Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Website: https://www.packtpub.com/product/the-self-taught-cloud-computing-engineer/9781805123705 Price: $50 Blurb: “The Self-Taught Cloud Computing Engineer is a comprehensive guide to mastering cloud computing concepts by building a broad and deep cloud knowledge base, developing hands-on cloud skills, and achieving professional cloud certifications. Even if you’re a beginner with a basic understanding of computer hardware and software, this book serves as the means to transition into a cloud computing career. Starting with the Amazon cloud, you’ll explore the fundamental AWS cloud services, then progress to advanced AWS cloud services in the domains of data, machine learning, and security. Next, you’ll build proficiency in Microsoft Azure Cloud and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) by examining the common attributes of the three clouds while distinguishing their unique features. You’ll further enhance your skills through practical experience on these platforms with real-life cloud project implementations. Finally, you’ll find expert guidance on cloud certifications and career development. By the end of this cloud computing book, you’ll have become a cloud-savvy professional well-versed in AWS, Azure, and GCP, ready to pursue cloud certifications to validate your skills.“
There is something I need to get out of the way first, though I have read part one of the book, I can’t really comment too in depth as I know next to nothing about Amazon cloud services, and there is NO WAY IN HELL I’ll give them my debit card details to have a spin and learn on their platform. They need to provide a learning platform if they want people to learn. The TL;DR version: the book does teach you a fair bit, however it feels AI generated in some parts and you really* need to pay attention to acronyms. The whole thing is a bit of a mish-mash; if you have never seen the “cloud” interfaces before, you may struggle. If you are triggered by AI generated bs writing (not the facts part), I suggest you don’t read this book. I had very low expectations when the book opened with “History of Computing”, however, it spanned pages four and five and it was done. When I say I know next to nothing about Amazon web services, it does not mean I have not used it before; I have done a few roll-outs on it, and it was slower than turtles stampeding through peanut butter (circa 2021/2022). This book claims to be “self-taught”, so I was expecting a lot of explanations to start; however, it fell into the house, door and all. I liked that the information I got was things that I did not know, and it broadened my understanding of the platform. Though I would have liked to follow along, I’d rather spend my time learning with a provider that does not want my credit-card details. The explanations were clear enough that I could answer all the questions at the end of chapter one, without practical.
Chapter two was cloud storage services, and covered things I had not heard of before, which was really neat. Snowball, snowcone and snowmobile, weird names to be sure, but here some of the reading felt like marketing bs instead of teaching, but, to be fair, it was really minimal. I fell over some questions at the end, but that had more to do with English not being my first language than bad explanations in the chapter. The screen shots presented were up-to-date, even considering that Amazon likes changing the layouts. Chapter three took me into the networking side of AWS, with things like VPC & CDN. Initially it felt like a sponsored segment more than a practical book with sentences like: “Time and cost effectiveness: Amazon VPCs are created at no cost. Since they are virtual, you can provision VPCs and subnets on the fly, and reduce the cost of your network infrastructure.” Like it was copied from the website, “Time” is in the preamble, but mentioned nowhere, and if it said “cost effectiveness”, why did they feel the need to add “and reduce the cost of your network infrastructure” at the end? Though the images showed what looked to be real-world examples, I started suspecting AI generated nonsense. I looked up the author and he is real, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m63uejwbb4w), but he is also a machine-learning pundit. Chapter four took me into relational databases offering of Amazon. Again I appreciated the minimal like two-page overview of databases, that is not padding, before he jumps into it. Here again, things like data warehouses were explained nicely. The next part also reads very informative, covering Amazon RDS and No SQL, etc. Then when I hit “Elasticache” (basically Redis), I found that strange marking language writing again, making my AI senses tingle. Also here the images have different resolution in one field to the next, as well as differing fonts, that scream AI. Just by-the-way, this book covers the view from only a Windows user’s perspective. I think the “looking for signs of AI” got the better of my focus, because I looked at the the end of chapter questions in the wrong way. Configure Stargate or Relational Database service 1 and salt for subnet1… XD
Chapter five moved into Amazon data analytics services, something else I was not familiar with, so I was looking forward to it. Yep big data is where they usually make back their money tenfold, once they have all your data and host it cheaply to attract your business. Here is where the cow part of ‘cash cow’ comes in, where you are milked. Again I was hit with marketing bs instead of teaching, trying to play off how “cost effective” it is, when in reality, it is everything but. Then, in the security line, we are given compliance, as a reason or feature? As I said before, this book makes my AI senses tingle like few others. Thereafter, everything is laid out in a very readable and understandable way with some images thrown in that make you go oh… A proper meat-and-potatoes section, that is nice and dense, and you may need to read a paragraph more than once. Chapter six is machine-learning; here the accent of the book changes and you can see this is where the author’s interest lies. It is literally like two people wrote this book. Though there still is that way of writing that breaks your stride, sprinkled in like chocolate chips. “Real-time translation: Translate can translate text in real time” – I mean, what the actual ??? Good grief! I am six chapters deep and already I need to take breaks from the book, not good.
