TL/DR
Cloud Computing Overview
- Cloud computing enables on-demand IT resource delivery with pay-as-you-go pricing
- Three deployment models: on-premise, cloud, and hybrid
- Six key advantages include cost-effectiveness, scalability, and global reach
Cloud Job Roles
- Cloud Architect designs overall cloud strategy and environment
- System Administrator manages cloud system performance and configurations
- Security Administrator ensures data integrity and protection in the cloud
- DevOps Administrator optimizes cloud usage and manages development pipelines
AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF)
- Six perspectives: Business, People, Governance, Platform, Security, and Operations
- Provides guidance for successful cloud adoption across various organizational aspects
Migration Strategies
- Six common strategies: rehosting, replatforming, refactoring, repurchasing, retaining, and retiring
I. Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources with primarily pay-as-you-go pricing.
Cloud computing deployment models
- On-premise
- Deploy resources by using virtualization and resource management tools.
- Increase resource utilization by using application management and virtualization technologies.
- Cloud
- Run all parts of the application in the cloud.
- Migrate existing applications to the cloud.
- Design and build new applications in the cloud.
- Hybrid
- Connect cloud-based resources to on-premises infrastructure.
- Integrate cloud-based resources with legacy IT applications.
Six advantages of cloud computing
- Pay-as-you-go: The cloud computing model is based on paying only for the resources that you use. This is in contrast to on-premises models of investing in data centers and hardware that might not be fully used.
- Benefit from massive economies of scale: By using cloud computing, you can achieve a lower cost than you can get on your own. Because usage from hundreds of thousands of customers is aggregated in the cloud, AWS can achieve higher economies of scale, which translates into lower pay-as-you-go prices.
- Stop guessing capacity: Stop guessing on your infrastructure capacity needs. When you make a capacity decision before deploying an application, you often end up either sitting on expensive idle resources or dealing with limited capacity. With cloud computing, these problems go away. You can access as much or as little capacity as you need, and scale up and down as required with only a few minutes notice.
- Increase speed and agility: IT resources are only a click away, which means that you reduce the time to make resources available to developers from weeks to minutes. This results in a dramatic increase in agility for the organization, because the cost and time it takes to experiment and develop is significantly lower.
- Realize cost savings: Companies can focus on projects that differentiate their business and remove the "undifferentiated heavy lifting", instead of maintaining data centers. With cloud computing, you can focus on your customers, rather than racking, stacking, and powering physical infrastructure.
- Go global in minutes: Applications can be deployed in multiple Regions around the world with a few clicks. This means that you can provide lower latency and a better experience for your customers at a minimal cost.
II. Job Roles in Cloud
Cloud Architect
The Cloud Architect is responsible for delivering an overall cloud strategy and is in charge of the entire cloud environment. The Cloud Architect builds a business’s cloud architecture blueprint to deliver highly available, cost-efficient, and scalable cloud environments. This role supervises deployment in the cloud environment and application architecture for all aspects of the cloud. It is critical that a Cloud Architect is knowledgeable enough to be your business’s AWS Cloud subject matter expert and the go-to for anything related to the cloud.
System Administrator
The System Administrator is responsible for overall performance of cloud systems. They are the glue that keeps systems working together by managing configurations, completing detailed tasks, and assisting Database Administrators with setting up database servers in the cloud.
A System Administrator in the cloud maintains data integrity by deploying, configuring, and monitoring hybrid and cloud solutions instead of infrastructure performance and maintenance.
It’s essential that the System Administrator is adaptable and proficient with configuration management, requirements gathering, deployment planning, and completing detailed hands-on task
Security Administrator
When using AWS, you gain the control and confidence you need to securely run a business with the most flexible and secure cloud computing environment available today. Going back to our shared responsibility model, security and compliance is a shared responsibility between AWS and the customer. AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud, which includes protecting the infrastructure that runs all of the services offered in the AWS Cloud. The customer is responsible for security in the cloud. This is the Security Administrator’s primary responsibility.
A Security Administrator must be someone that is trusted and exceptionally knowledgeable because they are responsible for the overall integrity, confidentiality, and protection of data and resources in the cloud.
This role is a combination of reactive (investigates when security incidents or concerns are reported) and proactive (puts standards and development processes in place to reduce the number of security incidents). While the Security Administrator does not need to know all of the details of cloud operations, they do define security requirements based on their company’s security and regulatory requirements.
To ensure security in the cloud, the Security Administrator must have a deep understanding of security rules and requirements applicable to their unique business. They must be highly resourceful, because it isn’t possible to memorize every rule or regulation. This role communicates these requirements down to engineers and up to decision makers to understand and address security risks.
DevOps Administrator
The DevOps Administrator optimizes the use of the AWS Cloud. They help businesses operate at a larger, faster scale by managing developers and orchestrating the numerous tools and stages in the pipeline.
This role creates and maintains processes so that teams and developers can follow the model of small, rapid releases. To do this, this role manages the release cycle to ensure that there is enough pipeline to evaluate changes that need to be made, tested, and pushed to production. Additionally, the DevOps Administrator conducts tests and backs out changes if there are issues. They have the ability to quickly roll back changes if something doesn’t work.
Because the DevOps Administrator is responsible for orchestrating the pipeline, this role must be proficient with programming scripting languages, operations, QA, and testing.
