will my dad LOSE his job? (a TRADITIONAL IT infrastructure engineer)

this is my dad he's what you would call a traditional infrastructure engineer hi i'm chuck keith and i'm an infrastructure manager at supreme lending i focus on the system storage side now i say traditional because what he does now it's changing shoot i.t is changing the way we deploy and manage our infrastructure it's evolving and this requires new skills skills that the traditional infrastructure engineer may not have so his job the one he's doing now will that go away like does he have to actually learn all these new fancy things like docker and kubernetes and microservices and the cloud i mean basically becoming a devops engineer does you have to do all that just to basically have a job to keep up let's talk about that you know i think about it from time to time on-prem the way it is today is going to be totally different in a couple years because i know that's a fear a lot of people in our industry have right now i mean honestly i have that fear i'm traditional in a lot of ways if i don't change if you don't change what's going to happen to us and thank you to dell technologies and their apex cloud for sponsoring this video let's rewind for a second what does a traditional infrastructure engineer actually do like what does that look like uh infrastructure engineer you know i'm in charge of storage virtualization you know anything on-prem you know that's um what we're used to doing that's what we support traditionally so you know virtual machines um vmware hyper-v active directory of course which is the backbone for many many companies day-to-day working on servers managing you know virtual servers virtual servers you know encompasses a lot of the infrastructure so not only are you building and preparing servers but you're also break fixing and troubleshooting now i got to say this all the skills involved in being a traditional infrastructure engineer they're crazy valuable virtualization storage server management and they'll be valuable for a very long time however we are seeing a pretty big shift in how things are done now what's happening to our on-prem infrastructure what's happening to all the stuff we know and love that lives in our data centers well we definitely see that some of it's going up to the public cloud this mysterious place that is basically just someone else's service someone else's storage we're borrowing it and we're paying for it and this cloud might be amazon it might be microsoft and many and by many i mean a lot of companies are throwing stuff up there they're putting their infrastructure that would normally be on-prem with a guy like my dad handling it and they're taking it and putting it in the cloud now you're probably wondering why why are companies doing this well there are a ton of reasons but some of the main ones you might see is that hey this server stuff it gets old it ages you have to buy new ones every once in a while and guess what that's kind of expensive so instead of buying brand new servers that are pricey it might be a bit easier to try out the public cloud for a few things so often when people move to the cloud it's not let's throw everything up there right now it's not like these servers we're gonna retire them let's just go to the cloud instead and if you're one of the cool kids you'll call it a lift and shift upgrade and that reason i just gave is actually part of the three laws sounds kind of scary it's not the first one i just mentioned is all about economics if we throw stuff up to the public cloud sure it's easier and the upfront costs are cheaper in the long run now you kind of have to weigh those cost factors yourself the second law the law of physics this covers things like hey what kind of latency do you need for your infrastructure if you're accessing data in the cloud or vice versa well that time to get back and forth caused some headaches for your company and then the laws of the land you see the public cloud does sound pretty lit in a lot of situations but there may be some security requirements some compliance things you have to go through that the cloud just can't meet for you you may have to have that stuff in a data center that you own that you secure so the three laws are really all about hey is the public cloud for me and which situation should i throw stuff up there and in which situation should i keep stuff on prem and where is there an in-between on that but still lots of people are throwing stuff up in the cloud more reasons we have to do that is because of uh cloud native technologies the way we build our applications our application architectures it's also evolving we're moving to something referred to as cloud native another industry buzzword we'll cover more on that here in a bit so for my dad the traditional infrastructure engineer this might mean that he has to start learning some cloud native technologies which by the way is its own thing its own discipline its own job and career path i mean they have a ton of certifications just to learn this so on top of knowing all the things he already knows managing on-prem technologies on-prem infrastructure he now has to add to his list to learn cloud-native technologies now we're not done yet because when we move stuff to the cloud it's not just like a carbon copy of the on-prem environment the way they do things is kind of different and in some cases like crazy different the cloud gives you access to new technologies that most traditional it shops just can't support because they don't know how i mentioned the buzzword earlier cloud native things like microservices containers kubernetes these technologies give us a new way to deploy our infrastructure which i mean our infrastructure the whole reason we have it is for the applications our company has so yeah this new stuff it's pretty different actually way different and for both custom development and off-the-shelf apps a lot of companies are going for this moving away from traditional virtual machines and doing containers kubernetes so looking back at my dad the traditional infrastructure engineer add that to the list man cloud and now we've got all these new buzzword things we have to learn kubernetes microservices containers all the cloud native stuff oh by the way just so you know i'm scratching the surface on this stuff for someone who's a traditional infrastructure engineer to actually jump into this world the list is a bit longer to truly wield the power of all these cloud native things you need to learn some automation tools like ansible puppet chef which we've talked about on this channel before if you're like what the junk is that check it out right here and now we're getting into devops territory a devops engineer is someone who has the skills to manage the infrastructure so cloud stuff kubernetes microservices and they also have software development skills they know enough about that to interact with the dev team they're kind of the person in the middle coordinating all this magic creating devops pipelines and all this crazy industry buzzword stuff now if you're like me the question that comes to your mind when you hear about all this new exciting stuff and technology is hey are companies actually doing this are they actually using it are they adopting this new stuff because honestly sometimes in technology things are trends they come and they go so is this just a trend are companies actually doing this and do traditional engineers need to learn all this stuff right now or risk losing their job traditionally you know i've been on prem all of our data centers are you know physical somewhere our company now has started to um move towards the cloud you know putting some active directory um domain uh controllers up there and we're going to start building machines we're already doing some development in azure i've been concentrating on the on the azure side of the house you know getting servers the network stood up so it's definitely