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Training

Strategic Training in Depth
Azure → Fabric → AI: A Layered Ecosystem

Azure is the foundation (compute, storage, identity, governance).  Fabric is the unifying layer that makes data usable end-to-end.  AI is the intelligence that sits on top.  

AI works well if the data beneath it (Fabric) is well-structured and the infrastructure (Azure) is strong.

Azure Data Fundamentals

Purview - Governance

Azure Fundamentals

Fabric Ecosystem

Azure AI Fundamentals

AI - Rag & Fine Tuning

Demystifying AI Agents

FabCon updates 

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📅 March 2025

Azure Virtual Training Day: Azure Data Fundamentals (DP-900)

Part 1 – 3/19/2025

  • Data concepts: structured (CSV), semi-structured (JSON/XML), unstructured (media, text), optimized formats (Avro, ORC, Parquet)

  • Relational vs. non-relational databases (OLTP vs. OLAP, keys, referential integrity, schema flexibility)

  • Core data roles & ETL (Extract–Transform–Load)

  • Azure storage: Blob, Azure Data Lake Gen2, Table Storage (NoSQL)

  • Azure Cosmos DB: partition/row keys, multi-API, global distribution

  • Large-scale analytics: Data Warehouse, Data Lake, Data Lakehouse, Apache Spark, Azure Databricks

  • Fabric introduction: unified SaaS analytics with OneLake

Part 2 - 3/20/2025

  • Data file formats & trade-offs: CSV, JSON, XML, Avro, ORC, Parquet, Blob

  • Relational databases in Azure: SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, MariaDB (cost vs. control, normalization)

  • Non-relational databases: Cosmos DB, ADLS Gen2 for analytics performance

  • Big data engines: Apache Spark, Azure Databricks, Lakehouse model

  • Fabric in practice: ingestion → analytics → visualization with Power BI

  • Real-time analytics: Event Hubs, Event Stream, Delta Lake, KQL for instant insights

  • Data visualization: Power BI dashboards, facts/dimensions, hierarchies, charts & maps

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Azure Virtual Training Day: Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900)

Part 1 - 3/26/2025

  • Cloud models (Public, Private, Hybrid), Shared Responsibility, CapEx vs. OpEx

  • Azure global infra: Regions, Availability Zones, Region Pairs, Subscriptions, Resource Groups

  • Compute: Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Virtual Desktop, Containers, Functions, App Services

  • Networking: VNets, NSGs, VPN Gateway, ExpressRoute, Azure DNS

Part 2 - 3/27/2025

  • Storage: Redundancy (LRS, ZRS, GRS, GZRS), Blob, Disk, Files, Tables, Queues, Access Tiers( Hot/Cool/Archive)

  • Identity & Security: Microsoft Entra ID, MFA, RBAC, Conditional Access, Zero Trust, Defender for Cloud

  • Cost: Pricing Calculator, TCO Calculator, Cost Mgmt + Tags

  • Governance & Monitoring: Azure Policy, Resource Locks, Purview, ARM Templates, Bicep, Azure Arc, Advisor, Service Health, Azure Monitor

 

John Savill's Technical Training - YouTube – for a strong Azure Foundation in cloud based analytics

  • I completed the 9+ hour course on Azure Fundamentals

 

Books to supplement online learning

 

Personal Fabric Learning Path

I joined a paid Online Fabric community to interact with a global network of passionate analysts, data engineers, data scientists (& more) looking to advance their careers on the Microsoft Fabric platform.​

📅 April 2025

Azure Virtual Training Day: Implement a Lakehouse with Microsoft Fabric (DP-600)

  • Part 1 — 4/3/2025

  • Part 2 — 4/4/2025

 

Azure Virtual Training Day: AI Fundamentals (AI-900)

Part 1 - 4/17/2025

  • Introduction to AI workloads: classification, regression, clustering, anomaly detection, recommendation systems

  • Responsible AI principles: fairness, reliability, inclusiveness, transparency, privacy & security

  • Machine learning fundamentals: supervised vs. unsupervised learning, features & labels, model training/validation/testing, overfitting vs. underfitting

  • Azure Machine Learning: no-code vs. pro-code experiences, model deployment options.

