits ($25, $50, etc) so you can redeem it in your AWS Account, give it a try, you never know when you can win.
Use your own debit/credit card: of course if you want to get right to the point you can use your debit/credit card, just remember the first steps require more time and eventually that means more money.

Indepent of what of the above options you choose please don't forget to remove any services you were working on it, this is means: clusters, VMs, deployed functions or any other assets, also, double check additional objects created during your exercises, as an example: after delete a cluster deployed on AWS EKS at the next day I still have charges related and this was because a VPC Gateway was up and running.

Set a Budget:

As you can imagine, it is very important to monitor the use of the founds we have related to our account, for that reason, each cloud provider has its own method to do run this task, just take in count setting up a budget works like a forecast__, this means, the budget is not a speed limit, you can pass it and it's our responsibility to monitor it from time to time; in simple terms: we are in charge to take care of out credits.

All right, bellow you will find a couple of snapshots related to the process of how to set a budget in Azure and AWS:

Setting up a budget in Azure

From your Azure dashboard please search for an option called "budgets":

After that set the requested info from the budget,in the bellow image you can find an example of my personal budget:

As a final step you have to set at least one email address to receive any alert related to your forecast:

Eventually you will receive emails like this one:

As you can see the forecast is higher than the expected, this means I should review what services I have deployed and take the decission to shut them down or continue as they are, the budget is not a tool to auto block something.

As a final comment, every time you log in Azure gives you insight like remaining credits and a cost by resouce just like in the next image:

Now it's your turn: let's try to set a budget and an alert on Azure, then try to deploy an asset and you'll see if there is a relation between your forecast and your budget.

In the next I'll show you how to set a budget in AWS. Happy coding!

DEV Community: Herbert Fernandez Tamayo