Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree Review 2024: Learn AWS Cloud DevOps from Udacity

Overview

Cloud DevOps, sounds cool? well, it is. DevOps is one of the most popular buzzwords in the field of Information Technology. DevOps Engineers work in collaboration with system operators, software developers, and some other IT professionals to facilitate, assimilate, and manage various operations, testings, and development.

Managing the IT infrastructure as per the supported software format in a multi-user environment is one of the core responsibilities of a DevOps Engineer. In this Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree Review 2022, we will be providing details about the Nanodegree in depth.

DevOps and its related roles come with a set of responsibilities. Initially, there are fewer responsibilities given to the Junior or Graduate DevOps Engineer.

However, some of the responsibilities of the professional DevOps Engineer are understanding the requirements and delivering them to developers, testing and analyzing code while working in collaboration with software developers and software engineers, contributing to Project Managements, improving and automating code and its development to release, and many more.

Coming to the skills required for a professional DevOps Engineer, they should have technical expertise in Cloud Infrastructure services such as AWS, Azure, etc. They should have hands-on experience in environmental management such as Linux/Unix, Windows, Shell, etc.

They should know how to manage nodes and diagnose application services with server issues. Proficiency in writing maintainable scripts is also expected along with technical knowledge of virtualization, automation, and DevOps working methodologies.

This Udacity Becoming a Cloud DevOps Engineer Nanodegree review will help you a lot in understanding the course structure, its pros, and cons, syllabus, and duration.

This Udacity Becoming a Cloud DevOps Engineer Nanodegree is a complete package where you can learn the skills and technology required to become successful in the field of DevOps.

There are some real projects which will help you to gain practical knowledge and understanding of industry standards such as Deploying a Static Website on AWS, deploying a High-availability Web App using CLOUDFORMATION, Building an automated CI/CD pipeline for Udapeople, etc.

If you buy the course through the links in this article, we can earn some affiliate commission.  This helps us to keep this blog up and running for your benefit.

About the Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree

In this Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree review, we will uncover the details and the collection of courses, lessons, or realistic projects designed to enhance your skills and gain abundant knowledge to build a successful career in the field of DevOps.

In this Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree, topics such as Cloud Foundations, Deployment of Infrastructure as a Code (IAC), Building CI/CD Pipelines, logging, and monitoring will be taught to you by world-class professionals.

After learning the skills from this Nanodegree you will gain confidence in implementing your ideas and thought required for the role of DevOps. This Nanodegree is kind of a complete package for students or professionals seeking to build a successful career as a DevOps Engineer.

If you are new to Cloud computing and its fundamentals then we recommend you to try this program Udacity’s School of Cloud Computing.

Udacity is a trusted name and giant in online educational platforms aimed to help students and professionals to enhance and develop their skills to give a boost to their career with the help of various online courses related to programming or technology.

There is a certain prerequisite required for this Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree. You should have intermediate knowledge of Front-end designing or Web development (HTML & CSS), Object-Oriented Programming, and Linux Command Line Basics.

After the completion of the Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree, you will be able to implement your knowledge of DevOps in this agile world.

Job Scenario

As various MNCs and big companies are adopting DevOps and looking for a quality DevOps Engineer, the demand for it is continuously increasing. The career path of the DevOps Engineer has had a bright future ahead ever since the middle of 2015.

There are various roles and responsibilities for the DevOps roles such as DevOps Architect, Security Engineer, Release Manager, Automation Engineer, etc. which is why it is also popular among students to choose DevOps as their Career option.

The average salary of the DevOps Engineer in the US Market is $95,269 per annum. Salary can vary based on certain conditions such as skills, area, experience, etc.

DevOps engineers must be well versed with various DevOps methodologies such as Continuous Integration and Delivery, Communication and collaboration, Microservice Architecture, etc. An entry-level DevOps Engineer earns around 6 to 10 LPA in the Indian market.

This complete Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree review will help you a lot in understanding the fundamentals of DevOps, its approaches, methodology, scopes, and implementations.

Now we will cover each detail of this Nanodegree, the features, advantages, and disadvantages so that you get to know the outcomes and the expectations from this Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree.

Costs and Duration of Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree

The overall duration of this Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree is 4 months and after enrollment, you have to give at least 10 hours per week to the program.