  • Cognitive Services overview: pre-built APIs for vision, speech, language, and decision workloads

 

Part 2 - 4/18/2025

  • Computer Vision: image classification, object detection, OCR, facial recognition, form recognizer

  • Natural Language Processing: sentiment analysis, key phrase extraction, entity recognition, translation, speech-to-text and text-to-speech

  • Generative AI: Azure OpenAI Service for text generation, embeddings, prompt engineering basics

  • Responsible AI guardrails: content safety, monitoring, compliance considerations in Azure

  • Integration & use cases: combining AI services into applications (chatbots, document analysis, translation, accessibility solutions)

 

DP-700: Fabric Data Engineer (7-part series)

  • Part 1 — Get Started with Data Engineering on Microsoft Fabric  (4/30/2025)

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Microsoft Tech Brief

  • Bring your data into the era of AI with Microsoft Fabric  (4/29/2025)

📅 May 2025​

DP-700: Fabric Data Engineer (7-part series)

  • Part 2 - Ingest & Manage Data in Fabric (5/1/2025)

  • Part 3 - Real-Time Intelligence in Fabric (5/7/2025)

  • Part 4 - Data Warehousing in Fabric (5/8/2025)

  • Part 5 - CI/CD, Monitoring & Security (5/14/2025)

  • Part 6 - Fabric Administration & Governance (5/15/2025)

  • Part 7 - Prepare for Exam Day + Q&A (5/21/2025)

 

AI-900 Fundamentals with Women in Azure AI (9-part series)

  • Part 1 - Cloud Computing Concepts (5/6/2025)

  • Part 2 - Introduction to AI (5/8/2025)

  • Part 3 - Computer Vision (5/13/2025)

  • Part 4 - NLP – Text & Language Understanding (5/15/2025)

  • Part 5 - NLP – Speech & Translation (5/20/2025)

  • Part 6 - Knowledge Mining & Document Intelligence (5/22/2025)

  • Part 7 - Generative AI (5/27/2025)

  • Part 8 - People, Growth & Generative Intelligence (5/28/2025)

  • Part 9 - Exam Simulation (5/29/2025)

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Microsoft Data Factory in Fabric (5-part series)

  • Part 1 - What’s New & Roadmap (5/22/2025)

  • Part 2 - AI-Powered Development Experience (5/27/2025)

 

Demystifying AI Agents (Microsoft, 5/21/2025) 

  • Learned to design modular AI agents with perception/action loops, multi-agent orchestration, and governance guardrails for trust, security, and compliance.

 

Other May Sessions

  • Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals: Generative AI (5/27/2025)

  • Fabric Edition: Securing Your Data in Fabric (5/28/2025)

  • Microsoft Discovery Hour: Modernize Your Security Operations Center (5/28/2025)

  • Microsoft Discovery Hour: Secure Your Future with AI-first Security Platform (5/29/2025)

  • Microsoft Tech Brief: Build Unique GenAI Experiences that Scale (5/29/2025)

📅 June 2025

Azure Virtual Training Day: Develop Your Own Custom Copilots with Azure AI

  • Part 1 - 6/9/2025

  • Part 2 - 6/10/2025

Microsoft Data Factory in Fabric (5-part series)

  • Part 3 - Mirroring with SAP Certified Partners (6/3/2025)

  • Part 4 - Deep Dive into Dataflows Gen2 (6/10/2025)

  • Part 5 - Q&A

Other June Sessions

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Build Azure AI Agents

  • What is Azure foundry, getting started, choosing your model RAG or Fine Tuning, Create a model deployment, Chat playground (how to), Agent Playground,

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📅 July 2025​

Generative AI training - John Savill's Technical Training - YouTube

  • Microsoft Foundry Training

  • Fabric Learning Path

  • Fabric Private Paid community to uplevel learning/knowledge learning how to build robust data analytics & engineering solutions with Microsoft Fabric

