First post of 2022

I had originally titled this “Last post of 2021” as I was hoping to publish it before Christmas, but as with many best-laid plans these days, Covid caused mine to go awry.

I caught the virus in late November which meant I had little to no energy (or desire) to be writing a blog post over the Christmas period, especially as I had spent the last few weeks of the month studying for the HashiCorp Certified: Vault Associate exam.

Based on my resting heart rate (I track it daily) over the last few months, I’m only just getting back to the level I was at prior to infection. Not a complete recovery yet, but enough to face whatever 2022 has to offer.

2021 was a monumental year for me. After 18 years together, a beautiful daughter, and several failed attempts at getting married (because of Covid lockdowns) Clare and I finally tied the knot!

We couldn’t travel abroad for the honeymoon, but we managed to get out of the house for some relaxing days in London (Probably where we caught Covid). I even fired up Ableton on my return and produced the first and only track of year - Rejuvenate.

My New Year’s Resolutions are not quite going to plan (when do they ever) but I intend to dedicate more time to music production this year so watch this space….

HashiCorp Certified: Vault Associate

It’s safe to say I was building up to this one.

I had originally planned to take this back in July, but after reading several blog and forum posts it convinced me to take the HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate exam instead.

I didn’t need to study as much for this one as I had recently attended the Vault 101: Introduction to Vault for Developers & 102: Introduction to Vault Operations training courses and the content was still fresh in my mind.

I’d mentioned in a previous post that the HashiCorp documentation is great and given the accessibility of the software (you can just download it) there’s no reason you couldn’t pass the exam with just those resources alone.

Prior to booking the exam, I picked out a couple of courses on Udemy (There’s not a massive selection out there) that helped enforce the knowledge enough for passing the exam.

If you have read some of my posts on security certification, you’ll know I have recommended a few courses from Zeal Vora in the past, so it was a simple decision picking up his latest HashiCorp Certified: Vault Associate 2021.

I also used the HashiCorp Certified: Vault Associate - Practice Exam - 2021 by Bryan Krausen as it came recommended by colleagues who had recently passed the exam. Both trainers offer discount codes on their GitHub repos here and here so be sure to save some pennies.

The only question now is whether I carve out some time for the Consul exam…