You can enroll in the program and access the complete 4-month duration of the course for a reasonable price of $1055.20. However, if you want to pay monthly for the course then you can pay $310.56 per month and continue your learning with this Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree.

Lastly, we always recommend you to stick to the date of completion and deadlines of the projects so that you may not lag behind and make it an unusual time-consuming program.

Prerequisite

Coming to the prerequisite of this Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree, intermediate knowledge of programming is required.

Prior knowledge of basic front-end development or Web development using HTML and CSS is required. It would be best if you build some kind of website or portfolio or blog on your own. Practical knowledge and experience in web development are always beneficial for various roles in the industry.

You should be well-versed with the concept of Object-Oriented Programming. It’s a kind of programming paradigm that relies on the concept of classes and objects. It is very useful in fast development with reusable and maintainable code format.

Lastly, having knowledge of some basic Linux commands using the Linux command line would be beneficial as it will be used in various DevOps methodologies and concepts.

It is always good to have basic knowledge of Web development, Object-Oriented Programming, and Linux. Well, If you already have the prerequisites then congrats, you are ready to rock and enroll yourself in the Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree and learn the important and valuable skills.

Syllabus of Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree

Now, coming to the syllabus part of this Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree review, well it is one of the best and comprehensive syllabi for students or professionals trying to get into the career track of DevOps.

The entire syllabus of this Nanodegree is divided into 4 courses where each of the courses has its own importance in developing the DevOps approach, the Nanodegree has various lessons along with challenging projects to practice your learning and implementations.

So, for now, let’s go in-depth with the details of every chapter and lesson in this Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree.

Course 1: Cloud Fundamentals

So, let’s start. This would be the first course of your Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree and in this course, you will learn the fundamentals of Cloud Computing with an introduction to computer power, security, networking, storage, and management services in the cloud.

By the ending of this course, you will deploy your first website to Amazon Web Services.

What is AWS?

This course of the Nanodegree program consists of seven lessons. So, let’s dive into the details of each lesson.

Lesson one is Cloud Overview. Getting an overview of learnings from any course is important and in this lesson, you will get a close overview of the Cloud and learn the basics of cloud computing including cloud deployment models, options, and benefits.

You will also explore various services provided by Amazon Web Services or AWS.

Lesson two is Foundational and Compute Services. In this lesson, you will learn why there is a need for servers, security, and compute power. You will explore AWS compute services like Elastic Cloud Compute, Virtual Private Cloud, Lambda for a serverless framework, and Elastic Beanstalk in action.

You will also launch a secure EC2 instance, create and execute a Lambda, and deploy an application to Elastic Beanstalk.

Lesson three is Storage and Content Delivery. In this lesson, you will learn why we need storage and content delivery in the Cloud. You will learn storage services like S3, DynamoDB, Relational Database Service (RDS), and CloudFront.

You will be creating a DynamoDB table, launching a MySQL database instance, and building a CloudFront distribution.

Lesson four is Security. In this lesson, you will learn the importance of security in the Cloud. You will see Identify and Access Management (IAM) in action and secure applications using IAM users, policies, and groups.

Lesson five is Networking and Elasticity. In this lesson, you will learn the basics of networking and elasticity in the Cloud. You will examine services like route 53, EC@ Auto Scaling, and Elastic Load Balancing.

You will add an auto-scaling policy to your EC2 instance.

Lesson six is Messaging and Containers. In this lesson, you will learn the basics of messaging and containers in the cloud. You will learn and explore services like Simple Notification Services, Simple Queue Services, and Elastic Container Services while creating cloud notifications using SNS.

Lesson seven is AWS Management. This will be the last lesson of this course and in this course, you will learn why we need logging, auditing, and resource management in the cloud. You will understand services such as CloudWatch, CloudTrail, CloudFormation, and some AWS Command-line interfaces.

Now you have completed all the lessons of the course and it’s time for you to work on a project. The project of this course is Deploy Static Website on AWS.

In this project, you will learn to deploy static websites (Websites that only include HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which requires no server-side processing). You will be creating an S3 bucket, configuring the bucket for website hosting, and secure it using IAM policies.

After that, you will be uploading the website files to your bucket and speeding up content delivery using AWS content distribution network service, CloudFront. After that, you will access your website in a browser with the help of the S3 endpoint.

