Labs by certification¶

Which hands-on projects back up which certification. Doing the lab is worth more than re-reading the notes: most of these exams test whether you have actually built the thing.

46 of 151 cert guides have a matching lab. The rest have no lab yet - that is a gap, not a judgement about the cert. Labs are mapped by hand in each project's certs: frontmatter.

AWS¶

Cert	Labs
AWS Certified AI Practitioner (AIF-C01)	Build a RAG pipeline
AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate (SOA-C03)	Hands-On Project: Set Up a Monitoring Stack
AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate (DEA-C01)	Hands-On Project: Build a Data Pipeline
AWS Certified Developer - Associate (DVA-C02)	Hands-On Project: Build a Serverless Application
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional (DOP-C02)	Hands-On Project: Build a CI/CD Pipeline
AWS Certified Generative AI Developer - Professional (AIP-C01)	Build a Claude agent with MCP, Build a RAG pipeline, Set up an eval harness
AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer - Associate (MLA-C01)	Hands-On Project: Deploy a Machine Learning Model
AWS Certified Security - Specialty (SCS-C02)	Hands-On Project: Implement Zero Trust Security
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03)	Hands-On Project: Deploy a 3-Tier Application
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional (SAP-C02)	Hands-On Project: Disaster Recovery Drill

Azure¶

Cert	Labs
Azure AZ-305: Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions	Hands-On Project: Disaster Recovery Drill
Microsoft Azure Administrator (AZ-104)	Hands-On Project: Deploy a 3-Tier Application
Microsoft Azure AI Engineer Associate (AI-102)	Build a RAG pipeline
Microsoft Azure Data Engineer Associate (DP-203)	Hands-On Project: Build a Data Pipeline
Microsoft Azure Data Scientist Associate (DP-100)	Fine-tune with LoRA, Hands-On Project: Deploy a Machine Learning Model
Microsoft Azure Developer Associate (AZ-204)	Hands-On Project: Build a Serverless Application
Microsoft Azure Security Engineer Associate (AZ-500)	Hands-On Project: Implement Zero Trust Security
Microsoft DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-400)	Hands-On Project: Build a CI/CD Pipeline

GCP¶

Cert	Labs
Google Cloud Associate Cloud Engineer Certification	Hands-On Project: Deploy a 3-Tier Application
Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect Certification	Hands-On Project: Disaster Recovery Drill
Google Cloud Professional Cloud Developer Certification	Hands-On Project: Build a Serverless Application
Google Cloud Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer Certification	Hands-On Project: Build a CI/CD Pipeline, Hands-On Project: Set Up a Monitoring Stack
Google Cloud Professional Cloud Security Engineer Certification	Hands-On Project: Implement Zero Trust Security
Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer Certification	Hands-On Project: Build a Data Pipeline
Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer Certification	Hands-On Project: Deploy a Machine Learning Model

Kubernetes/CNCF¶

Cert	Labs
Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)	Hands-On Project: Set Up a Production-Like Kubernetes Cluster
Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)	Hands-On Project: Set Up a Production-Like Kubernetes Cluster
Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)	Hands-On Project: Implement Zero Trust Security
Prometheus Certified Associate (PCA)	Hands-On Project: Set Up a Monitoring Stack

HashiCorp¶

Cert	Labs
HashiCorp Terraform Associate (003) Certification	Hands-On Project: Build Infrastructure with Terraform
HashiCorp Terraform Authoring and Operations Professional Certification	Hands-On Project: Build Infrastructure with Terraform

Databricks¶

Cert	Labs
Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate	Hands-On Project: Build a Data Pipeline
Databricks Certified Generative AI Engineer Associate	Build a RAG pipeline, Set up an eval harness
Databricks Certified Machine Learning Associate	Hands-On Project: Deploy a Machine Learning Model
Databricks Certified Machine Learning Professional	Fine-tune with LoRA

NVIDIA¶

Cert	Labs
NVIDIA Certified Associate - AI Infrastructure Operations (NCA-AIIO)	Run Llama on a single GPU
NVIDIA Certified Associate - Generative AI and LLMs (NCA-GENL)	Run Llama on a single GPU
NVIDIA Certified Professional - Agentic AI (NCP-AAI)	Build a Claude agent with MCP
NVIDIA Certified Professional - Generative AI & LLMs (NCP-GENL)	Fine-tune with LoRA

GitHub¶

Cert	Labs
GitHub Actions Certification	Hands-On Project: Build a CI/CD Pipeline

Red Hat¶

Cert	Labs
Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Administration (EX280)	Hands-On Project: Set Up a Production-Like Kubernetes Cluster

CompTIA¶

Cert	Labs
CompTIA Cloud+ (CV0-004)	Hands-On Project: Deploy a 3-Tier Application, Hands-On Project: Disaster Recovery Drill

Cloud Security Alliance¶

Cert	Labs
CCSK v5 - Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge	Hands-On Project: Implement Zero Trust Security

Anthropic Claude¶

Cert	Labs
Claude Certified Architect - Foundations (CCAR-F)	Build a RAG pipeline
Claude Certified Developer - Foundations (CCDV-F)	Build a Claude agent with MCP
Claude Prompt Engineering Specialist - Self-Directed Study Track (CPES)	Set up an eval harness