On prem infrastructure to cloud - Career advise

[Guest2]

It's interesting re-visiting this thread 2-3 years later.
We do still have on premises services running but in my area over 200 servers have been decommissioned.

A year or so ago I moved teams and therefore had time to use the portal more and more and start looking at other areas including terraform.
I started out with some basics and adjusting/adding to existing code and getting familiar with the CI/CD process and the whole new world of Git/Gitlab. We build an Azure Virtual Desktop PoC environment in the GUI and are now building this out in code (very early stages)

Other areas im learning are AKS and Azure firewall, multiple changes have been carried on firewalls and AKS. Log Analytics Workspace, monitoring in general, AI and HCP Vault have also be touched on and recently created a new LAW specifically for AKS in IaC.
I've also been pulling recommendations from Advisor to improve security, system stability and reduce cost as things are starting to add up!

I now see it's not a 'glorified button presser' at all after working with network engineers who run some DevOps sessions. There is still very much a need for design and engineers to design and implement solutions.

Treating infrastructure like cattle instead of pets (and AKS like insects!) I now understand someones comment too
Course / qualification wise, i've not bothered really but have been going through an online AKS course, though its not really hands and prefer looking at what we have and making improvements where necessary. I have read The Pheonix project, recommended for anyone in IT.

The journey will be long, but it's certainly interesting.

 

[OspreyO]

The problem I have with phoenix project book is that mostly everyone in it, eventually comes around to the right way of doing things, and that's not what happens in real life.

While we saved money moving to the cloud, the costs of being in the cloud are rising. I can see at some point we'll be back to where we started on costs. But we'll be far more entrenched in our cloud providers.

The other side is due to things like increasing data protection, and a return to the office, increasing lockdown of what the staff can do, will mean we are not leveraging the cloud as intended. The cloud also requires an lift in everyone's skillset especially the end users. I think we've fallen short with that. It's not a gap that can be bridged by buying in staff due to a shortage of skilled people, and restricted budgets.

 

[Guest2]

The problem I have with phoenix project book is that mostly everyone in it, eventually comes around to the right way of doing things, and that's not what happens in real life.

While we saved money moving to the cloud, the costs of being in the cloud are rising. I can see at some point we'll be back to where we started on costs. But we'll be far more entrenched in our cloud providers.

The other side is due to things like increasing data protection, and a return to the office, increasing lockdown of what the staff can do, will mean we are not leveraging the cloud as intended. The cloud also requires an lift in everyone's skillset especially the end users. I think we've fallen short with that. It's not a gap that can be bridged by buying in staff due to a shortage of skilled people, and restricted budgets.

Yep, but i did think as i was reading "are yes, thats x person where i work"
100% costs are only going to go up skyrocket and the reason we are already looking to switch cloud providers even though we're only about 60% migrated into cloud.

Big changes for end users too, espcially in terms of MFA but most of ours are smart and everyone is becoming more and more tech savvy as the years go on. General age of end user is now ~35 so have grown up with tech in general. It's not like it was 15-20 years ago when the average user just about open MS Word and browse the web, most have now been using smart phones and MFA for social media and other apps for at least a few years.

 

[OspreyO]

MFA is another black hole of developers skillset's.

I don't think it's age. You get teens all using the cloud at school, social media, smart phones, yet can't use excel, or collaborative documents or databases. You'll get the teen techies who can, but the majority struggle to organise their inbox or reply coherently to an email or text.

Back on topic in the last few years I shifted to cloud side of DevOps. Still big holes in my skillset and qualifications and expressive. But its the cloud stuff that mostly keeps me vaguely relevant when it comes to jobs.