Businesses have committed to the cloud for its scalability, agility, and security. As customers continue to deepen their investments in cloud and AI services and environments become more complex, the need for proper cloud management increases. Continuous improvement and careful management through all phases of your cloud journey helps avoid unexpected costs and inefficient resource allocation while improving security and reliability. Strategic optimization delivers the resiliency to efficiently and securely handle fluctuating workloads with ease, ensuring you manage your environment for optimal performance.
For cloud professionals looking to systematically upskill and validate their expertise, we’ve created a powerful learning resource called Plans on Microsoft Learn. These customized learning journeys provide a guided, structured approach to mastering specific technical domains and roles with specific learning objectives and milestones. Our official plan, “Improve Reliability, Security and Performance on Azure”, provides learning modules and resources on tools and best practices from Microsoft that can help your business elevate reliability, security, and performance of your cloud and AI investments.
What are Plans on Microsoft Learn?
Plans on Microsoft Learn are hand-crafted curricula that bundle together related Learn modules, learning paths, and certifications into milestones with a logical, end-to-end educational experience. Track progress and percent-completion of each milestone as you work through the plan. Each plan is meticulously designed by Microsoft technical and learning experts to build comprehensive skills for a particular job role or competency area.
Plans offer an efficient, curated approach for learners to navigate Microsoft’s extensive training library. Rather than having to sift through the catalog of individual resources, plans lay out an optimal sequence tailored to each topic and learning objective. They start with fundamentals and progressively advance to more specialized subjects through thoughtful progression.
Beyond just compiling content, plans incorporate hands-on activities, knowledge checks, certifications, and other engagement tools to reinforce practical skills. Up-to-date Microsoft Azure technical content is seamlessly woven in, allowing learners to receive the latest cloud best practices.
What are the benefits of Plans on Microsoft Learn?
While the self-guided flexibility of Microsoft Learn is incredibly empowering, following an official plan yields some distinct benefits:
- Comprehensiveness. Plans provide complete coverage of all the concepts and skills required to truly master a domain, leaving no gaps.
- Efficiency. The resources within plans are carefully curated, allowing learners to laser-focus their efforts on just what’s needed.
- Structure. Clear start-to-finish learning paths prevent knowledge fragmentation and facilitate efficiently building specialized skillsets.
- Hands-on. Built-in coding, labs, and other interactive components solidify skills through applied practice.
- Validated expertise. Plans can incorporate certifications to formally validate and prove proficiency.
- Latest skills. Leveraging Microsoft’s deep technical expertise, plans rapidly integrate the latest cloud service updates and best practices.
What will I learn in the “Improve Reliability, Security and Performance on Azure” Plan?
With cloud spend efficiency becoming an ever-growing priority, these optimization skills are invaluable to organizations seeking to maximize their ROI from Azure. Among our official Learn Plans, the “Improve Reliability, Security, and Performance on Azure” Plan stands out for its immense business value and career impact potential. This comprehensive curriculum is designed to equip learners with deep skills for confidently designing, implementing, and managing cost-optimized Azure architectures at scale.
The Plan kicks off with fundamental cloud concepts like subscription management and organizational structure. It covers core Azure services like virtual machines, storage, databases, and networking through an optimization lens.
Learners then progress to more advanced cost optimization strategies such as reservation model pricing, Microsoft Azure Hybrid Benefit, and the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment. Monitoring, analytics, and automation techniques are explored for proactively identifying inefficiencies and waste.
Throughout, learners get hands-on practice with cost management and optimization tools like Azure Advisor, Azure Pricing Calculator, and Cost Management + Billing. Real-world design scenarios challenge them to apply optimization best practices end-to-end.
For those seeking validation, this Skilling Plan aligns perfectly with the AZ-305: Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions expert-level certification exam.
Upon completing the Plan, learners will have cultivated a comprehensive, job-ready skillset for designing and implementing cost-optimized, high-scale Azure architectures. This turbo-charges their impact across roles like cloud architects, solution engineers, cloud administrators and more.
Who should engage with this Plan?
This Azure Skilling Plan is designed for a broad audience, including:
- Cloud architects and engineers. Gain the skills to design and implement optimized Azure solutions from the ground up.
- Developers. Learn how to build applications that are inherently cost-efficient and performant.
- IT pros. Understand how to manage and optimize your existing Azure resources.
- Anyone with a passion for the cloud. Whether you’re new to Azure or an experienced pro, this plan offers valuable insights and practical skills to level up your cloud game.
What can I learn next?
After completing the official plan to “Improve Reliability, Security, and Performance on Azure,” you’ll find there’s lots more to discover on Microsoft Learn.
Our Learn Live sessions deliver technical readiness and skilling programming in a television format, typically broadcasted live with Q&A and available on-demand.
Azure Optimization Virtual Training Days aim to funnel Microsoft’s know-how into helping you optimize and manage your cloud investment. Guided by a Microsoft Technical Trainer, you’ll discover how Azure guidance, resources, and practices can streamline your cloud spend, enable modernization, and fuel innovation in the cloud.
How do I get started?
Whether you’re a cloud pro looking to formalize your optimization chops, or just starting to navigate Microsoft’s vast cloud learning ecosystem, the Microsoft official Plan “Improve Reliability, Security, and Performance on Azure” offers a powerful way to accelerate your skilling. By engaging with its learn modules, you’ll be equipped to confidently design, deploy and manage cost-efficient, high-performance Azure architectures that deliver maximum business value.
Getting started is simple. Head over to Microsoft Learn and enroll in the “Improve Reliability, Security, and Performance on Azure” Plan. The content is organized into logical milestones, so you can easily track your progress and pick up where you left off. Take advantage of the hands-on labs and community forums to solidify your understanding and connect with fellow learners.
The post Improve cloud performance and reliability with a guided learning plan appeared first on Microsoft Azure Blog.
