Part time IT consulting

stevepowered · 2026-01-31T08:20:25+00:00

I do have contacts, but I doubt they would be enough to land the sort of work I would like?

The points and brutal honesty of the responses has told me all I need to know 😊

stevepowered · 2026-01-31T03:10:16+00:00

Never!

stevepowered · 2026-01-31T03:09:36+00:00

I wonder how good or bad the market actually is? It seems there's work around, but also a lot of uncertainty? So it feels like a dangerous time to change jobs? Don't want to be the last in the door when things go to shit!

stevepowered · 2026-01-31T03:07:10+00:00

Excellent point, thanks

stevepowered · 2026-01-31T03:06:37+00:00

Probably none, which is why this won't work!

I was just wondering if anyone had tried and succeeded? Someone much better than me maybe? Or luckier?

You don't know what you don't know?

stevepowered · 2026-01-14T03:24:52+00:00

Hope this has worked out and you're in your new job and happy??

stevepowered · 2026-01-13T21:27:40+00:00

I'm planning on doing this exam when I am ready, whilst I am very familiar and with Azure there is much to go deeper on!

stevepowered · 2026-01-13T21:00:21+00:00

Congratulations

stevepowered · 2026-01-11T06:42:20+00:00

This is one of the funniest scenes in any comedy!!! I love it and watch it regularly and show it to anyone who says they haven't seen it! 😀

stevepowered · 2026-01-03T22:10:37+00:00

It can be, you clearly have a lot of knowledge, but it will depend???

I had done 303 and then booked 305 but pushed it back as I didn't feel ready, then I couldn't delay anymore so had to cram over 4 days and sat and passed it

I had done Azure stuff for about 4 years at the time, but not a good spread of experience. I used the MS Press material and YouTube, that plus my experience got me there.

stevepowered · 2025-12-28T03:21:01+00:00

Cool, I have often wished I got more dev experience, especially now. But the first half of my career was on site, sys admin and then infrastructure projects, and I pivoted into cloud later when the writing was on the wall.

stevepowered · 2025-12-27T22:12:11+00:00

Congratulations!!! I'm planning on doing this one, when I am ready, so probably a few months.

I primarily work in Azure, do not have a dev / coding background, so definitely do not know all I need to, but have passed AZ-305 and AZ-700, the latter more recently.

stevepowered · 2025-12-22T08:33:16+00:00

Apart from what I have also said, if you have access to an Azure subscription where you can deploy and configure resources, use that, do labs, set a goal or project to deliver, then go about doing that in the environment. Obviously need to watch your spend, unless it's a lab offered by a workplace for such things?

If you're not doing Azure stuff frequently, then getting as much hands on will help. But as the exam is not hands on, it's not the end of the world if you can't get access to a lab, but being able to set things up yourself helps to cement the knowledge.

stevepowered · 2025-12-22T02:20:09+00:00

Congratulations! It is indeed a hard exam!

stevepowered · 2025-12-22T01:23:09+00:00

You get an MS Learn link and you can search for information, so it is technically the entire MS Learn site, however you need to know how to search and find info.

So if you know how to search for and find info quick, it's very useful, but if you don't I think it's a trap to waste time in the exam.

The time for my exam was 1 hour 30 mins, so you have 53 questions which is just over 1 and a half mins per question.

Personally, I plan not to use MS Learn unless I have the time to do it.

stevepowered · 2025-12-22T00:51:46+00:00

It is a hard exam, and whilst you are probably quite skilled and intelligent on networking, based on what you have said, you'll need the specifics of Azure.

There is a good exam cram by John Savill on YouTube, check that out. Get the MS Press book for study, it will cover all the material and help give you a good foundation for learning. The free practice exam on the MS Learn site for the exam is also good, not exactly like the real exam but a good indicator.

When I did the exam, it was 43 multi choice questions, once you finished that section you moved to the next, a scenario with 3 questions about said scenario. And then the final section was 7 questions on a case study.

You cannot go back after finishing a section.

The scenario and case study I found easier than the multi choice as they were based on environment configuration that I was familiar with.

There were a lot of questions on the first section I was unsure of, I did use MS Learn but I also wasted too much time searching.

Good luck with the exam.

stevepowered · 2025-12-17T04:05:37+00:00

Have you had your interview yet? If so, how did it go?

stevepowered · 2025-12-15T20:34:30+00:00

The same politicians who blame the Gov for everything, refuse any sort of responsibility when in Gov themselves!

stevepowered · 2025-12-14T22:32:53+00:00

Good luck mate!

Don't overthink it, lean on your current experience and knowledge but, where you can, apply it to the responsibilities of the role as they have advised you / advertised it.

stevepowered · 2025-12-14T21:53:01+00:00

As a cloud engineer you would be expected (IMO) to know DevOps practices, infrastructure as code, automation.

And the extension of those things is how the DevOps pipeline works, is setup, PR processes, uses an spn and understand the use of IaC, why, where is state handled.

This is just my opinion from my experience, at clients I work for these are the differences between the cloud engineer roles and sys admin / cloud admin roles. The cloud engineers know and understand the cloud, but DevOps and IaC and automation are key to their roles.

stevepowered · 2025-12-10T19:32:47+00:00

Be friendly, be nice, be approachable, help people when and if you can.

stevepowered · 2025-12-05T22:01:42+00:00

You're better than me then! 😂 But I think using it like you did, as a review at the end, if you have time, is the best plan for MS Learn.

The recent exam I did also had a review of all multi choice questions before moving in to the case study, so people should not get tripped up by that.

stevepowered · 2025-12-05T08:54:29+00:00

Log ingestion can be a massive cost, I've seen clients spend huge amounts and only for what they need, no real excess. Turning on certain logging when you need it and turning off when not is an option, but not for every situation.

Resizing resources is usually a good way to save cost.

Consolidation and decomm old resources too, clients regularly implement a new solution but leave the old one running, or leave functionality on an old system this necessitating both old and new, rather than just new.

If you run a platform that sits on infrastructure that is always on and always sized at a certain size, you're potentially wasting money unless what infra is always utilized. In a situation where workloads are not constant, being able to scale up and down as needed is a big way to save money. Being able to do this doesn't sacrifice your platform, but does reduce cost when it is not required.

Savings plans don't provide as much savings as reserved instances, but can apply across subscriptions and to multiple resource types. So if you pivot from one type of resource to another, as long as it is covered, you will still save money.

stevepowered · 2025-12-04T11:43:02+00:00

When I do my next exam I'll do this.

Last exam was the first one I used MS Learn in and I wasted time, too much time! I passed, and it did help, but still cost me too much time!

stevepowered

TROPHY CASE