A Cloud Guru Associate Community Training Architect Gwyneth Pena-Siguenza recently launched the #CloudGuruChallenge: Your resume in Azure challenge. The challenge is to create an online version of your resume in Azure to build your cloud skills. Gwyn talks more about the challenge on her YouTube channel.
I decided to take on this challenge as a way to bolster my Azure skills. Working on a project is the best way to build skills. You often run into problems or challenges that require diving deeper into the technology, thereby building knowledge.
You can view my resume website here:
Why did you take on the challenge?
I just started in a new role where I am focusing on Azure 100%, so I viewed the challenge as a way to kick-start that move. I had seen the challenge before when it was for AWS, and I was excited to take it for Azure. I viewed it as a great learning opportunity and as a way to gain more experience.
How did you complete the challenge?
I completed the challenge by focusing on the different components needed for each part. Before creating any Azure resources, I knew I needed the resume website. After creating it, I started deploying the Azure resources I knew I needed to host it. I incorporated the visitor counter, then finished up by automating some of the deployment using GitHub Actions.
I documented each part in four blog posts. Some go into more technical detail than others, but I included links to external resources that I used during the deployment.
- Azure Resume Challenge – Part 1: Creating the website and Azure resources
- Azure Resume Challenge – Part 2: Integrating CDN and HTTPS
- Azure Resume Challenge – Part 3: Adding the Visitor Counter
- Azure Resume Challenge – Part 4: Deploying with GitHub Actions
What was the hardest part?
The hardest part was incorporating the JavaScript code to trigger the Azure Function to increment the visitor counter. Alongside this was also creating the CosmosDB resource and learning how it is structured. In the future, I might just use a storage account table instead for simplicity.
Which part did you enjoy the most?
Tackling GitHub Actions was the best part. I’ve been learning Azure Pipelines, so that knowledge helped a lot. It’s nice to have the repository and workflow integrated into the same place. I plan on adding some more workflows to my other projects. I also enjoyed working with the Azure CLI. I’m a big PowerShell fan but I found the CLI commands and syntax easier to use. Except forgetting to use double hyphens for the command parameters.
What are your biggest takeaways?
I’ve learned that I need projects like this in order to push myself to try new things. I would have put off learning or trying some of the things I accomplished in this challenge if I didn’t take it on.
What would you change next time?
I want to redo this project but use Terraform to deploy and configure all the Azure resources. Using infrastructure-as-code would be a nice add-on to bring everything together.