So here I am continuing the book on a Saturday, as I could not even… :). I want to read part two of the book, but my FOMO will not allow me to skip part one. Chapter seven is Amazon Cloud security services, and honestly, it does not differ from other providers as far as I can tell. What I liked about this section, is that there were sections where you made mistakes and fixed those mistakes, like you would in the real world. The explanations are clear, but I would have liked maybe a few red rectangles to understand where the author is talking about, like: “Next Amazon S3 noticed that the requested object was encrypted.” ← like how do you, and more importantly me, know that? (Yes I know most stuff is encrypted by default). There were also a few times I went ‘huh’ again, when you get jumped with: “the third A in amazon AAA” and I’m like everything in Amazon starts with bloody ‘A’, so I look back a few paragraphs and I do not see this supposed ‘AAA’. I go back to the beginning of the chapter, looking for ‘AAA’ and not finding it. This was my other peeve with this book. It is supposedly for “self-teaching”, but does not drive things home. The so-called case study section again reads like the marketing section of a website instead of a real case study. I gave up and moved to part two, where I wanted to be. Part two, GCP. The author immediately lets you know that he will be comparing GCP to AWS. This is great if you know one and not the other. Off the bat, I would have liked it if he used the GCP interface and linked what he was showing to where it is. While the chapter does its best to mirror the AWS side of things, some things are mentioned once, but never dived into. This would have been a great segue into gsutil, something I really need to allocate time to.
Just like that, we are into chapter nine, cloud databases and big data services. (Not storage services, to mirror part one.) Immediately we hit cloudSQL, and we are shown how to create a MySQL db via the Google cloud console. However, here you are not shown where it hides, like the author did for AWS. (I look out for it as it is something I remember when I was totally green, where is the cloud console?) We are then introduced to cloud spanner and cloud firestone. (Which I have never used, so I was all ears … or make that eyes.) Using cloud run, we get to implement something. Awesome! You get to use the bucket you created earlier, making the learning feel engaging. Yip, my hot chocolate started getting cold by the time I was reading this. We move into Google’s moneymaker Bigtable for an overview. Here the crappy marketing writing is absent, not telling you how much money you save. The author covers each subdomain with its own overview so you can get to grips with the terms. We then get to implement our own pipeline. Exciting stuff! A whole lab on just what I wanted. Before the end-of-the-chapter questions, we get a few lines on BI (Looker) and are told to go read up on it online. Again you can answer “A” to all questions and pass the test, just like in part one.
Chapter ten has us looking at AI services. Google has the Vertex AI suite, something else I have not looked into before. Here the author does what he did in the previous chapter and gives an overview and breaks it down into manageable chunks. As I am not familiar with it, I can only compare it to previous chapters, and again it feels like the author’s passion is here. It feels better explained than any of the previous chapters. Chapter eleven, cloud security services, is where I leave you, as I have oveshot my space in the magazine again. Here I would have liked to see navigation, as this trips up many newbies, including me when I was green (yes, I know about the direct search. Maybe a few more screenshots with arrows or blocks, as I feel this is an important section for any cloud engineer. (You spend a lot of time here and it felt a bit light.) I hope I have given you an idea of what the book is like. If you would like to give it a skip or pick it up, the link is in the article. Honestly, I don’t think it is worth the asking price of $50 (almost $1200 here, I can get four other books on the topic for that price.)