    • Course modules: completed all the Fabric lessons

    • Every other Saturday 2 back to back calls:

      • Fabric Monthly Updates & catch up: to talk through the latest product updates, and updates

    • Hands on tutorials: watched videos and engaged in community while looking into purchasing a private fabric tenant

      • Dataflow Gen2 – power query, M query, ETL/ELT

      • Data Pipelines – Orchestration, ETL/ELT, Metadata, Expressions

      • Data Warehousing & T-SQL – T-SQL, Data Warehousing, Data modeling

      • CI/CD – Version Control, Deployment Pipelines, Azure DevOps

      • Source Sorcery – REST API extraction

      • Lakehouse & Notebooks – Lakehouses, PySpark, Notebooks, Data Modeling/Transformation

      • Real-time & Streaming – Eventreams, Eventhouses, KQL

      • Data Quality & Testing – Data Quality, Code Quality, Governance

      • Security, Administration –

      • Monitoring & Optimization - Capacity Management

      • Solution Architecture – Architectural Design Making, Design Patterns, Medallion architecture

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📅 August 2025

  • Fabric Private Paid community to uplevel learning/knowledge learning how to build robust data analytics & engineering solutions with Microsoft Fabric

  • Strategizing further for deploying learning on private accounts

 

📅 September 2025

Microsoft Reactor Training: Customize AI Models with RAG & Fine-Tuning

  • Hybrid Strategies: RAG to ground models in external data + fine-tuning to adapt behavior for domain needs.

  • Azure Workflow Demo: Walkthrough of dataset preparation and fine-tuning job setup.

  • Responsible AI Guardrails: Built-in content safety, groundedness validation, and compliance checks.

  • Evaluation Metrics: Coherence, fluency, groundedness, precision/recall, and similarity-to-ground-truth.

CoPilot Training (Your 365 Advisor) - keeping up with the changes!​

5 day challenge to become familiar with Copilot. AI tools are the future of work.

  • The Microsoft home page is now called M365 Copilot

Microsoft Azure Virtual Training Day: Build an AI App with Azure using RAG -9/29/2025

  • Understand vCore-based Azure Cosmos DB for Mongo DB

  • Build you own AI copilot with vCore-based Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB and Azure open AI

 

Live Fabric calls

  • Saturday, September 13, 2025

    • Monthly Update & Catchup - Overview of recent Fabric product updates

    • Architecture Review with Ravi - We reviewed a real-world Fabric architecture from Community member Ravi! We discussed context, decisions, challenges in designing a Fabric Architecture

  • Tuesday, September 23, 2025

    • FabCon Excitement – Live call 9/23/2025 debrief

  • Sunday, September 28, 2025

    • Q&A Session - Our chance to meet, ask questions, and learn!

​​Hand on tutorials 

Making my way through over 120 hands-on tutorials and projects, split across the following modules:

  • Dataflow Gen2 – power query, M query, ETL/ELT (6 exercise builds)

  • Data Pipelines – Orchestration, ETL/ELT, Metadata, Expressions (12 exercise builds)

  • Data Warehousing & T-SQL – T-SQL, Data Warehousing, Data modeling (28 exercise builds)

  • CI/CD – Version Control, Deployment Pipelines, Azure DevOps

  • Source Sorcery – REST API extraction

  • Lakehouse & Notebooks – Lakehouses, PySpark, Notebooks, Data Modeling/Transformation

  • Real-time & Streaming – Eventreams, Eventhouses, KQL

  • Data Quality & Testing – Data Quality, Code Quality, Governance

  • Security, Administration –

  • Monitoring & Optimization - Capacity Management

  • Solution Architecture – Architectural Design Making, Design Patterns, Medallion architecture

 

📅 October 2025

Fabric Private Paid community to uplevel learning/knowledge learning how to build robust data analytics & engineering solutions with Microsoft Fabric

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