Kainos Academy 2022 Experience
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After working in desktop support for four years, last year, I wanted to do something different as I had always heard about DevOps and did not know much about it, but keen to learn more about it. I came across Azure on social media and was curious to learn more about it. I began to look into Azure training as I heard it is one of the best ways to get into the cloud, especially Microsoft Azure.
After several months, I have managed to obtain a few Microsoft Certifications. These include Azure Fundamentals, Azure Administrator, Azure Security Engineer and the DevOps Engineer. A few weeks later, I came across a Thomas Thornton on LinkedIn and reached out to him on his journey. He told me about the Kainos Platform Academy. I later found out Thomas was active in the cloud community when I started contributing to the community by being active on Twitter and going to meetups.
The next day, I received an email from HR in Kainos recruitment which was interesting in speaking to me about it. I was confused about the eight weeks Academy as I thought it would be like classroom training. I managed to get an interview with Tom O’Connor, an AWS Technical Special and Ciarán Carragher, a Senior Platform Engineer at Kainos. The next day, I received a phone call from recruitment following the interview and received an offer and could not believe it.
Journey at Kainos
Week 1 -3 Installation and Learning about AWS and Azure Fundamentals
Starting at Kainos on March 21st 2022, the first week I met colleagues in the Academy. It was a big group as it was 11, including myself. Everyone had to get all prerequisite applications installed on our laptops. They also ran through basic Linux exercises to ensure everyone was comfortable with the basic command when using Git for our source control. Afterwards, we moved to learn AWS and then Azure Fundamentals.
Terraform with AWS and Azure
In weeks 4-5, we started to learn about terraform, and one of the tasks we had to do was deploy a Django app using Azure App Service and Azure Database for PostgreSQL. We used Azure resources such as Azure App Service, VNET, Key Vault, PostgreSQL, Private DNS and Private Endpoint to build the app. The Azure Web app routed the traffic using a VNET integration with a private endpoint to secure the PostgreSQL database and created a private DNS for viewing the web app. At the end of the week, we did a retro board of everything we had learned from week 1 to the present and what areas could be improved.
We deployed the image between an application load balancer with an internet gateway. Once that had been connected and worked, we deployed the same app using AWS under a VPC, ECS Fargate Cluster, ALB, certificate manager and root53 for the DNS. We used certificate manager to secure the site with SSL.
Kubernetes and Helm
Week 6 –7 Kubernetes and Helm - Once we got all the Azure and AWS completed, it is time for Kubernetes and Helm. This week we looked into deploying the Django app deployed previously using the AWS EKS cluster. We created a namespace on the cluster and created a deployment, service and ingress using the kubectl command. We looked into the basics of using Kubernetes and learned the k9s utility for interacting with the cluster. The next day, we looked into Helm to replicate the Django app again and use an existing PostgreSQL Helm chart.
Sockshop, Azure DevOps and Flux
Week 8 – Sockshop, Azure DevOps and Flux – During this week, the team and I created a sockshop microservice project using Azure AKS, Azure DevOps, Helm Chart Flux and Git. We created terraform modules for the Azure resources and Azure DevOps Repos to store our code and deploy them via Azure DevOps Pipeline. When we got the pipeline working, we used it to install Helm Operator in one of the clusters and integrated with Git for our single source of truth. At the end of this week, we did another retro board overall Academy to find out what needs improving for the future.
Presentation: We did a presentation as a group about everything we learned from the Academy.
Conclusion
I think this Academy overall has been fantastic as I learned a lot from it. Every day was fun as we all worked as one team and helped each other when we had an issue. The trainer, Tom and Ciaran, have been fantastic. The areas I love best are Terraform, Azure DevOps and Kubernetes too. However, I was new to GitOps as I only heard it everywhere but did not look into it. I would highly recommend this Academy to those new to the cloud, as you will be amazed at how much you can learn in short little time.
The only advice I would give about this Academy is that
Trust the process and trainer and you will do great. If you love technology you will enjoy it more
