Something significant happened this week. I received a call from a recruiter about a potential Data Center role at AWS, with an interview scheduled for late April. It is not confirmed yet, but it is real enough to take seriously and prepare for properly.
This post is about what I am doing to get ready.
Why This Role Matters
My background sits at the intersection of cloud security, infrastructure, and IAM. I have spent the last few years working with AWS, Azure, and GCP, building and securing systems, and deepening my understanding of identity and access management. But a Data Center role at AWS is a different kind of challenge.
Data centre work is grounded in physical infrastructure, hardware, networking at scale, and the operational discipline to keep systems running reliably under pressure. It is where the cloud actually lives. Understanding what sits beneath the abstractions I work with every day is something I have always wanted to sharpen, and this opportunity is exactly the right reason to do it properly.
The Preparation Plan
I am giving myself until the interview to work through two focused courses. Neither is entirely unfamiliar territory, but a structured refresher before an interview is never wasted time.
Course 1: Master Cisco CCNA 200-301
Instructor: Jeremy McDowell
The CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) certification is one of the most recognised networking credentials in the industry. The 200-301 curriculum covers the foundational and intermediate networking concepts that underpin almost everything in a data centre environment:
- IP addressing, subnetting, and routing protocols
- Switching, VLANs, and Spanning Tree Protocol
- Network security fundamentals and access control lists
- Wireless networking principles
- Automation and programmability basics
- Network troubleshooting methodology
Jeremy McDowell’s course is thorough and well structured. For a role where you are expected to understand how traffic moves through physical and virtual infrastructure, this is the right foundation to revisit.
Course 2: CompTIA Server+
Channel: Bare Metal Cyber (YouTube)
Where CCNA focuses on networking, CompTIA Server+ covers the server-side fundamentals that sit alongside it in a data centre:
- Server hardware components and architecture
- Storage technologies and configurations (RAID, SAN, NAS)
- Virtualisation concepts and hypervisor management
- Server operating systems and administration
- Disaster recovery and business continuity planning
- Physical security and environmental controls in data centres
- Troubleshooting hardware and software failures
Bare Metal Cyber delivers this material in a clear, practical format on YouTube. For a Data Centre role specifically, Server+ content maps directly to day-to-day operational knowledge.
What I Already Bring
This preparation is not starting from zero. Over the past four years I have worked extensively with cloud infrastructure across AWS, Azure, and GCP. I have hands-on experience with IAM, system hardening, network security, SIEM tooling, and infrastructure automation. I have also been working through the AZ-900 certification material in detail over the past several weeks, which has reinforced a lot of the cloud architecture fundamentals from a different angle.
The CCNA and Server+ study is specifically about filling the gaps and sharpening the edges, particularly around physical infrastructure and networking at the level of depth that a hands-on data centre environment demands.
What Comes Next
Over the next few weeks I will be working through both courses alongside reviewing core data centre concepts. As I go through the material I will write up what I am learning here, the same way I have been documenting the AZ-900 journey.
Whether this particular opportunity comes through or not, the knowledge is worth having. Data centre operations, networking fundamentals, and server infrastructure are not going away. They are the foundation everything else is built on.
If you are also preparing for technical roles in infrastructure or cloud, feel free to reach out. Always good to compare notes.
