This year as one of my professional development goals I set out to earn the Microsoft Certified Azure Solution Architect Expert qualification. I started early in the year, booking the first of two exams in April. The second was in August and I am now certified as an Azure Solution Architect.
The courses were interesting and challenged me as a developer to expand my thinking and to incorporate a wider viewpoint. Considerations such as Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery have very little application in my current role as a developer, but are crucial considerations for solution architects.
Similarly Active Directory and specifically Azure Active Directory and hybrid solutions with AD Connect played an important component of the technical content. I think I now know more than I ever thought I’d need to about password hash synchronisation or ADFS and MFA.
Looking forward to having my weekends back and to have time to prepare for the summer triathlon season. Am competing in two events this year, both sprint distance, and the usual Round The Bays in February. On the coding front I’m exploring using Kestrel on Linux and containers with Docker and Azure container instances.