I recently passed the Puppet Professional exam and used Linux Academy‘s Learning Puppet DevOps Deployment course to prepare.  I believe that if you study the official Puppet Documentation, take the Linux Academy course and spend a good amount of time in the lab, you should be able to pass.

I hope this doesn’t sound too much like an advertisement, but the main reason for this post is point out what a great resource I think the Linux Academy is.  DevOps is a hot topic right now and there are plenty of high paying opportunities out there for people with a DevOps skillset.  At the end of this article I’ve pasted the Linux Academy course listing as of this posting.  You’ll find many topics that you’ll see in a DevOps job listing.  They even have a course on how to obtain a Linux job.

Here is an overview of what you receive:

Core Features

• 6 dedicated lab servers
• Self-paced labs in every topic
• Nuggets: bits of sparkly wisdom
• Help from the instructors
• Practice Exams & Exercises
• Certificates of Completion

When I first started learning computers I got a hold of an old computer and installed Linux on it.  As you can imagine, compared to the options that we have today this isn’t very efficient. Now we can spin up multiple virtual machines, try something, destroy and quickly rebuild them if needed.  I eventually moved on to using VMware Workstation and then to a home-based hardware lab.  When I talk to people that are looking to get involved in DevOps, they often say they want to build a home lab.  I normally try to steer them away from this approach.  It can be expensive, requires more equipment than they initially realize and impacts the electric bill.

Going with virtualization solutions such as VMware Workstation or Virtualbox is often a good choice, but even these can present obstacles to new users.  You still need to install an OS, configure OS networking and then deal with the virtualization networking options such as NAT and/or bridging.

Linux Academy provides 6 lab servers that can be available within minutes.  You simply select the OS you want and optionally specify a role such as a Chef server.  The servers are reachable via the internet as soon as they are finished being provisioned.  If you’re taking an AWS course, virtual machines are spun up using the Linux Academy account so you don’t incur an additional cost.

The barrier to entry doesn’t get much lower than this.  I can imagine someone with very little experience could start with the introduction to Linux courses and work their way up in a short amount of time.

Linux

Start Here

Introduction To The Linux Academy
Linux Essentials Certification

Associate

Introduction To Linux With Ubuntu 14 Desktop
SQL Primer
Introduction To Android Development
Mastering The Linux Command Line
Introduction To Python On Linux
How To Get A Linux Job
Linux By Example For Novices To Pros
Introduction To VMware ESXi
Git and Git lab – Start to Finish

Professional

Linux+ LPIC Level 1 Exam 1
Linux+ LPIC Level 1 Exam 2
Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) 7
Linux Foundation Certified Systems Administrator (LFCS)
Linux Foundation Certified Systems Engineer
PostgreSQL 9.4 Administration
LPIC Level 2 Exam 201
Apache Tomcat 7 Application Server
Apache Tomcat 8 Application Server
CentOS 7: Enterprise Linux Server Update
Introduction To Ruby Programming Language On Linux
Nginx And The LEMP Stack

AWS

Start Here

Introduction To The Linux Academy
Linux Essentials Certification

Associate

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Level
AWS Certified Developer – Associate Level
AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate Leve
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Level (2014)

Professional

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional Level
Deploying MariaDB Or MySQL On VPC EC2 From Scratch With Replication
Hybrid AWS Technologies

OpenStack

Start Here

Introduction To The Linux Academy
Linux Essentials Certification

Associate

OpenStack Essentials
OpenStack MCA100 – Associates Certification

Professional

Deploy and Manage OpenStack on Ubuntu – Icehouse
Red Hat OpenStack Administrator Certification

DevOps

Start Here

Introduction To The Linux Academy
Linux Essentials Certification

Associate

DevOps Essentials

Professional

Using Ansible for Configuration Management and Deployments
Learning Vagrant
Docker Deep Dive
Learning Chef DevOps Deployment
Learning Puppet DevOps Deployment (Puppet Professional Cert)
Jenkins and Build Automation