Course 2: Deploy Infrastructure as Code (IAC)

In this course, you will learn about several tools that enable you to deploy underlying infrastructure components that provide security and services to the servers. You will deploy infrastructure using CloudFormation, AWS tools for Infrastructure as Code (IAC).

You will be using CloudFormation to deploy infrastructure patterns that are used broadly in the industry and can be used to deploy any cloud application. In the real world, you will start with initial business requirements that you will turn into Cloud Architecture Diagrams. After that, you will deploy this architecture using CloudFormation.

AWS CloudFormation

This course of the Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree is divided into five lessons briefly describing each of the concepts in detail. Let’s uncover some details of the lesson in this course.

Lesson one is Getting Started with CloudFormation. In this lesson, you will set up the necessary tools to get started with CloudFormation and deploy your first server using CloudFormation.

Lesson two is Infrastructure Diagrams. In this lesson, you will convert business requirements into infrastructure diagrams and understand the principles behind design choices.

Lesson three is Networking Infrastructure. In this lesson, you will implement a virtual private network and subnets and learn how to provide inbound and outbound internet access to your public and private subnets inside your VPC.

You will also be using a routing table to route the traffic within your virtual private cloud.

Lesson four is Servers and Security Groups. In this lesson, you will deploy a web server into an auto-scaling group.

Lesson five is Storage and Databases. So this will be the last lesson of this course you will deploy S3 storage for images, config files, and more. You will also deploy a relational database and encryption service for your application.

After all these lessons, you will be working on a project. The project of this course is to Deploy a High Availability Web App Using CloudFormation.

Course 3: Build CI/CD Pipelines, Monitoring, and Logging

In this course, you will learn about the process of taking software from source code to deployment and beyond. You will choose the right deployment strategy for your business needs and deploy an appropriate CI/CD pipeline.

CI/CD Pipeline: A Gentle Introduction

In addition, you will also learn to manage and make changes to your servers in an automated way, using Ansible, which is a leading configuration management tool.

This course of the Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree is divided into four lessons briefly describing CI/CD concepts in detail. Let’s uncover some details of the lesson in this course.

Lesson one is Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment. In this lesson, you understand the fundamentals of CI/CD with an example of business-centered benefits. You will also recognize common building blocks of CI/CD pipelines.

Lesson two is Building a Continuous Integration Pipeline. In this lesson, you will understand how and why to use configuration management tools and utilize configuration management tools to accomplish deployment to the cloud-based servers.

Lesson three is Enabling Continuous Delivery with Deployment Pipelines. In this lesson, you will know what configuration management tools are and how to use them.

Lesson four is Monitoring Environments. In this lesson, you will install and configure Prometheus as a monitoring tool. You will get various data sources into Prometheus and analyze monitoring data while setting up alerts.

So, after the completion of all these lessons, it’s time for you to apply your practical knowledge to a Project.

The Project of this course is to Build an automated CI/CD Pipeline for UdaPeople. In this project, you will demonstrate your Cloud DevOps Engineer skills being a new employee at Udapeople.

You will also set up automated monitoring and alerting to test and ensure the delivered value stays in demand.

Course 4: Microservices at Scale Using Kubernetes

Now, you will be moving to your last course Microservices at Scale Using Kubernetes, in this course, you will learn to create and deploy a Kubernetes cluster, configure Kubernetes autoscale, and load test a Kubernetes application. You will also learn to operationalize both existing and new microservices, applying container best practices.

You will learn to pick the appropriate abstraction for microservices such as AWS Lambda and Kubernetes.

This course of the Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree is divided into four lessons. Let’s uncover some details of the lesson in this course.

Lesson one is to Deploy High-availability Microservice Event-Driven Application. In this lesson, you will understand Serverless (AWS Lambda) concepts.

Lesson two is to Use Docker Format Containers. In this lesson you will understand Docker image format, you will run and modify Docker containers locally.

Lesson three is Containerization of Existing Apps. In this lesson, you will use the appropriate Docker base images, install packages into Docker image, and configure the application setup.

Lesson four is Operationalize and Orchestrate Kubernetes. In this lesson, you will understand Kubernetes concepts and configure monitoring, alerts, and incidence response.

After completing all these lessons of the last course, now you will be working on the course project “Operationalize a Machine Learning Microservice API”.

Lastly, you will have to work on the final Capstone Project. In this project, you will use all the topics and concepts you have learned in this Nanodegree.

