kenpat
39a1541270
Strip all CompTIA A+ references, exam dates, and deadlines from the project-facing documentation. Certifications roadmap now starts at CCNA, learning path phases renumbered, interview prep updated accordingly. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
126 lines
5.4 KiB
Markdown
126 lines
5.4 KiB
Markdown
# Learning Path — From Where You Are to Cloud Engineer
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## Your Advantage
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You don't have a blank canvas. You have a live production system you built — eleven services running across two hosts with SSO, active-active failover, and shared databases. Most people study networking in a textbook. You configured Cloudflare DNS, set up Tailscale, debugged a Docker networking ufw issue, and traced a distributed systems bug in OAuth2. That's hands-on experience that study alone can't replicate.
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The goal now: attach the vocabulary, depth, and theory to things you've already done.
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---
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## Phase 1 — CCNA (3–6 Months)
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The CCNA will make everything in your homelab make deeper sense. After CCNA, re-read the networking.md file in this repo and you'll see how much more you understand.
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**Study approach:**
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1. **Jeremy's IT Lab** (free YouTube + Anki flashcards) — start here
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2. **Packet Tracer labs** (free from Cisco) — build networks, don't just watch
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3. **Subnetting practice** — do it daily until it's instant. Use subnettingpractice.com
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4. **Week 1-4:** OSI model, TCP/IP, subnetting, Ethernet, switching
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5. **Week 5-8:** VLANs, Spanning Tree, inter-VLAN routing
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6. **Week 9-16:** IPv4 routing (OSPF, EIGRP), IPv6, ACLs, NAT
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7. **Week 17-20:** WAN, wireless, security, automation basics, practice exams
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**Labs to build in Packet Tracer that map to your homelab:**
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- Build the monk + kscloud1 network topology
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- Simulate the Cloudflare Tunnel concept with a router acting as the "edge"
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- Set up ACLs that mimic your ufw rules
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---
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## Phase 2 — AWS SAA-C03 (After CCNA)
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**Study approach:**
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1. **Stephane Maarek's course** (Udemy) — the industry standard
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2. **AWS Free Tier** — rebuild your homelab services as AWS equivalents:
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- Forgejo → CodeCommit
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- Custom portal → S3 static website + CloudFront
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- Prometheus/Grafana → CloudWatch
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- Authentik → Cognito
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- Docker Compose → ECS Fargate
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- Tailscale → VPC + PrivateLink
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3. **Tutorial Dojo practice exams** — Jon Bonso's exams are the most accurate
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**For each AWS service you study, map it back to your homelab:**
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| AWS | Your Homelab Equivalent |
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|-----|------------------------|
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| EC2 | Hetzner VPS (kscloud1) |
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| S3 | Static file storage |
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| VPC | Docker bridge network (kitestacks) |
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| ALB + CloudFront | Cloudflare Tunnel + edge |
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| RDS | Shared Postgres on kscloud1 (Authentik + Forgejo) |
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| ElastiCache | Shared Redis on kscloud1 |
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| CloudWatch | Prometheus + Grafana |
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| Route 53 | Cloudflare DNS |
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| IAM | Authentik RBAC / groups (homelab-admin) |
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| Secrets Manager | .env files (what you'd replace) |
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| ECS / Fargate | Docker Compose (what you use) |
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| VPC Peering | Tailscale overlay |
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| Confluence/SharePoint | BookStack |
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| ServiceNow | OSTicket |
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---
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## Phase 3 — Hands-On Learning Between Certs
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Don't just study. Build.
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**Projects to add to your homelab that teach real cloud concepts:**
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1. **Add Terraform** — define your kscloud1 server in Terraform so you can destroy and recreate it in minutes. This is Infrastructure as Code, a core cloud skill.
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2. **Add a CI/CD pipeline** — set up Forgejo Actions (Forgejo's built-in CI/CD) so that pushing to a repo automatically tests and deploys changes. This is what DevOps engineers do all day.
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3. **Add Vault** — replace .env files with HashiCorp Vault for secrets management. Real production environments never use .env files.
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4. **Add Kubernetes** — migrate one or two services from Docker Compose to a local k3s cluster. k3s is lightweight Kubernetes — you have enough RAM on monk.
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5. **Add automated backups** — write a script that backs up your Docker volumes to an S3 bucket (or kscloud1) nightly.
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Each of these is a cert objective AND a portfolio item.
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---
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## Daily Practice Habits
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**15 minutes per day beats 3 hours on weekends.**
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- **Subnetting:** Do 10 subnet calculations per day during CCNA study
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- **Flashcards:** Anki for networking concepts, AWS services
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- **Logs:** Check `docker logs` on a different service each day — understand what it's saying
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- **Break something:** Pick one service per week, deliberately misconfigure it, diagnose and fix it. Document what you broke and how you fixed it.
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- **Read error messages:** When something breaks, read the full error before Googling. Form a hypothesis first.
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---
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## Resources — Free First
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| Topic | Resource | Cost |
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|-------|----------|------|
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| CCNA | Jeremy's IT Lab (YouTube) | Free |
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| CCNA labs | Cisco Packet Tracer | Free |
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| AWS SAA | AWS Skill Builder free tier | Free |
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| Python | automate the boring stuff (automatetheboringstuff.com) | Free |
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| Docker | docs.docker.com "Get Started" | Free |
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| Git | git-scm.com/book | Free |
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| Linux | linuxcommand.org | Free |
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| Networking deeper | tcpdump / Wireshark tutorials | Free |
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**Worth paying for:**
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- Stephane Maarek's AWS SAA on Udemy ($15 on sale — never pay full price)
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- Tutorial Dojo AWS practice exams ($15)
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- Jason Dion CCNA practice exams on Udemy ($15)
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---
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## How to Know You're Ready to Interview
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You're ready when you can:
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1. Explain the OAuth2 authorization code flow from memory without notes
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2. Subnet any /24 or /25 network in under 30 seconds
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3. Describe what happens at each layer of the OSI model when you ping google.com
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4. Walk someone through what happens when a request hits www.kitestacks.com
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5. Explain the difference between authentication and authorization
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6. Describe what a VPC is and why it exists
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7. Answer "what would you do differently?" with a real answer (not "nothing")
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