A short, honest introduction to public cloud, without the marketing.
We cover the core services, the pricing model that catches everyone out, identity, and how to stand up a small workload and then tear it down again. Delivered online so it fits around work.
Jobs this leads towards
Real roles people do after this course and the ones that follow it.
-
Cloud support engineer
Keeps a company's systems running in Microsoft's cloud and fixes what breaks.
-
Junior cloud administrator
Sets up accounts, storage and virtual machines in Azure for a team.
-
IT support with cloud skills
Ordinary help-desk work, but for a company whose servers live in the cloud — which is most of them now.
Certifications
What this course prepares you to sit. Exam vouchers are included.
- Microsoft AZ-900 (Azure Fundamentals)
Is this for me?
Ninety seconds, no wrong answers, nothing recorded. It tells you how closely this course matches what you enjoy — and where to look if it does not.
What a week looks like
Day to day, so nobody is surprised.
- One evening on concepts, one evening in the real console with a free-tier account.
- Every session ends with something running in the cloud that you built.
- Costs are tracked on purpose: you learn to read the bill before it is a problem.
- A practice exam every few weeks.
Three questions from week one
Get them wrong and you belong here. Get them right and you belong here too. Nothing is recorded.
Books worth having
None of these is required — the course lends what it needs. These are the ones worth owning.
-
Microsoft Learn (free)
The official learning paths; the course follows them.
What to bring
Usually nothing. Where something small helps, it is here.
- ▸Nothing to buy: free-tier cloud accounts and lent laptops.
- ▸A notebook for the vocabulary — there is a lot of it.
- ▸A phone for the authenticator app.
Do this at home
Between sessions. Ten to twenty minutes; the people who do this are the ones who finish.
- Habit 1Do one Microsoft Learn module a day (15 minutes).
- Habit 2Spin up a free virtual machine, use it, and delete it. Check the bill.
- Habit 3Explain 'the cloud' to somebody at home in one minute.
What you will be able to do
- Describe the core Azure services and when each is appropriate
- Estimate what a workload will cost before you build it
- Deploy a virtual machine and a web app, and remove them cleanly
- Use resource groups, tags and role assignments sensibly
What you will use
- Azure Portal
- Azure CLI
- Entra ID
What the course covers
The lesson plan for this course is being written. Register and we will tell you the moment it opens.