Also Read: Udacity Cloud Developer Nanodegree Review 2022: Is it Worth it?

Pros and Cons of Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree

So after discussing all the prerequisites, costs, duration, and syllabus of the Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree. Now, let’s discuss the Pros and Cons part of this Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree review.

Pros :

DevOps Engineers are expected to bring a change in IT culture, focusing on rapid service delivery through various methodologies and good practices.

Finding a Good DevOps Engineer is difficult and that’s also the reason why its demand is increasing day by day. This Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree will develop your skills and provide you with everything required to become a professional DevOps Engineer.

The realistic projects in this Nanodegree are really an interesting part.  Working on real-world projects such as Operationalizing a Machine Learning Microservice API, Building an automated CI/CD Pipeline for UdaPeople, Deploy a High-Availability Web App Using CloudFormation, provides you wide industry exposure and practical knowledge which is hard to find in many online programs.

Top-class technical mentor support throughout the program. They always motivate you and help you to stay on your track while pursuing the course.

With Udacity there is always personalized learning at your pace to achieve personal goals with the help of their flexible learning program.

Studying with Udacity will always give you the advantages of a Personal career coach and services to help you out in interview preparation, building a resume, and online professional profile to boost your career.

The Course has been rated 4.6 stars out of 5 by most of the learners and graduates enrolled in the program.

Financial support is available worldwide in this challenging time of Pandemic for you to stay sharp and on track with this Nanodegree.

This Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree provides everything a beginner requires to become successful in the field of DevOps or Development Operations. Jobs and their value of DevOps are increasing per day.

This would be a golden opportunity for you to settle your career goals as a DevOps Engineer and achieve them with the help of this Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree.

Cons :

Still, some of the businesses and companies have not adopted the DevOps culture. So it may be challenging for you to handle the transitional changes in both technical and organizational.

Good DevOps Engineers are still hard to find, you have to master the DevOps approaches and methodologies to fulfill the demand of the company.

Nanodegree Certificate of Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree

You will receive a similar Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree certification upon graduation and completion of the complete program. Well, you should know that this certificate is not accredited by any university but it’s definitely a perfect way to show potential recruiters your qualification and skills.

You should definitely add it to your LinkedIn or Github profile to highlight yourself as a DevOps expert. You can easily access your certificate through your Udacity account.

The Advance features you get with Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree

Udacity is popular for its valuable and updated courses which have helped thousands of students, learners, and professionals to improve their skills and land a better job.

Apart from the courses and lessons in the program, they offer some extra services which make this Cloud DevOps Engineer Nanodegree so special. Let’s have a look at some of their services.

 1. Mentorship

They have a world-class mentorship which is one of the best parts of the Udacity programs. Mentors guide you throughout the entire program.

They will try to answer your every query and doubts which you might face in the program. Also, they will be responsible for reviewing your projects and providing feedback.

They already know how challenging some of the typical concepts can be, so they will always be in your corner to boost your confidence and motivate you.

2. Career Services

They always try their best to get you hired and that’s the reason why they help you in the preparation of Job interviews and building a professional resume and profile.

Your resume and profile will be reviewed by an expert who will recommend you to make changes or improvements in it if required.

Udacity also shares your profile with its partnered organizations.

3. Community and discussion forums

Udacity has a nice community feature where you will meet other like-minded peers from your batch and communicate with them.

You can share your ideas, ask a question in a group of students, and build a professional classroom-like environment.

4. Projects and High-Quality content

The quality of the content of any online learning platform is what really matters. It is more important than any other stuff available online. Here in Udacity, you will get high-quality content and project-based learning, the programs are overall project-centric.

You will be working on some realistic and interesting projects, which will definitely help you to gain more practical experience. All of your projects will be reviewed by your mentors who will guide you throughout the program.

You can add your projects and certificates to your Linkedin profile to attract potential employers. The instructors are industry professionals and many of them come from big MNC’s.

5. Graduation certificate

Having a certificate from a reputed Massive open online course is always an advantage for you. After the completion of the Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree, you will receive a decent graduation certification from them.

Most employers and potential recruiters are aware of the value of the content provided by Udacity and other big online educational platforms.

Must Read: My Experience: Udacity Review 2022| Are Nanodegrees Worth $1400?

