Emily Freeman - 97 Things Every Cloud Engineer Should Know

• 2020-12-04: First Release

Ideas about cloud computing have been around since at least the 1960s. Our modern understanding of the cloud can be traced back to about 2006, when Amazon first launched Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). The rise and adoption of cloud technologies has changed the shape of our industry and our global society. The cloud has made getting started less expensive and growing to global scale feasible, and is helping turn every organization into a technology organizationor at least an organization that uses technology as a strategic enabler of delivering value.

A cloud engineer is, broadly defined, someone who creates, manages, operates, or configures systems running in the cloud. This could be a system administrator responsible for building base images, a software developer responsible for writing applications, a data scientist building machine learning models, a site reliability engineer responding to pages when things go awry, and more. In some organizations, all of those functions are handled by one single human; in others, hundreds of people may be in each one of those roles.

This book is a collection of articles from a diverse set of professional cloud engineers. We have authors from around the world. Some are early in their cloud journeys, and others have decades of experience. Each and every author brings their own perspective and experience to the article that theyve shared as part of this book. Our intent is to help you find one, two, or maybe even ninety-seven things that inspire you to dig deeper and expand your own career. Just as the cloud has many facets, this book has many types of articles for you to check out. Start with some cloud fundamentals, and then read more about software development approaches in the cloud. Or start with a couple of articles about how to improve your organization, then dig into new approaches to operations and reliability. It really is up to you!

This book was written in 2020, a year marked by a global pandemic, an amplification of and broader awakening to the injustices of systemic racism, and many other changes that will have an effect on generations to come. The events of this year have touched every one of us on a personal level. Companies and organizations are not immune to these events either: 2020 saw some companies experience explosive growth, while others had to face their swift demise. The cloud has played a role in all of these things toowhether providing new ways for us to connect while remaining socially distant, rapidly spreading information and misinformation, or providing scientists the technology required for testing, tracing, and learning more about a pernicious virus.

We would like to thank the authors of each article. They have generously shared their insights and knowledge in an effort to inform and inspire as you continue your own journey as a cloud engineer. Use this book to spark a conversation among cloud engineers, connect on a human level, and learn from one another.

Enjoy the book!

Nathen Harvey and Emily Freeman

OReilly Online Learning

Note

For more than 40 years, OReilly Media has provided technology and business training, knowledge, and insight to help companies succeed.

Our unique network of experts and innovators share their knowledge and expertise through books, articles, and our online learning platform. OReillys online learning platform gives you on-demand access to live training courses, in-depth learning paths, interactive coding environments, and a vast collection of text and video from OReilly and 200+ other publishers. For more information, visit http://oreilly.com.

How to Contact Us

Please address comments and questions concerning this book to the publisher :

• OReilly Media, Inc.
• 1005 Gravenstein Highway North
• Sebastopol, CA 95472
• 800-998-9938 (in the United States or Canada)
• 707-829-0515 (international or local)
• 707-829-0104 (fax)

We have a web page for this book, where we list errata, examples, and any additional information. You can access this page at https://oreil.ly/97-things-cloud-engineers.

Email to comment or ask technical questions about this book.

Visit http://oreilly.com for news and information about our books and courses .

Find us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/oreilly

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/oreillymedia

Watch us on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/oreillymedia

Part I. Fundamentals

Chapter 1. What Is the Cloud?

Nathen Harvey

Developer Advocate at Google

Before you get too deep into the articles in this book, lets establish a common understanding of the cloud.

Wikipedia says that cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. The term is generally used to describe datacenters available to many users over the internet.

At its most basic level, the cloud is essentially a datacenter that you access over the internet. However, viewing the cloud as someone elses datacenter does not really allow you or your team to take full advantage of all that the cloud has to offer.