researchHQ’s Key Takeaways:
- As cloud adoption accelerates, it is more imperative than ever that organisations ensure a baseline cloud fluency across their teams; this involves tackling some tricky topics.
- When configured correctly, auto-scaling of servers allows organisations to flexibly meet traffic fluctuations to avoid running unnecessary servers or experiencing server overload.
- Identity and access management (IAM) allows granular control of access rights across an organisation’s systems based on user identities and permissions.
- Virtual private clouds are like data centres in the cloud, keeping data secure and off the internet while connecting internet-facing services to both that data and the web.
Here are four trip-up topics found to frequently stump cloud learners and what IT teams should know to master them and build their cloud vocabulary.
The cloud computing market is growing fast, and the trend is forecasted to continue. In fact, a recent Gartner report projected that global spending on public cloud services will grow 18% in 2021, to a total of over $300 billion. This means even more companies will accelerate their move to the cloud, and they’ll need employees with the know-how to make it happen.
The idea of helping a team reach a “baseline cloud fluency” is a phrase we hear a lot. You can have two engineers that excel at one kind of cloud operation, but if the rest of the team can’t speak their language, nothing gets done.
To better understand how we can help organizations get on the same page with cloud, we turned to our data. We analyzed 2.7 million responses to hundreds of questions across multiple areas of cloud expertise, homing in on the toughest questions, where the correct response rate fell below a C average (60%). From there, we identified key products, technologies, and topics that were often represented in those questions.
Informed by our research, here are four trip-up topics that we found to frequently stump cloud learners and what I think IT teams should know to master them, building on their cloud vocabulary in the process:
1. Auto-scaling
Auto-scaling helps to adjust your server count to manage shifts in traffic volume. For instance, imagine that you’ve just launched a new product, and an influx of users are excitedly trying to order it through your app or website. If you haven’t configured auto-scaling correctly, you’re about to collapse under the weight of your success.
Auto-scaling is tricky for a couple of reasons. Not only do you have to make the right call on which auto-scaling option you want to use, but you also have to ensure that you pick the right route. And it’s not easy — our learners missed tough questions related to auto-scaling more than half (52.6%) of the time.
When you’re configuring an auto-scaling group, ask yourself:
- How many servers do you want to maintain uptime?
- Do you want to adjust your server count manually?
- Do you want to schedule when to scale up or down, or,
- Would you like it to be based on conditions with your product performance?
If you think through these four parameters from the get-go, you can avoid problems down the line.
2. Identity and access management (IAM)
IAM allows you to manage who has access to a console by setting up users, groups, permissions, and roles. You can grant access to different parts of the platform, very granular permissions down to an individual user getting access to one service and not another. It’s how cloud resources speak to each other, how you audit them, and how you control access for your developers to update them, making it core to any cloud usage.
With IAM, the stakes are high: One compromised account could end up leading to a breach across your entire cloud footprint. This means getting IAM right has implications for everyone, not just the security team, yet according to our research, it’s a topic that tends to trip people up. Our learners missed tough questions related to IAM about half (50.5%) of the time.
