Hi @alaminmishu,
Welcome to the forums! It’s awesome to see you planning for your path ahead.
Please understand that this response is based off of personal experience, and not by any “tried and true” way.
I’m very much interested in this certification HashiCorp Cloud Engineer Certifications
Oooh, which certifications are you interested in?
Can you help me by suggesting to me which machine should I used for my DevOps or SRE or Cloud Solution Architect Career goal?
From my point of view, any machine with an operating system can be used. I know SRE’s who can function perfectly fine on chromebooks <$500 USD. Part of this, though, is because they understand where most of their work takes place - ie, the cloud.
If you are taking courses through an online class, most of the time, you’ll be using a web browser, and likely an IDE. Assuming you are focused on cloud infrastructure, and have work resources to deploy to the cloud, your own personal computing capability should be very minimal.
If you are going the Development route, where you’re frequently compiling code, emulating operating systems or virtualizing large workloads - then you’ll want to dig into specifications.
In general, an “Average” build in today’s technology would be something with 6 cores, at least 8GB of RAM, but tending to 16 if possible. Here’s Apple’s MacBook Pro line, which most developer’s/large enterprises may issue. The 16" form factor is considered a “desktop replacement”, and can be nice if/when people are travelling again.
BUT, if your company is looking at 13" Macbook specifications for your base performance - 1300 still gets you a GREAT Desktop + Monitor + Keyboard route.
So, my final recommendation is to ask your company how they handle PC builds. If they get it direct from a sourcing company, there may be configurations you can find that match that budget. One tool I referred to during my PC building was Logical Increments, which gives you an understanding of gradually increasing performance parts and their price ranges.
That’s the Hardware Recommendations I have - Figure out what your company’s budget is, and match HW from there. Don’t shell out a ton of money for Hard Drives or GPU’s, as they won’t be utilized in your regular workflows for a few years.
The bigger difference is “What OS/Workflows do you like” - and this is all personal preferences. When I started, I enjoyed MacOS, as it is “Linux-like” enough to navigate like a server and be generally okay with the concepts and abstractions.
Recently (After 7 years), I switched to windows. Powershell is definitely different. You can use “GitBash” to come close to a Linux native terminal on Windows, but it’s not perfect. If you get Windows 10 Professional, you can get Windows Subsystem for Linux which provides emulation for Ubuntu and CentOS. This is a bit of an overkill, because Vagrant is awesome for emulation of Linux Operating systems.
So, in short - If you’re already on Windows, I recommend sticking with Windows. If you are going to be Work From Home all the time, getting a Desktop is better than a Laptop. Play with Vagrant and if that gets you the Linux/Windows workflows you want, take advantage of that.
Extra areas to play in - WSL if your machine/company support it, or exploring MacOS for versatility.
Hope this opinion helps~!