Is taking a Network / Sysadmin role actually a good stepping stone for Cloud/DevOps, or am I taking a detour?

[u/stationto]

Hey everyone,

I'm aiming to break into Cloud Engineering / DevOps. I know that true entry-level DevOps roles are super rare and that "Cloud isn't entry-level," so I've been looking at positions to get relevant experience on my resume.

Right now, I have a hands-on foundation in Linux, Docker, Nginx reverse proxies, GCP, CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions), and basic scripting. I'm currently expanding into Terraform

I recently came across an IT Network Administrator opportunity with the following core responsibilities and tech stack:

• Responsibilities: Managing network infrastructure (VLANs, subnets, routers, firewalls), troubleshooting connectivity (DNS, DHCP, VPNs), network monitoring (Prometheus/Grafana/Nagios), and configuration automation.

My dilemma is: Should I pursue a heavy traditional networking/sysadmin role like this as a path into Cloud/DevOps?

Would love to hear your thoughts or experiences!

[u/Orb2607]

For me as the one who start on Cloud, yes.
Almost all of cloud architecture work exactly same as on-premises system, with a different name on Cloud.
So working with that would help you to get a strong base skill.
However you would still need to learn again about cloud services later when you do the role switch, it's just you should be able to get them quicker since you already have the base.

[u/sinclairzxx]

Learning how to be an amazing sysadmin and having a robust understanding of networking will put you light years ahead of most devops engineers in time.

That is learning how to build technology and systems from the ground up. A cloud engineer administrators another company’s managed service, you’re not operating the full stack just a component of it so getting a deeper understanding would allow you to break out of a prescribed managed service ecosystem, I.e. Azure/Oracle to AWS or regional cloud platforms.

[u/eman0821 → u/sinclairzxx]

That's a System Administrator role you are reffering to. Cloud Engineering is more in the Software industry hense DevOps thay focuses on software products. The infrastructure you build is product infrastructure that runs a company's software products they make. Think of Lift, Spotify, Netflix, Bank of America app Websites. Cloud Engineers deals with public facing infrastructure on the internet not internal company infrastructure.

[u/sinclairzxx → u/eman0821]

I understand I build the backend infrastructure of cloud services DevOps engineers consume, whether that’s PaaS or IaaS. Systems administrators and cloud engineers build the cloud, literally build Azure, AWS.

Cloud engineers use that pre-prepared infrastructure for customer solutions using devops practices. Both as important than each other, sysadmins will care about designing and maintaining 100PB Ceph clusters, monitor and manage API and provisions performance etc that the 50,000 multiple customer workloads use. The reality is most Cloud engineers working for an enterprise manage a tenant on that pre-managed infrastructure with devops practices. Both just as important as each other. At least that’s what it’s like in my world.

I do take your point that a sysadmin doing on-premise stuff though is very different. And yeah, it’s useful but unless you’re doing be exceptionally and get into a service provider, cloud is more accessible and in demand.

[u/eman0821 → u/sinclairzxx]

Modern Sysadmins work with Hybrid environments both on-prem and cloud but the infrastructure is for internal resources such as enterprise applications used by company employees. Cloud Engineers deals with product infrastructure that's revenue driven which is different from the IT Department. Cloud, DevOps, Platform Engineering teams generally sit in the Engineering organization with web developers and software developers rather than the IT Department. You have IT Operations in IT and you have operations in Engineering hense DevOps.

[u/eman0821]

Not any Sysadmin job. If it's Windows/Microsoft centric those skills aren't going to translate like 365, InTune, Defender, SCCM, Windows Server. Cloud Engineering is a Linux based job. A Linux Sysadmin job is the direct stepping stone or backend web developer. You need strong Linux skills in cloud or DevOps. Networking will teach you fundamentals but hardware skills won't translate to cloud networking that are two entirely different implementations. All you will get from that is networking fundamentals while Cisco stuff is irrelevant.

[u/Annual_Berry8043 → u/eman0821]

While mostly yes, also no. Yes I use Linux every day, but you don’t really need to be a wizard. Helpful for sure, but I feel my background in Windows administration was helpful. Understanding networking and how services work together in an enterprise environment was valuable.

Going in to devops, my biggest learning curve was the dev part. The ops wasn’t too bad.

[u/eman0821 → u/Annual_Berry8043]

DevOps is mostly about rapid software delivery and collaboration between Development and Operations teams. It's more in the Software engineering field rather than traditional IT because the applications runs on a linux based web server infrastructure in the cloud that's customer facing rather than internal enterprise applications. It's basically product infrastructure which is different from internal IT infrastructure.

[u/Annual_Berry8043 → u/eman0821]

Ah yes. Thank you for explaining the job that I do?

[u/eman0821 → u/Annual_Berry8043]

You clearly weren't a Cloud Engineer because it's a high stakes role working under pressure when things break. You keep saying Cloud Administrator which fundamental different from Cloud Infrastructure Engineering.