what does the cloud solutions architect actually do I am an enterprise cloud architect working at AWS but when I mentioned that in a dinner party all I get is blank stares even my wife of 10 years think cloud is something that exists only in weather reports let’s demystify this right here right now so I’ll give you two different versions one version is for friends and family who has no idea what cloud is and another version is for the folks who has basic idea about cloud and thinking about switching their Kenya to cloud or maybe thinking about becoming a cloud solutions architect themselves on top of that we are going to go over.
what is the output from cloud solutions architects and we will check some myths about cloud solutions architects alright let’s get to it so let’s start with definition of architect a person who designs buildings and in many cases also supervises their construction and now let’s see what cloud is nope not this kind so cloud computing solution is the on-demand delivery of compute power database storage applications and other IT resources via the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing one real-life example similar to this is electricity when you need it you flip the switch and then you use it once you are done you just flip the switch off and that’s it you don’t need to know how the electricity is being generated and you pay as you use now let’s apply the principle to personal computing.
let’s say you do lot of intense graphical work in your computer with cloud you can just use a very powerful machine from the cloud make your cat videos and then switch it off and you just pay for the time you use it so now if we go one level higher from your personal computer to an enterprise company the complexity is much more they have what you call a server which you can think of a very powerful and bigger version of your laptops there are way more software and hardware in it and all the servers are kept in a building called data centre and the company has to manage the cooling the electric bill all the connection to the server’s all the security everything so it’s a lot of money and over it now the company can move out of the data centre and move everything to cloud.
This overhead and in the process save a lot of money however if we want to move all that complex software and hardware to the cloud we need someone to create a blueprint of how things should be built how they communicate with each other how do you secure it Tara hence the cloud architect once the blueprint is made developers can come in and start building the pieces just like your house so this is the friend and family version folks now let’s take a look at the core tasks of cloud architect for cloud our folks cloud architects analyse current technology stack and gather requirements and create design in cloud using appropriate AWS services they have knowledge of hybrid ecosystem best practices pros and cons of different services why do you have to know hybrid ecosystem because it takes time for big enterprises to move from data centre to cloud so till they move hundred percent to cloud you have to know how to design architecture using both component from data centre and cloud our architects have breadth of knowledge they know little about a lot of stuff and knows a lot about few stuff I highlighted this because this is one of the critical quality of a good cloud architect you have to have general idea about all the services in AWS however it is impossible to know deep into each one so you will design based on the general knowledge and then dive deep on certain areas based on the requirement a cloud architect can adjust design based on organization priority what do I mean by that so there are different pillars of cloud architecture operational excellence security reliability performance efficiency cost optimization time to migration etc.
So based on the priority of the organization the design will change so one of the most important quality in cloud architect is soft skills because you have to articulate the design to CXOs as well as dev leads you have to have both elevator pitch and deeper dive ready and you have to drive consensus this next one is a must-have in a cloud architect you have to inspire people even though you are an individual contributor if you think about it resources kind of has to listen to their manager because at the end of the year manager does their review but architect needs to get help from those resources by earning trust and demonstrating knowledge again going back to the soft.
Skills architect has to conduct one to feel and one to many training sessions on AWS services and designs so if you’re coming from the deep technical background you probably have this number one and number two however you have to do some work on the soft skills and this training session now this slide is pretty but I wanted to give you guys an accurate idea and this is from my actual experience so I did not Google this stuff so here are some sample cushions and sample outputs from the architect so? I’m not going to read all of this but as you can see some sample questions are what does the application do current?technology stack sizes of one print servers etc.
?Some sample outputs are design diagram and design document should we use ec2 several layers or container how does the cost and time? DevOps strategy etc now that we understand core tasks of cloud architect and some of the outputs they produce let’s look at some of the myths I got my? AWS solutions architect associate hence? I am a cloud architect so the questions that you have to ask yourself is how do?you design systems in the previous role can you explain your ideas to a wide variety of people again if you are coming from?deep technical background this is the area that you are probably going to need?the most amount of work so another question to ask yourself is what do you like to do more architecting developing system.
Creating automation so the next meter is easiest way to transition to cloud is being an architect well it depends let’s say you are a solo architect with no other architects help and you have never architected a project in cloud before so that’s a lot of stress on you for some projects they need help on specialized areas let’s say security and you already know a lot about security so that would be little easier and it always depends on time line of migration and criticality of the app one tip I have is if you know about automation DevOps architect is of high demand currently that might be a smoother entry point it is easier to transition to cloud with current role if you are on promoter you can become cloud Java developer easily because Java is Java at the end of the day all you need to learn is how to test and run your code income myth number three being a cloud architect is super cool yep so is every other role in cloud start building and switch your career.
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