My Azure Certification Journey: From Zero to Cloud Confident (with ChatGPT as My Study Buddy!)

Introduction

I never planned to get into Azure. In fact, until recently, my career had been all about on-prem servers, racks, and blinking lights — the classic IT Operations life. Then, suddenly, I inherited a SaaS project at work after the previous person quit.

I logged into Azure for the first time, looked around, and thought:

“Well… this is different.”

And not in a good way.

Reality Check: The Cloud Isn’t Just Magic

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Within days, I realized:
✅ Our cloud costs were insanely high due to inefficient plans and oversized resources.
✅ Security vulnerabilities were everywhere in the Azure Dashboard.
✅ I had no idea what I was doing.

That’s when I had my “aha” moment — I needed to understand Azure before it burned a hole in my company’s budget (or my career!).

So, I decided to get Azure certified and turn this challenge into an opportunity.

Step 1: Choosing the Right Certification (and Asking ChatGPT for Advice!)