Update: This page was completely updated in January 2016. Links were fixed, and new links were added.

Scope and overview

Inspired by Don Jones‘ excellent “Don’t Get Stuck in Your Job” blog post, I’ve taken some time to compile a bunch of online IT training to help people diversify their IT knowledge, for free.

This post covers a selection of free IT training that I’ve found on my travels. Topics are diverse, and include areas like: Virtualization and Cloud, Networking, Security, Linux, Storage systems, PowerShell, to Programming and Database fundamentals.

I believe that as IT Professionals, the more aspects of IT that we understand and appreciate, the better we’re able to meet the needs of business. I’d really like this to evolve into a community resource for anyone who wants to diversify their IT knowledge. If you’ve found other free IT training or resources that aren’t mentioned here, please feel free to mention it in the comments and I’ll endeavour to add it (I’m particularly interested in official training from vendors).

If you’re left wondering where on earth you’re going to get time to study all this, remember that it only takes about 20 hours to pick up a subject/skill, and that’s merely a month of Lunch-times!

Virtualization and Cloud

VMware

Full list of Free self-paced learning from VMware

EMC

Hyper-V

OpenStack

Multi-technology Virtualization

Docker (Containers)

PowerShell

Linux