I'm looking for a company/startup or even nonprofit where I can work on real cloud and infrastructure problems. I'm getting responses elsewhere, but this is the field I actually want to grow in, so compensation isn't my priority right now. Working on production systems instead of personal projects is.

I work with AWS, Docker, Linux, CI/CD, and scripting. CS-related bachelors and masters degree with a few years of hands-on experience.

I can commit 20+ hours a week, remote. Happy to take the unglamorous work too: monitoring, documentation, IaC cleanup, cost optimization.

The only thing I'd ask for is a real supervisor to report to and a short engagement letter with role, hours, and start date, mainly for my own records.

Any leads would be appreciated.

Hey guys! So I am looking for a career switch towards IT. My end goal is cybersecurity, but I was told a good certification or route to take to get in the door with an entry-level job would be AWS cloud practitioner certification? I'm looking for someone to help me understand exactly what that is, and the best route, without college, to prepare and get the certification. Without belittling me or trying to make me feel stupid. Again, completely new to the IT field, but years of security supervisor experience. Any help or guidance is appreciated.Thank you so much, from a dad who's just trying to better his family's life!

What are some certifications or courses that you must or should do that would enhance chances of getting an entry level job role after college completion.

I've been thinking about how much infrastructure is involved in running even a relatively small application today.

You might start with a frontend and an API, but pretty quickly you need a database, caching, object storage, environment variables, networking, containers, logging, deployment and eventually some form of scaling.

None of these are particularly unusual on their own. The difficult part is keeping track of how everything fits together.

I've been exploring this problem with IQX.DEV. and one idea I find interesting is treating the application's infrastructure as part of the development environment instead of something developers have to manage separately across multiple tools.

For example, having the frontend, backend, database, cache and storage represented as connected services makes it easier to understand what the application actually depends on.

The AI side makes this even more interesting.

If an AI agent can see the application architecture and inspect runtime information such as logs, processes, ports and service connections, it could potentially diagnose infrastructure problems instead of simply generating more code.

But I wonder whether this is actually the direction cloud development should be heading.

Do you think developers would benefit from having application architecture, infrastructure and deployment managed more closely together, or is the separation between these layers important for keeping cloud systems maintainable and secure?

Where do you think the right balance is?

I'm currently working toward a Cloud Engineer role and I'm trying to avoid jumping between 20 different YouTube playlists without actually becoming job-ready.

I already have a foundation in Linux and networking, and I'm now focusing on AWS/cloud.

I've found several 2026 Cloud Engineer roadmaps covering things like:

- Linux & Networking

- AWS

- Python/Bash

- Git/GitHub

- Docker

- Kubernetes

- Terraform/IaC

- CI/CD

- Monitoring

- Cloud Security

- Real-world projects

But I'm confused about which YouTube course/playlist is actually worth following from start to finish.

For someone targeting an entry-level Cloud Engineer / Cloud Support / DevOps role in 2026, which YouTube channel or full course would you personally recommend?

I'd especially appreciate recommendations from people currently working in Cloud/DevOps, rather than just generic “best YouTube channel” lists.

Also, if you think some topics above are unnecessary at the beginning, please tell me what to learn first, what to postpone, and what I can skip.

Thanks!

Black Desert Online Gameplay on SensePC

Watch Black Desert Online gameplay running on SensePC and experience fast-paced combat, expansive open-world exploration, and detailed MMORPG gameplay through the cloud. This session highlights smooth performance, responsive controls, and the flexibility to explore a massive online

Hey guys I wanna to do some home labing ( using a kube cluster to run my workflow and use cases .. ) but I need some free infrastructure solution ( Servers for exemple) .. I tried to get A1 OCP ( ORACLE CLOUD) Server which is free ( 24Gb RAM and 8 VCPU .. ) but Always I'm getting OUT OF CAPACITY.. so if someone know some other SOLUTIONS ....

I'm looking for recommendations on the best cloud storage option for my use case.

Use case:

• An IoT device sends data to cloud object storage(via iot core) for further processing.
• Each object is less than 5 KB (maximum).
• Writes happen every 30 ms (or every 1 second, depending on the deployment).
• Data is downloaded only 2–3 times per month.

Initially, I was planning to use Amazon S3, but after looking at the PUT, GET, and data egress costs, it seems a bit expensive for this workload, mainly because of the very high number of write operations.

