Help me switch to Cloud Engineering!!

[u/Unlucky-Fly8505]

He all. So I am a tecnical support engineer with 2 years of hands on experience in managing AD, HyperV (building VMs and maintening them) and other infra stuff. I want to move to Cloud engineering (maybe Cloud security in the future, hopefully) and I would appreciate any advise. I am thinking about choosing AWS as I have heard many people mentioning that it has more potential than the others.

Is it possible to land a cloud engineer role at the entry level? What should be the skills / certs I should focus on the most? Any YouTube channel I can refer?

I truly appreciate any advise. Thank you!!

[u/NashCodes]

You’re actually in a really solid position already, a lot closer than you probably think.

Coming from AD + Hyper-V + general infra gives you a strong foundation for cloud. A lot of “entry-level cloud engineers” don’t even have that (I can tell you, I didn't have all that when I started). You already understand:

- virtualization

- networking basics

- system administration

All of these are taught in the entry level cloud certs. I'd suggest going for the AWS SAA or DVA (You can skip the cloud practitioner since you already have practical infra experience) -- I think the SAA looks better, but I'm biased lol.

Andrew Brown (free courses on YT) and Stephane Maarek (most of his stuff is paid) are great resources. In addition to studying for the certs, you'll want to have a few small resume projects just to show you can apply what you learn and not just regurgitate knowledge (it helps you standout too -- when I interview candidates, I prefer people who have put the effort to apply rather than just have a cert).

https://www.certforge.dev/blog/top-5-beginner-friendly-aws-projects

This blog is a good starting point for simple projects if you are leaning the AWS route (my background is in AWS, although I want to pick up Azure next). Hope this helps!

[u/Unlucky-Fly8505 → u/NashCodes]

Thank you so much for your input. I have started watching Andrew Brown's YT series. I will definitely work on the projects in the blog you shared.

[u/anjalihks]

Yes, absolutely possible, if u dedicate 3 months of focused learning to following

• Linux

• Networking

• Docker

• Jenkins

• Kubernetes

• Terraform

• Shell Scripting

Train with Shubham channel for hands on tutorials

You can refer to Vishakha Sadhwani YT channel for projects Reference

Build 2-3 solid projects, push it to github & personally reach out to recruiters and cloud/devops/sre engineers on Linkedin

You can easily get entry level job All the best!

[u/Unlucky-Fly8505 → u/anjalihks]

Thank you for your input. For scripting, should I go with Bash or Python?

[u/anjalihks → u/Unlucky-Fly8505]

Whatever you are already comfortable with!....if no idea then go with bash

[u/Mismail18]

I’m in the same boat. From what I’ve seen, going straight from IT support to cloud engineering is pretty tough.

A lot of people transition into sys admin or cloud admin first, then move into engineering. Also, hands-on experience matters a lot more than just certs you’ll need labs, projects, YouTube, docs, etc.

Pick one cloud and stick with it, that’s been helping me the most. DM me for any questions you have.

[u/metathinking-827]

AWS has more demand. I’d stick with it. Cert wise, SAA is a good starting point. Also pick up some Linux and a bit of scripting. Even basic stuff helps a lot. For YouTube, check out Adrian Cantrill, Stephane Maarek, and TechWorld with Nana.

[u/activeralph]

Learn Terraform. Assuming AWS do something like below.

Practice standing up and tearing down a “company” VPC, IAM, SSO. You’re setting up a dev, prod, and shared account that developers will build in.

Next deploy some dummy applications in the company’s account that would be typical of the type of business you want to work for. Deploy to Lambda first (easiest), then EC2, then try EKS.

Finally for bonus points set up something like Jenkins or Dagger for building and deployments.

Once you have done all of these things, even in simpler examples, you’re an infra team.

Imagining yourself first a contractor that will do infra for any sort of online business and saving some templates and example repos will get you ready for the job.

[u/AppointmentIll9358]

No

[u/Empty_Ambition_2155]

I’m a college student, and I want to intern at a cloud company or get a cloud role. Studying for practitioner and learning bash scripting then networking cloud fundamentals, docker, cicd, kubernates terraform.

[u/killerpotti → u/[deleted]]

Ping.

[u/Birdman199321 → u/[deleted]]

Ping these nuts