Our profession evolves every year, whether through the introduction of a new tool, a new cloud service or a new working method. This constant evolution requires the establishment of a learning culture to continuously share experiences and ideas, thus encouraging everyone to gain new knowledge each year.
Obviously, this demands a portion of our working time and an online library of training resources maintained by entities with authority in the domain. These entities are responsible for updating the content to allow us to continuously improve our skills, sometimes in advance in our career in order to aim for an internal or external evolution. Therefore, relying on trusted education partners is important to ensure the highest quality learning content.
The purpose of this article is to list free certifications and training for Site Reliability Engineers, DevOps engineers, operators, software developers and architects who work on designing, developing, maintaining and operating software services in an automated and secure way.
Cloud
The Cloud has been an important part of our daily lives for many years now. Its impact on productivity and therefore profitability makes it a major player today in the DevOps world. Here is a free training list to introduce you to this type of architecture.
AWS Skill Builder
An online platform where AWS provides multiple free trainings to introduce concepts on their Cloud, perfect for anyone interested to get hands-on with the major Cloud provider. We recommend specifically three training: security, devops and architect learning path.
Google Cloud training
Google provides multiple free training on this platform to introduce their services. Google also provides an interesting skills challenge where you can practice on their Cloud and win multiple badges for your resume.
Microsoft Learn For Azure
Last platform of the three major Cloud providers that provides multiple reads and videos on Azure services.
Knowledge of the top three cloud service providers is a best practice. Keep your mind open even if you have a preference for one, they have all their pros and cons. Choosing the right cloud provider depends on several factors, one of which is your skills!
CI/CD and GitOps
Integration and deployment are two big parts of DevOps. There are several ways to manage both depending on the methodology and the tools used. Here is a list of training and certifications to get an overview on how to start a project properly.
Introduction to GitOps by The Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is a great platform with a lot of free content on various topics. This training is a good introduction to anyone wanting to get started with the GitOps methodology.
GitOps Fundamentals by CodeFresh
ArgoCD is an excellent choice to start any GitOps project. CodeFresh has released a great certification to introduce the concept and the way to implement it with Argo.
Certified Jenkins Engineer by Cloudbees
Jenkins is probably one of the most famous integration tools in the DevOps ecosystem. Cloudbees offers a free course to prepare for the certification.
Gitlab 101 by Gitlab
Gitlab is another famous tool in the DevOps world that combines multiple features in one space. Properly deploying, configuring and using this tool requires a learning curve that Gitlab detailed in different courses.
Kubernetes
Kubernetes has been one of the most trending tools for years now. Adopted by every cloud provider and a large number of companies, we still continue to find new usage of this platform. The onboarding can be tremendous depending on the set up. Relying on free courses and certifications is probably a good start for your Kubernetes journey.
Introduction to Kubernetes by The Linux Foundation
Perfect training for every beginner to get a basic introduction of the fundamental concepts of Kubernetes.
Certified Calico Operator: Level 1 by Tigera
To properly manage Kubernetes resources, it is important to understand basic stuff like networking. Tigera created a great certification to introduce networking on Kubernetes with Calico.
Istio Fundamentals by Solo.io
A quick training and certification to introduce Istio service mesh and its implementation to demystify the tool and accelerate its adoption.
Istio and Envoy Fundamentals by Tetrate
Two free trainings to introduce the tools and their benefits.
RKE and K3s by Rancher/Suse Academy
Rancher is deeply involved in the Kubernetes world with their different products like Rancher, Longhorn or K3s. Their Suse Academy provides multiple great content like training and certifications to improve your skills on those technologies.
VMware Kube Academy
VMware is another big company involved in the Kubernetes ecosystem that provides multiple free courses to introduce multiple concepts like containers, orchestration platform, best practices, etc.
Observability
Observability is an important challenge for all companies wishing to be competitive in a constantly changing market. Ensuring a high level of service for its customers is essential. It is therefore important to train engineering teams in the different ways to set up and operate an observability platform.
Introduction to Prometheus by Promlabs
Prometheus is a famous time series database used by many companies to store metrics gathered by multiple agents. This training from Promlabs is a perfect introduction to the Prometheus stack for every beginner.
Introduction to Prometheus and PromQL by Sysdig
Prometheus comes with its own query language called PromQL. It is mandatory to understand the basis of this language to easily extract useful information from any Prometheus data. Sysdig provides quick training to start your journey with the PromQL language.
Elastic Stack Training
The Elastic Stack is probably one of the stacks most used in different areas, logging, monitoring, tracing, machine learning, etc. Each set up is unique and requires a good understanding of each component to get the best of it. Fortunately, Elastic provides several training sessions on each component.
Sumo Logic Training
Sumo Logic is another observability platform used to collect and graph data from multiple cloud native applications like FluentD, FluentBit, Falco, etc. Sumo Logic offers several free training and certifications to get your hands on the platform and how to operate it in different contexts such as Kubernetes, Cloud or on-premise.
Full Stack Observability by New Relic
For New Relic users interested to test and validate their knowledge on the stack, New Relic provides a free certification called Full Stack Observability.
DevSecOps
Security is everyone’s business. We must all, at different levels, make a difference in improving the security of the infrastructure. As DevOps moves quickly, security must follow as well as knowledge.
Aqua Security Academy
Aqua Security is a famous company known to be the owner of multiple tools to improve security on Kubernetes. Fortunately, they also provide multiple free content on their Aqua Academy to introduce multiple concepts related to security.
Falco 101 by Sysdig
Falco is a great threat detection tool on Kubernetes. Probably a must have on every production cluster to prevent security breach. Sysdig provides a course to properly get started.
Fundamentals Certification for Kyverno by Nirmata
The Open Policy Agent (OPA) is probably the most famous open-source security tool for Kubernetes. Kyverno is a promising project based on OPA to facilitate the management of security rules. Nirmata provides a free certification on Kyverno to introduce the concept.
Qualys Training
Qualys is also a famous security company that offers multiple features to identify and protect any kind of infrastructure. They provide free training in the DevSecOps area that are interesting to optimize pipelines and detect vulnerabilities before deploying any code to production.
Chaos Engineering
This test technique in production tends to be democratized as it benefits the reliability of the infrastructure. Fortunately, in recent years, the concept has become eye-catching and tools, leaders in the market today, have emerged with their lots of courses.
Chaos Engineering Practitioner Certificate Program by Gremlin
This certification introduces the concept of Chaos Engineering and how to implement it with Gremlin.
Next?
This is a short list of free resources available on the Internet. We will try to keep it up to date so if you are thinking about free content that would not be listed in this article, feel free to share it in the comments!
For more information on topics mentioned in this article, please refer to this documentation:
About the authors
Hicham Bouissoumer— Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) — DevOps
Nicolas Giron — Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) — DevOps