Cloud Networking: So far…

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Since I passed AZ-900 (fundamentals) I decided it was worth it to look into AZ-700 (Networking) as a next step. Why not?!

I currently have access to Udemy so I decided to take a course from the same instructor that wrote/recorded the course for my AZ-900 exam. If I’m honest I wasn’t impressed as compared to the fundamentals course. I do have another recommended course from a previous co-worker that I plan on taking as talking with him he said it was worth the time and helped him pass AZ-700 but as we all know time is hard to come by sometimes.

I’ve been going through the MS Learn course for AZ-700 and it’s intriguing and scaring me a bit. MS Learn is a great tool with lots of courses/modules so surely check it out. https://learn.microsoft.com. The course has been decent but the way it’s written seems to me like the exam is going to be very marketing based. Lot’s of slides about SKU’s and I’ll tell you there are a lot. Azure seems to have a bunch of ways to do similar things and many different SKU’s within each way of doing it. I’m having a tough time organizing it all in my head which will needed to be answering the questions.

I’ve only been going down the MS Azure rabbit hole because for some reason it sparked my brain. I know others that have went down AWS and Google Cloud paths and there is no doubt they all do it differently based on blogs and posts I’ve read. One thing I’ve learned so far is that the basic concepts of our core networking hasn’t really changed. It’s just different products and connectivity options. Whether you are moving 100% to the cloud or doing a hybrid approach of on-prem/colocation data centers and sharing connectivity with your end users to the cloud is a dizzying challenge of making decisions on products that are often usage based making the financial side a key component.

So far from what I’ve seen (and I know I’m late to the party) the overall network concepts of IP addressing, Application services, Virtual Machines, Load Balancing, VPN’s, Hub/Spoke networks with gateways hasn’t really changed it is just a matter of learning the concepts, available technology, and configuration options available with whatever cloud platform you choose. It is certainly a whirlwind and decisions are based on budget and needs as per usual. Luckily the documentation and purchasing calculators seem to be fairly well done to make things easier.

The process really hasn’t changed. As a network guy you still need to work with your app/dev, server, workstation, database teams, etc to discover and map out the needs. Then you have to pick the right products(SKU’s) for your platform to meet the demands and put together a configuration plan to make it happen. Cloud networking is just a new product to study/learn and create something that works.

While I’m early in the process of learning (which never ends) it’s been good to at least get an understanding of the topics/options. I may or may not have to use them but it’s been kind of fun digging into something new to me yet again. Never stop learning!

Share this article:

Permanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/cloud-networking-so-far/

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.