About Instructors

1. Kesha Williams (Instructor of Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree)

Kesha has over 20 years of experience in software development and is a software engineering manager at Chick-fil-A, routinely leading innovation teams in proving out the use of cloud services to solve complex business problems. She was recently named an Alexa Champion by Amazon.

2. Carlos Rivas (Instructor of Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree)

Carlos is a Senior Solutions Architect at Infiniti Consulting where he helps institutions move traditional data centers to the cloud. He has worked for several large telecommunication providers managing and configuring network infrastructure using Java, Groovy, Python, Perl, and PHP.

3. Noah Gift (Founder of Pragmatic AI Labs)

Noah Gift teaches and consults at top universities and companies globally, including Duke and Northwestern. His areas of expertise are Machine Learning, MLOps, A.I, Data Science, and Cloud Architecture. Noah has authored several bestselling books, including Python for DevOps.

4. Byron Sommardahl (Chief Technology Officer)

Byron Sommardahl is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Acklen Avenue, an agile software development company. He has been developing software since he was 9 years old and is a true believer in anything that improves software maintainability, usability, and delivery.

Reviews from Learners of Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree

Review from Anonymous learner

Review from Ivan Penchev

Review from Dustin D’Avignon – The Road to DevOps

“The course offers a very good foundation for newcomers to the DevOps. Adding a new component or a complete course on leveraging security tools in the whole process will make this even more useful. In general a good taste of learning and a satisfying journey. Quick review: The course on Jenkins and CloudFormation could be improved. The course from Noah (4th course) is the best one, very practical and informative with lots of additional challenge quests one can choose to complete. The first course is also good.” – Diego P.

“The first part of the program is an overview of the services available in the cloud, almost a solutions architect in a nutshell with hands-on exercises and theory. The content is great and project 1 represents a useful deployment of a static website using s3 and CloudFront which is pretty neat once you understand permissions, lifecycle, and IAM roles.” – Jose N.

More Reviews

Andrew Wilson

Principal Software Engineer

★★★★★

Moving Forward.
Another milestone has been achieved!
I’ve earned loads of information during this Nanodegree program about Cloud & DevOps technologies. Some of which is how to use AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, CircleCI, …etc.

You can find the final project here: https://lnkd.in/dkAScMhf
As well as all projects: https://lnkd.in/drsRuyVs

Can’t wait for more challenges!
#cloud#devops#nanodegree#udacity#aws#docker#kubernetes#k8s#circleci

Peter Hanna

Site Reliability/DevOps Engineer at Extreme Solution – AWS Certified Cloud Solution Architect Associate

★★★★★

Finally received my Nanodegree certificate in cloud DevOps after months of hard work. It was a challenging experience but I got to learn a lot about configuration management and troubleshooting as well as hands-on experience in CICD, IaC, Docker, and K8S. Looking forward to more challenges!

Udacity#CloudComputing#DevOps

Is Cloud DevOps Engineer Nanodegree worth it?

DevOps can be one of the best career opportunities for you if you try to master its approaches, methodologies, and skills as we already said that various companies are always in search of Good and efficient DevOps Engineers.

The skills and the technologies taught in this Nanodegree can make you proficient for any DevOps role such as Security Engineer, DevOps Architect, and many others. Practical projects at the end of every course along with the Capstone project are more than enough to provide you practical industry-level experience and boost your confidence.

Overall this Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree is up to the mark and is best for intermediate learners who want to become successful in the field of DevOps or crack the interview for the role related to it. This job role will be in more demand as more and more companies adopt the DevOps culture.

At last, We say Yes to this Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree, however, it’s all up to you, how talented you are and what you’re gonna do to extract out the best possible outcome from this Nanodegree. Remember you should do good research and learn more about the things you are interested in.

FAQ’s related to Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree

Why should I enroll?

Cloud Computing and the DevOps field are expected to grow rapidly in the upcoming years. Top companies are always looking for tech talents to join as DevOps Engineers across Industries.

What jobs will this program prepare me for?

DevOps Engineer, Reliability Engineer, Release Manager, Security Engineer, Automation Engineer, Software Tester are some of the Job roles for which you will get prepared in this Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree.

How do I know if this program is right for me?

This Nanodegree is for developers, operation managers, system admin interested in building software delivery pipelines, automating IT infrastructures, or managing and deploying Infrastructure.