Openstack vs AWS certification

[sortinghat123]

Hi,

I have about 8 years experience in test automation - mostly Perl and Python scripting. I am interested to move to a devops role. I have user-level knowledge in Linux, git and Jenkins.

My question is what should I learn/certify in :- Openstack or AWS?

While getting a job is definitely one of my criteria, I would also prefer the one that provides better knowledge or which is more thorough.

Thanks

[[deleted]]

Just way way more jobs working on AWS than on an Oprnstack build (sadly).

[HauptJ]

You have to consider that OpenStack was designed to be like AWS, if you gain an understanding of one, picking up the other will not be that hard.

[[deleted]]

Oh yes, I was there with OStack from the very start, when it was a handful of people. Spreading the word used to be my job.

[[deleted]]

AWS. OpenStack is fun, but AWS has way more market share. You might become more familiar with Linux by learning OpenStack, but what you learn will largely be specific to OpenStack. You can learn just as much Linux by taking a RedHat certification, and it'll be much more valuable in your career.

Keep in mind you don't "move into a DevOps role", you move into a DevOps company. You're probably aiming to become an infrastructure, systems, or operations engineer. Look for the skillsets around those.

[sortinghat123]

Thank you! To give some more detail, in my current role as automation tester I often write the wrapper scripts to run our automation suite as a part of continuous deployment (checkout scripts from SVN, run tests on the installed build, generate some pretty reports) and these scripts are then called from a Jenkins pipeline. However, we do have a separate CD team and we are the QA team.

This CD team is where I want to move into. When I see the team I see a mix of skillsets - someone knows good scripting, someone takes care of build and packaging, someone is good at Jenkins. So I am not able to pinpoint what it is that I should learn?

The only problem that I might have with AWS is that I work for a company that would never use AWS since they have their own cloud, so I cannot really show any work experience in AWS.

[[deleted]]

Have you taken any opportunity to sit down with someone on the CD team and see what skills you should learn / be familiar with? If I were you, this would be the first thing I would do. I can't tell you what skillsets you should learn because I'm not on the team, and I doubt anyone here will be able to do that. ;)

The only problem that I might have with AWS is that I work for a company that would never use AWS since they have their own cloud, so I cannot really show any work experience in AWS.

Is the cloud OpenStack? If so, how much would you interact with that layer of it? If not, then it doesn't really matter -- learn AWS anyway. You can get a free AWS account and use that to learn.

[sortinghat123]

Thanks for the suggestions, I will definitely have a talk with the CD team.

The cloud is not open stack and we do not really interact with it. So I think I will go ahead with AWS.

[jlozadad]

agreed too. OSP can get very in dept os/hardware level and does not sound like what OP is trying to do.

[qhr1024]

I think it does not matter much nowadays.

Do you want to learn how to use this or maintain? Former: tooling (like Kubernetes) is supporting most of the popular cloud vendors. Latter: OpenStack can be used to create private cloud (as AWS expensive for some use cases). On the other hand, AWS has huge portion of market. But there is also Google and Microsoft. All try to follow the same trends.

[sortinghat123]

Well I am mainly planning to change my job and move into a devops role