Understanding Cloud Operations for New Engineers: Skills and Best Practices for Platform Engineers

Cloud computing is at the forefront of digital transformation, and as businesses move towards hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures, the demand for platform engineers who can manage and optimize these environments is growing rapidly. For those new to cloud operations, it is crucial to develop a foundational understanding of the skills, tools, and best practices necessary to ensure seamless cloud platform management.

In this article, we will break down the essential skills and best practices from the perspective of a platform engineer, as outlined in “Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure and Operations Explained”.

Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure and Operations Explained: Accelerate your application migration and modernization journey on the cloud with IBM and Red Hat — Mansura Habiba

Core Skills for Cloud Operations

1. Infrastructure as Code (IaC): A key principle in modern cloud infrastructure management is IaC, where infrastructure is provisioned and managed through code. This approach allows for automated deployments and ensures consistency across environments. New engineers should learn how to implement IaC using tools like Terraform, Ansible, or IBM Cloud Schematics. Mastering IaC helps eliminate manual configuration errors and makes scaling infrastructure easier.
2. Automation and CI/CD: Automation is at the heart of efficient cloud operations. Platform engineers should be well-versed in Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) practices. These practices, enabled by pipelines in tools like Jenkins, GitLab, or Red Hat OpenShift, allow teams to push changes to production faster and with fewer errors. Understanding how to automate deployment processes and integrate DevOps practices is key to minimizing downtime and ensuring smooth updates.
3. Security in Cloud Operations: Security is an essential skill set for any platform engineer. In a hybrid cloud environment, managing security at various layers — from infrastructure to applications — is crucial. New joiners must familiarize themselves with Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), encryption practices, and security tools like IBM Cloud Security Advisor to ensure compliance and protect against breaches .
4. Observability and Monitoring: Maintaining a stable and reliable cloud infrastructure requires continuous monitoring. Engineers must understand how to implement observability frameworks that monitor the health of services and applications. Tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and the built-in monitoring services of IBM Cloud and Red Hat OpenShift are essential for keeping an eye on performance metrics and detecting anomalies before they impact operations .

Best Practices for Cloud Operations

1. Building a Robust Landing Zone: As new workloads are migrated to the cloud, it is essential to build and maintain a robust landing zone. A landing zone provides the foundational infrastructure, including network, security, and governance policies, that allows workloads to operate securely and efficiently. New platform engineers should ensure that they understand how to automate landing zone deployment using best practices in IaC and how to continuously improve the landing zone to support scalability .
2. Embrace SRE and DevSecOps: Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles and DevSecOps practices are crucial in managing large-scale cloud environments. SRE focuses on maintaining reliability and availability by automating tasks like incident response and ensuring the platform can handle high levels of traffic and usage. DevSecOps, meanwhile, integrates security into the development pipeline, ensuring that applications are secure from the start. New joiners should embrace these practices to increase efficiency and security across cloud environments .
3. Cost Optimization through FinOps: One of the key challenges in cloud management is cost control. Cloud platforms offer the ability to scale on-demand, but this can lead to runaway costs if not carefully managed. New platform engineers should become familiar with FinOps — a set of practices designed to manage and optimize cloud spending. This includes using cost monitoring tools, setting up alerts for usage spikes, and automating cost-saving measures like shutting down unused resources .
4. Service Reliability and Resilience: The goal of a well-managed cloud environment is to ensure high availability and resilience. Platform engineers should implement fault-tolerant architectures, disaster recovery plans, and automated backup solutions to guarantee business continuity in the event of an outage. Leveraging tools such as Kubernetes for container orchestration and IBM Cloud’s disaster recovery services is critical for achieving resilience .

Conclusion

For new joiners stepping into the world of cloud operations, building proficiency in the areas mentioned above will provide a strong foundation for managing hybrid cloud environments. As organizations increasingly rely on cloud-native infrastructure, the demand for skilled platform engineers continues to grow. By mastering automation, security, and cloud cost optimization, engineers can ensure that their cloud environments remain efficient, secure, and scalable.

For those looking to deepen their knowledge, I recommend diving into the following resources:

• “Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure and Operations Explained: Accelerate your application migration and modernization journey on the cloud with IBM and Red Hat” by Mansura Habiba for understanding critical aspects of cloud platform operations and platform modernization.
• “The Phoenix Project” by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford, for insights into DevOps and continuous improvement in IT operations.
• “Cloud Native DevOps with Kubernetes” by John Arundel and Justin Domingus, for a deep dive into Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure management.
• “Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems” by Niall Richard Murphy, for a comprehensive guide on SRE principles.

These readings will help you continue your journey into the world of cloud operations and platform engineering.