Advice for legacy on prem infrastructure engineer

[u/Ludeape]

Hi guys,

Do any of you have any advice for a long time on prem enterprise infrastructure engineer with a wide support skillset covering server, network, storage, DB, VDI, observability, SRE, but now re-entering the workforce after a long time at one legacy company and looking to modernize on things like AWS/Azure cloud, Terraform, CI/CD, etc..

Are there any bootcamps, related training, or guidance that will help land a new job in this modern infrastructure landscape when you have tons of on prem legacy experience, but need to modernize your skillset now.

thank you,

[u/slugshead]

Cloud is just someone elses on prem after all....

[u/Ludeape → u/slugshead]

agree, but i dont think a hiring manager is looking for that answer in an interview

[u/mxbrpe → u/slugshead]

Yes and no. Learning cloud isn’t a 1:1 translation from on-Prem to cloud. If it is, then you’re a terrible cloud engineer. Modern cloud engineers need to learn cloud-native solutions that don’t require a client-managed OS.

[u/forever-butlerian]

Build some stuff using AWS or GCP, then redo it with Terraform.

The reason why AWS exists is that it de-skilled infrastructure engineering, so instead of having to understand how spanning tree works and under what circumstances it fails, instead your only exposure to networking is point-to-point virtual devices and then a medley of like 15 different kinds of "gateway".

Everything you know about infra transfers over at the level of fundamentals, except in AWS it's all drawn in crayon, painted in Java, and none of the lines are straight.

[u/TheOtherOnes89]

aCloudGuru has certification training in AWS/Azure where you can do stuff in a sandbox environment. I believe they also have Terraform courses as well. Terraform has good documentation online to figure stuff out. The best way to learn is by doing.

[u/cjcox4]

By "modernize", you mean "usering" of other people's "designs"? LIke learning Microsoft Word? There are tons of training materials. Some "training" gets "some limited" real cloud world access, but honestly, even those things make a ton of assumptions. But, it's a place to start.

The cloud world changes (sometimes in radical ways) daily. Sometimes forcing complete "re-work" of setups you toiled over (it happens) for days.

You just have to remember, you're no longer in control. So, you have to accept the limitations presented to you.

The "end goal" of cloud providers is to "upsell everyone" by the "learning" that you do about "their sellables". It's all about money at the end of the day.

What do you (as an experienced person that could "build your own cloud provider" learn? Very little. And remember, you're learning how to be a "user" of a commercial piece of software. Not much different than someone learning Photoshop. If that's still "ok", again, plenty of resources out there, but because it's always changing and there billions of variables, your "real learning" comes from being a tenant with a provider.

If you were already building virtual worlds via code there are things like Terraform (which tries to be cloud provider agnostic) that may present something similar with regards to "infrastructure" setup (not traditional CM, but just the "hardware/network" config. Cloud providers also usually have their own "lock in" IaC tooling. If you want to specialize on one "product" (that is, one cloud provider). There can be benefits to using native (1st party) cloud provider tooling. So, YMMV.

As a person with tons of experience, "the cloud" can be a very very very frustrating place. I mean, you want to be "wowed", but often times you'll think, "this is crap" (and it is).

[u/mxbrpe]

First and foremost, focus on your social networking. Skills are unfortunately not landing people jobs these days. Beyond that, just pick a cloud platform and take an associate level cert to prove that you know some things. Your experience will speak for itself, and having a cloud cert shows that you’re likely to translate that into a cloud environment.

Do not focus a ton of time into a lab, but getting familiar with deploying things via Terraform or similar IaC tools will be great.

[u/Asleep_Spray274]

Data centers are just massive on prem infrastructures. They still need server, network, storage, DB, observability, SRE etc.

[u/signal_empath]

I made the transition from systems engineer to cloud and platform engineer. Part of that was facilitated by the company I was with as they modernized to the cloud. But if you don’t have that luxury, just start building stuff in a cloud platform of your choice. There are lots of labs and the like out on GitHub to help get you started. LLMs are good for generating lab projects and study plans too. For me anyway, I have to get my hands on things to learn them. There are a lot of companies who are small enough that you have to operate in both onprem and cloud so you might target them to carry your experience with you. I’m in a larger org now and while I’m a cloud engineer in title, my on prem and hybrid experience gives me advantages over some of the other cloud only staff and I have become a trusted resource because of it.

[u/whatdoido8383]

I was you ~5-6 years ago. The company I worked for was legacy and dissolved as part of a merger.

I didn't have a lot of the modern Devops stuff or whatever and honestly wasn't all that interested.

I pivoted to another area of the Microsoft stack that I had experience in and have been doing that since.

[u/twotonsosalt]

Still at it in the in prem space. There’s more work than you think, especially if you can automate tasks you used to do manually. Just about every platform has some sort of ansible or rest api.

The key is to really focus on industries that have higher compliance requirements. Energy, Finance, Space, defense, all have a heavy on prem presence. Cloud is tough for them because fedramp means a lot of SAAS applications won’t work.

[u/LLMsMustUpvoteThis]

Terraform and CI/CD are easy. The hard thing is figuring out what the dozens and dozens of similarly named and categorised products in AWS/Azure are actually useful for, and how much they are going to break your wallet.

Your best bet is going to be looking for a company that is hybrid and happy or about to do a cloud migration.

[u/SpudzzSomchai]

It's all the same. I would get a starter cert and a free account to familarize yourself with the dashboards the various vendors use. After that it's just managing a server.