{"id":986,"date":"2014-02-10T08:45:09","date_gmt":"2014-02-10T14:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/?p=986"},"modified":"2014-02-10T08:47:31","modified_gmt":"2014-02-10T14:47:31","slug":"microsoft-virtual-academy-coursesfree-it-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/2014\/02\/microsoft-virtual-academy-coursesfree-it-training\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Virtual Academy Courses &ndash; Free IT Training"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I often get requests and questions related to training, along with general questions about how I keep up with technology.&#160; They range from general requests (\u201cHow do I get started with database administration?\u201d), to much more specific (\u201cHow can I implement High-Availability for Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 R2 without purchasing expensive shared storage?\u201d).&#160; There\u2019s often a wealth of information available online, with sources including blog posts, product web sites, training videos, White Papers, and industry publications (online and offline).&#160; The challenge often becomes trying to organize the available information and to manage your learning.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com\/?mtag=MVP33705\">Microsoft Virtual Academy<\/a> (MVA) site is a free resource that includes a huge collection of free, online learning materials on dozens of topics.&#160; The content provides both topic-specific (Virtualization, Hybrid Cloud, etc.) and product-specific (Hyper-V, System Center, etc.) content.&#160; In addition to standard online courses, there are also live events.&#160; The content is presented by industry experts (such as Microsoft MVPs), along with Microsoft\u2019s own product developers and managers.<\/p>\n<p>I recently participated in a multi-day Windows Azure Jump-Start series (if you\u2019re interested, the content will be made available on-demand).&#160; You can find, sign up for, and attend events using the <a href=\"http:\/\/events.microsoftvirtualacademy.com\/?mtag=MVP33705\">Microsoft Virtual Academy Live Events<\/a> page.<\/p>\n<p>The MVA site also offer some other convenient features.&#160; You can earn \u201cpoints\u201d on the site for completing training courses and evaluations.&#160; It\u2019s kind of like Xbox Live Achievements, and it helps to see how much time and effort you\u2019ve put into keeping current or learning something new.&#160; You can also add various courses to your My Learning Plan queue, so whenever you have some free time, you can jump quickly into a course.&#160; You can even download an unofficial Transcript to keep track of which courses you\u2019ve finished.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, if you\u2019re looking for a good way to keep up with Microsoft products and industry best practices, I highly recommend visiting the MVA site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I often get requests and questions related to training, along with general questions about how I keep up with technology.&#160; They range from general requests (\u201cHow do I get started with database administration?\u201d), to much more specific (\u201cHow can I implement High-Availability for Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 R2 without purchasing expensive shared storage?\u201d).&#160; There\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-it-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=986"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":990,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986\/revisions\/990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anildesai.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}