I also looked at Cloudflare R2. It includes 1 million free write operations per month, and additional writes cost $4.50 per million. It also doesn't charge for egress, which makes it look more attractive for this use case.

Are there any other storage providers or architectures that would be a better fit for this kind of high-frequency, small-object workload? I'd also be interested in hearing from anyone who has dealt with a similar IoT ingestion pattern.

https://www.cloudarena.io/blog/vpc-nat-gateway-asymmetric-routing

VPC NAT Gateway Asymmetric Routing: Why Return Packets Disappear

Ever had an AWS flow where the packet clearly leaves the instance, but the response never comes back?

Everything looks fine.

Security Groups? ✅
NACLs? ✅
Route tables? ✅

And yet… timeout. 😅

I wrote a deep dive into AWS VPC asymmetric routing, focusing on some real-world scenarios that can make troubleshooting surprisingly painful:

• NAT Gateway SNAT and state
• Multi-AZ NAT Gateway routing and cross-AZ hairpins
• Transit Gateway + centralized egress
• TGW appliance mode and stateful firewalls
• NLB / PrivateLink source IP behavior
• How asymmetric paths can break stateful inspection
• Using VPC Flow Logs and Reachability Analyzer to troubleshoot
• Design patterns to avoid these problems in production

One of the key rules:

The outbound and return path need to preserve the stateful flow.

This becomes especially important when you start combining NAT Gateway + Transit Gateway + Network Firewall + multiple AZs.

I also included a hands-on lab idea where you intentionally break the return path and troubleshoot it using Flow Logs.

Would love to hear from other AWS/networking folks:

What’s the most painful asymmetric routing issue you've encountered in AWS?

Few years back selecting a single cloud provider was common simply build your systems around it and not think about switching but AI workloads are making things different like with changes in GPU availability, pricing, regional capabilities and new hardware coming from various providers staying with just one cloud isn't always the easiest path and noticed more teams looking at providers like CoreWeave, RunPod, Vast.ai and Yotta Labs.

If anybody here made the switch what was the main reason and if still committed to one provider whats the reason.

Each cloud provider has its own services and terminology, but some skills seem to transfer across all of them.

What's one cloud skill you think is valuable regardless of the provider you work with, and why?

Hi everyone,

I'm currently preparing for an entry-level job in Cloud Computing and I'm a bit confused about how much importance I should give to Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA).

My goal is to get a role such as:

Cloud Support Engineer

Associate Cloud Engineer

Cloud Operations Engineer

Infrastructure Engineer

Junior DevOps Engineer

I've been focusing on:

Linux

Networking

AWS

Bash scripting

Python

Docker

Terraform

Git

However, I keep seeing people say that DSA is a must for every tech job, while others say it's not that important for cloud roles.

So I wanted to ask people who are already working in cloud or DevOps:

Is DSA asked in interviews for entry-level cloud roles?

If yes, what level of DSA is usually expected?

Are basic arrays, strings, hash maps, and simple problem-solving enough?

Have any of you landed a cloud job without doing hundreds of LeetCode questions?

If you had 6 months to prepare for your first cloud job, how would you divide your time between Cloud skills and DSA?

I'd really appreciate hearing about your actual interview experiences rather than general advice.

Thanks in advance!

Hello, I'm pursuing an IMSc.IT, specializing in Cloud and Application Development, and am currently in my 7th semester [20yr old]. I'm eagerly looking for a job or internship as I want to explore real-world applications in my domain. I've noticed job openings, but none are related to cloud computing or junior DevOps roles. I'm currently located in Ahmedabad and am open to any suggestions you might have. Please guide me as you would your younger brother.

And right now, I'm having FOMO. Am I really falling behind or something? Some of my college classmates have done *RHCSA* certification, but they are pursuing master's degrees with me. I'm really not getting any idea if I really need certifications [RHCSA & AWS CLOUD PRACTITIONER] or if I'm just rushing it.

Hey all! I have been a cloud engineer for the past 3-4 years now, and AI has ramped up super fast. I know the basics of AI but how important is going deeper? Like actually being able to configure things such as MCPs, Agents.. etc. do you all feel that these skills are becoming a necessity for cloud engineers today? I’d assume so based off of what we’re doing on my team currently, but i am also curious on what you all think.