As part of getting back into regular blogging, I would like to announce that the Certification Question of the Day is going to be making its return.
I did this in the past for prior MCSE and MCSA certifications on my old blog (from many, many moons ago) and I thought it might be cool to give it another go now under the mantle of Azure certifications and the new role based training that I am involved with.
As I did prior, I will put “QOTD” in the category field for easier searching here on the site as well as the certification it applies to (e.g. “AZ-103” or “AZ-500” – etc.)
A day after a post, I will re-post the question with the accompanying answer.
So as I alluded to the other day, I kick started a blog again (yes I know… how quaint and 1990s of me).
I’ve contributed probably to over a dozen different blogs over the years and then have separately run a dozen or so of my own. It’s always varying degrees of fun and frustration depending on which end of the spectrum you are at a given point of time.
Azure offers many different options for creating your own personal blog and one of them is a free option if you’re going to be very light on the use and traffic. This is a great option if it’s more for just “fun” as a hobby or creative outlet.
Eventually, if you’re marginally successful picking up a following, you’ll need to step up and pay for some of the services.
To get started, you’ll go to the Azure Portal to access your subscription.
On your homepage or via the dashboard, you can go to the search bar and type in WordPress as a simple way to get started.
Once you select that option from the Azure Marketplace, you’ll arrive at the APP configuration page.
You’ll give your site a unique address (has to be globally unique) – whatever name you give it will be the default Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) that you’ll use to reach the site (unless you’re going to register a different name).
You’ll set the subscription you’ll use in the next drop down box and then choose to either use an existing Resource Group or Create a new one
Next, you’ll choose a Database provider; you can select Azure Database for MySQL (which is designed for production environment and will scale to meet demand) or the cheaper option of MySQL in App.
Because I want to try to do this just as a hobby and for fun, I am going with everything I can (at least for now) that is inexpensive or free; with that, I’ll use MySQL in-app.
Next, I’ll choose my App Service Plan and the location and I’ll accept the defaults for Application Insights.
I will also choose the F1 Pricing tier as that is free for 60 minutes a day worth of compute.
(You can view all the tiers and what each one offers and costs HERE.)
Once that’s done, I’ll select CREATE, which will run the validation and deploy the app.
So that’s how I set mine all up… let’s see how we’re doing with that free service over the past three days the site’s been up by reviewing the output on the OVERVIEW dashboard and the APPLICATION INSIGHTS page for the information it supplies.
So we can see the results of the past hour on the OVERVIEW page above, but let’s dig in some on the past three days to see how well that F1 Pricing tier has served the new page.
So far, so good – 240 requests, all serviced (no failures), and the worst latency isn’t really all that bad at the peak of 200.85ms.
I can also see from my QUOTA view that I have a fair amount of room to grow still under this free plan.
Guess my next task is to try to drive a little more traffic to the blog 😉
“If I can teach someone the technology, and they can learn the material, they will pass the exams.”
I’ve been saying that for 22 years now. At the rate I am going, I will probably be saying that for another 22.
I’ve had a number of jobs in information technology since 1996 (informally, part time) and formally (full time). Way too many to list here; it’s just easier to point you to myLinkedIn page (and feel free to follow me there too).
Throughout all that time of “doing the job” I was always doing something else – I was learning the next thing and showing someone else what I was studying or working on.
I also decided that I loved what I did so much that I would try, as best I could, to train and skill others. So, back in late 2001, some 19 odd years ago, I earned my Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) certification.
So it is with all of this, I’ve decided to get back to blogging a little, too.
I am going to start the site here and see where things take me, how things go, what time permits, how posts take off, and so forth.
For a long time I ran a blog over on BlogSpot but I let it go over the years. Now, it’s probably a good time to take a clean break from that too and leave it dormant.
I’ll have to see how things go here; I am, of course, running it on Azure in my own subscription and it’s not my intention to try to paywall or monetize the site. Having said that, I have four kids so I can’t spend a ton of money here either.
Because my current day job is “all Azure skilling, all the time” it would be my intention to make all my posts focused on that; I might dabble elsewhere in the certification realm (as I do have certifications that span other technologies too, but nothing like the ones at Microsoft.)
I’d like to see too if I can get some other partners in crime (other Azure Technical Trainers or other MCTs) to pitch in on some posts of their own… sort of inviting them along to put up their work as a guest author of some of their own content.
36 hours in a day and all…
So, for now, I re-launch the grand experiment (and no Trek fans… I am not talking about the NX-2000).