III. Map On-Premises Job Roles to Job Roles in the Cloud
IT Solutions Architect → Cloud Architect
On-premise
The IT Solutions Architect typically will move directly into the Cloud Architect role.
On Cloud
The Cloud Architect is the subject matter expert (SME) for the team. They are the go-to for anything related to the cloud.
This is typically a lateral move for an IT Solutions Architect. Their day-to-day concern changes from on-premises issues with hardware, HVAC, or server upgrades, for example, to a focus on cloud technology. An example of a task for a Cloud Architect might be to assist a System Administrator who needs help with an integration.
System, Network, and Desktop Administrators → AWS System Operations Professional and AWS Security Administrators
On-premise
System Administrators install, support, and maintain computer systems and servers.
Network Administrators design, install, configure, and maintain LAN and WAN.
Security administrators install, configure, manage, monitor, and enforce security solutions.
Desktop Administrators deploy, configure, secure, manage, and monitor devices and applications.
On Cloud
As an example, an on-premises System Administrator might move into the AWS System Operations (SysOps) role. In this role, they oversee the server, network, and desktop teams.
The team member who was the Network or Security Administrator often fills the AWS Security Administrator role.
Database and Application Development Administrators → AWS DevOps Administrator
On-premise
Database Administrators direct or perform installation and maintenance of databases in the IT environment.
Application Development Administrators keep the organization's applications up and running.
On Cloud
AWS DevOps Administrator
AWS DevOps Administrators build and operate fast and scalable workflows. They collaborate with others, such as developers and DevOps engineers, to design and build automation solutions.
IV. Cloud Adoption Framework
At the highest level, the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) organizes guidance into six areas of focus, called Perspectives. Each Perspective addresses distinct responsibilities. The planning process helps the right people across the organization prepare for the changes ahead.
In general, the Business, People, and Governance Perspectives focus on business capabilities, whereas the Platform, Security, and Operations Perspectives focus on technical capabilities.
Business Perspective
The Business Perspective ensures that IT aligns with business needs and that IT investments link to key business results.
Use the Business Perspective to create a strong business case for cloud adoption and prioritize cloud adoption initiatives. Ensure that your business strategies and goals align with your IT strategies and goals.
Common roles in the Business Perspective include:
- Business managers
- Finance managers
- Budget owners
- Strategy stakeholders
People Perspective
The People Perspective supports development of an organization-wide change management strategy for successful cloud adoption.
Use the People Perspective to evaluate organizational structures and roles, new skill and process requirements, and identify gaps. This helps prioritize training, staffing, and organizational changes.
Common roles in the People Perspective include:
- Human resources
- Staffing
- People managers
Governance Perspective
The Governance Perspective focuses on the skills and processes to align IT strategy with business strategy. This ensures that you maximize the business value and minimize risks.
Use the Governance Perspective to understand how to update the staff skills and processes necessary to ensure business governance in the cloud. Manage and measure cloud investments to evaluate business outcomes.
Common roles in the Governance Perspective include:
- Chief Information Officer (CIO)
- Program managers
- Enterprise architects
- Business analysts
- Portfolio managers
Platform Perspective
The Platform Perspective includes principles and patterns for implementing new solutions on the cloud, and migrating on-premises workloads to the cloud.
Use a variety of architectural models to understand and communicate the structure of IT systems and their relationships. Describe the architecture of the target state environment in detail.
Common roles in the Platform Perspective include:
- Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
- IT managers
- Solutions architects
Security Perspective
The Security Perspective ensures that the organization meets security objectives for visibility, auditability, control, and agility.
Use the AWS CAF to structure the selection and implementation of security controls that meet the organization’s needs.
Common roles in the Security Perspective include:
- Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)
- IT security managers
- IT security analysts
Operations Perspective
The Operations Perspective helps you to enable, run, use, operate, and recover IT workloads to the level agreed upon with your business stakeholders.
Define how day-to-day, quarter-to-quarter, and year-to-year business is conducted. Align with and support the operations of the business. The AWS CAF helps these stakeholders define current operating procedures and identify the process changes and training needed to implement successful cloud adoption.
Common roles in the Operations Perspective include:
- IT operations managers
- IT support managers
V. Migration Strategies
6 strategies for migration
When migrating applications to the cloud, six of the most common migration strategies(opens in a new tab) that you can implement are:
Rehosting
Rehosting also known as “lift-and-shift” involves moving applications without changes.
In the scenario of a large legacy migration, in which the company is looking to implement its migration and scale quickly to meet a business case, the majority of applications are rehosted.
Replatforming
Replatforming, also known as “lift, tinker, and shift,” involves making a few cloud optimizations to realize a tangible benefit. Optimization is achieved without changing the core architecture of the application.
Refactoring/re-architecting
Refactoring (also known as re-architecting) involves reimagining how an application is architected and developed by using cloud-native features. Refactoring is driven by a strong business need to add features, scale, or performance that would otherwise be difficult to achieve in the application’s existing environment.
Repurchasing
Repurchasing involves moving from a traditional license to a software-as-a-service model.
For example, a business might choose to implement the repurchasing strategy by migrating from a customer relationship management (CRM) system to Salesforce.com.
Retaining
Retaining consists of keeping applications that are critical for the business in the source environment. This might include applications that require major refactoring before they can be migrated, or, work that can be postponed until a later time.
Retiring
Retiring is the process of removing applications that are no longer needed.
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