Many people might feel the Cloud Architect and DevOps Architect can play dual roles. As per my observation yes, many small and medium level organizations are utilizing the IT Professionals in the same manner. I wrote a blog for these roles segregation with their main Activities. I felt this might help to some of the practitioners.
With reference to my previous blog on Cloud Architect role comparison with DevOps, there were questions on DevOps architect role comparison.
Identifying the Sprint cycles for different projects.
Identifying the different environments needs including the different test levels requirements.
Plan/design the environment specifications to build Infrastructure As A Code [IAC] and guide the DevOps Engineers.
At the same time he/she need to collaborate with the Cloud Architect to seek the permissions/approvals to utilize the cloud environment on these environmental requirements/setup.
Both these architects need to measure the cost of this Infrastructure to estimate and get approval from the management.
The DevOps Architect is also responsible to plan for different production deployments. He/She need to work together with the Cloud Architect to establish this setup.
In the current trend the containerization is accelerating with Cloud technology. Both these architects need to keep working on these areas to reduce the Virtual Machines cost by replacing with containers. At the same time these two people need to think on converting the applications into Microservices slowly with the Agile methods. This will have easy maintenance in future and also the further cost can be reduced in view of infrastructure and the man power. And their guidelines need to submit to management as a proposal. These two people are also responsible to upgrade their teams skills on the new trends in Cloud technology.
If you ask me the question who are the team members for these roles;
DevOps Engineers will report to DevOps Architect.
Cloud/system engineer reports to Cloud Architect.
So these architects need to manage their teams well in view of their skills augmentation and the tasks rolling as per the DevOps Speed/Velocity concepts.
What kind of IT Professionals can be converted into DevOps Architect ?
Basically, the DevOps activities are related to more on Practices and Culture. If your background is related to the below areas in the past, your profile might suit to convert by learning the above mentioned skills.
You might have worked on Deployment areas
Worked in release management
Worked in Development processes implementation areas.
You should be savvy in implementing the Agile/Scrum/Lean practices.
You should have worked as a Servant leadership role also. [Even as a Scrum master]. In many cases this role is responsible to mentor the teams on different practices implementation by gearing up the teams to follow DevOps Velocity.
You should have worked in Identifying the retrospective issues very well and implemented the improvements in different Sprint cycles.
He/she should be savvy in learning new technology and transform the knowledge to the teams well. This knowledge should be very simple on the tools features related areas and how they can utilize them in their setup ? How they can reduce the efforts and cost to the company with a ROI Demonstration. They need to prove it to management with a POC.
This person is responsible to show some ROI as Cloud Architect does it on DevOps New practices implementation.
The DevOps Architect reports to the DevOps Practices head or CIO or CTO. Where as the Cloud Architect reports to CIO or CTO. Depends on the size of the organization, there can be Chief Cloud architect also, where all the Cloud architects report to this position.
Why the DevOps practice team is required to involve in Infra cloud planning?
I was talking to some clients recently on the importance of Cloud migration activities planning. I have come with some guidelines for them as part of my engagement. Some of my guidelines given to them, I would like to share as below.
When the DevOps practice team need to do the infra setup for a cloud migration they also need to participate on the identification of Infra activities and the specifications. Which is very essential.
This need to be done as initial step with any Cloud services migration.
As per my opinion we can work with any cloud services like; AWS/AZURE/Google Cloud, etc., by having the above activity as mandatory.
The attached blog/Video contains the same discussion with the details of the steps required to setup a Virtual Private Cloud. The VPC nomenclature we might have seen with AWS. But similar setup or name cane be there with other Cloud service providers also.
Once this VPC is created the systems are going to be hosted on Cloud.
The Ops team’s responsibility is; to make sure the Cloud migration is correctly and completely done for all the live setup.
At the same time they also need to conduct a pilot testing activity successfully which is mandated as per the Agile Projects management [Agile PM] standards before they announce go live.
They also need to do a parallel run along with the past production setup with a new cloud setup for few weeks.
Below URL contains the initial planning discussion as mentioned:
So to catch the market or scale yourself in IT Cloud needs, you need to learn it.
1. If you are looking for Conversion into AWS Cloud Architect Job role, with your Sys/Network/Storage/DB admin role;
2. Please look into this!! This is valuable and great opportunity for you!! to step down into it.
3. There are many IT professionals globally converting through right mentors, from Traditional role into this role to catch up the global IT market demand!! to sustain in IT Payrolls…….!!
4.Please come back for a discussion, after all the below links/blogs/videos walk-through thoroughly.
AWS SSA salary is higher than any other roles in AWS.
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Also please note;
Being experienced IT Professional, I don’t give live projects like training companies.
Because I don’t handle any AWS client projects just for this course.
But as per the IT delivery life cycle standards we will create some Proof of Concept projects during this course, which can be used for a client demo later by you.
You as Cloud architect, will be able to take-up/handle confidently the client projects after this course.
At the same time, I don’t place anybody after coaching. After learning you need to expose the international IT Job market.
If interested on this learning please come to a call to discuss the same by booking time with a scheduled call.
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For more details on course samples, visit the following blogs/videos/Feedback also.
Building Cloud/DevOps/AI/ML/Gen AI Architects 