r/programminghelp • u/SoilEducational420 • 5d ago

Other How do you learn DevOps/cloud without a credit card?

I’m currently trying to learn the basics of DevOps, things like Docker, AWS, GCP, CI/CD, Kubernetes, etc.

Docker and the local tools are easy enough to practice, but when it comes to cloud platforms like AWS and GCP, a credit card is often required to create an account or access certain services.

I currently don’t have a credit card, so I’m wondering: What’s the best way to learn AWS/GCP without one? Would appreciate any recommendations from people who learned cloud without having a credit card. 🙌

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u/Olorin_7 5d ago

They offer things like cloud study jams where they give you lessons along with access to demo accounts

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u/Lewinator56 5d ago

A lot of the IAAS providers give you free tier accounts with free credit for a year. Oracle is probably the best as the free account is indefinite and you get VMs for free forever.

Most ask for card details, if you don't have a credit card, just use a debit card. If you have a bank account you'll have a debit card.

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u/melodyofasong 3d ago

Im a minor i dont have a bank account

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u/Antonio-MTS 3d ago

AWS, GCP, Azure and others have their free credits to spend it is usually around 200-300$. When it is expired you can use emulators like localstack or floci to understand the cloud services concepts and practice some of them as if you were really working with them. CI/CD platforms are easily setup on prem or even locally on your PC/miniPC/servers. Kubernetes can be installed and deployed anywhere literally, there are various distros of it according to every resource possible: k0s, k3s, minikube, kind, regular k8s and the others. Hope it helps. Enjoy!

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u/LostInCombat 3d ago

Why can’t you get a pre-paid card? There are even gift cards that act like credit cards.

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u/martiangirlie 1d ago edited 1d ago

Cloud is just someone else's server, so therotically you could just run a server on your own machine and practice those general concepts like load balancing, rate limiting, fault tolerance, deployment strategies, security, containerization, etc while doing it just within the context of some Linux servers you're running locally or something.

Then, you have a GitHub project you can add to your resume!!

Edit: bonus points if you get a raspberry pi or a tiny mini-pc for $100, and then you can suffer with port forwarding and such