Microsoft is a company best known for a range of options, both hardware and software, in the modern world. From their Surface tablets to Microsoft Office, a widely known thing about Microsoft is that you pay for what you get. While they offer some free tools, Office and even Microsoft Windows, cost a small amount if you want to use them. This makes it all the more surprising when they announced that you can now get a certification for managing an operating system on Azure, their cloud based system. The operating system in question will cost you nothing, it’s Linux.
The new Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate Linux on Azure Certification will be used to show that you as a professional can run and manage Linux based servers on Microsoft’s cloud system (Azure). While this is a surprise, only a few years ago Azure didn’t support anything like Linux, however, it is not a giant surprise given the recent push by companies and governments to embrace open source software.
In order to get the new certification, you need to have passed not only the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator but also the Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure solutions exam.
While it’s nice for Microsoft to continue supporting open source software, and even with competing operating systems, I see it being a rare case where people (and companies) will be paying out hundreds for certification of free software.