somewhere that um we'll be you know i think we'll always be somewhat of a hybrid shop but we'll focus more on the cloud in the future now first i'll say this not all companies are trying to get on the bleeding edge of tech and for a lot of good reasons like normally new tech has new bugs new issues a lot of companies are kind of hesitant and slow to adopt new stuff because they want to see how everyone else does and frankly it's kind of the mentality that hey if it ain't broke don't fix it now sure companies like those trendy startups are using cloud stuff cloud native everywhere but honestly a lot of companies are still rocking the on-prem infrastructure that traditional stuff we know and love but they are exploring moving some of their workloads some of the stuff they do to the cloud kind of the example i said before they might have some servers they're retiring why not just put that app we had there up there our company to my knowledge are not using microservices i know that's something that we'd like to move to in the future um probably um later this year or next year but i know that's where you need to go where you need to be that's kind of the adoption we see with the cloud it's not like okay guys flip a switch we're in the cloud now what you don't know the cloud you're fired no that's not how we're doing things it's more like one specific project we see hey can we do that up there might be kind of cool let's try it now again one of the main reasons companies move their stuff to the cloud is not just because it's called the cloud it's because it actually has some really cool technology we want to use but the problem is often this is done without the knowledge of traditional infrastructure engineers like my dad they think oh man we want to do this new stuff this is cloud stuff cloud native stuff traditional infrastructure engineers who are on-prem they don't know this stuff and we can't do that on-prem so we have to go to the cloud and we have to talk to new people and do this whole new thing now that's not necessarily true we'll talk more about that here in a moment but moving to the cloud again is not an overnight thing widely used apps like microsoft sql server and oracle they're being offered as containers which does make it kind of crazy simple to deploy it and manage it and all that kind of stuff and we're seeing more of that so here's the situation we know companies are moving stuff to the cloud where does my dad come in where does the role of the infrastructure engineer the traditional one come into play as companies do start to move more and more of their stuff to the cloud will his skills become more irrelevant i guess yes and no because again remember the skills he has now are still so insanely valuable like i mean goodness companies can't find people like him and if you want to become like him you should you should learn the skills he has but when those skills become more irrelevant with the move to the cloud what's going to happen the way i see it one of two things we see this first one pretty often they may adopt a new dedicated environment for their container infrastructure their microservices cloud native stuff which often is the public cloud right aws microsoft google and when companies decide to do that they need someone with those skills to do it right you don't just remove your server and say here you go amazon make it cloudy it's not that simple right so with that you either have to hire a devops engineer or someone who knows cloud very well or get your traditional infrastructure people like my dad to learn the cloud which by the way both of those options are fine but that can often be an expensive endeavor a time-consuming endeavor now this new trend we're seeing now is pretty cool they're extending their current environment to support all this new stuff so to contrast with option one they basically start adding some new infrastructure extending their current on-prem environment to support cloud native stuff now did you catch that we're doing some cloud-native things on-prem instead of throwing stuff up there we add some new technology down here that can do the cool stuff that we can do up there now imagine this what if engineers like my dad traditional infrastructure engineers by the way every time i say infrastructure engineer or traditional drinking game you have to take a sip of coffee by the end of this you'll be so excited and ready to go ah okay anyways what if engineers like my dad could start using cloud native technologies kubernetes containers all this cool stuff on-prem right on their on-prem infrastructure and without a complete overhaul of their current skill set what if they could use the same tools they're used to using like my dad using vcenter which is vmware's way to manage virtualization what if he could use that to manage all the new stuff too sure yeah manage virtual machines like you're used to but you can also do the new stuff right there in the same tool this is exactly what we're seeing with vmware vsphere and tanzu deployed with dell technologies apex traditional engineers like my dad can now deploy the new stuff cloud native stuff on the same environment alongside the old stuff virtual machines and not only that using the same tool they can deploy on-prem cloud native stuff like kubernetes and they can also deploy that same stuff in the cloud and it doesn't matter what cloud provider you want to use it's multi-cloud you can do azure aws gcp it all plays with it and again you're using the same tool now i'm personally a huge fan of this because it puts the power in the hands of the traditional engineers i'm sure many of you feel the same way i do with all this new stuff we feel like we have to learn right now and it becomes overwhelming because we're still having to manage our environments but now we're like okay we have to learn all this new stuff too because everything's changing it's a lot man i know so i love seeing it where the tools we know and love now are helping us move that direction without a crazy learning curve i mean sure there are things that are different about containers and kubernetes and micro services but if you can start deploying that stuff with the same tools you know and love it's a bit easier and it's also great for companies right they can start using the new stuff without changing everything they do they can still use their on-prem infrastructure they can still use virtualization and vmware but they can start using the new stuff too and they don't have to hire a bunch of brand new staff just to manage this their existing staff can use it they already know how now i know what you're thinking chuck i want to play with it i want to see what you're talking about theory is all fun and cool but you want to get your hands dirty well the sponsor of this video dell technologies actually offers a pretty cool lab environment you can play with it's called the customer solution centers and it's a place where you can you know play their solutions so if you're already a dell technologies customer you're in luck and also you get to access some schmies or smes to ask questions and start to make this cloud native journey on-prem though you don't have to go up but you can it's optional or both both is cool too and they also have some self-service demos you can check out in the link below as well so let's get back to the original question will my dad lose his job you know i think about it from time to time um because really the the industry is evolving um you know you see everything pushing to the cloud and and to me the duties that we do now um i think it's going to be essential for some programming whether that's you know more powershell python um of course you know kubernetes and you know the whole cloud adventure you know we're gonna have to adapt and change the way we do things now so yeah that's definitely um one of the things i'm working on a little bit more cloud-centric in my studies i know that on-prem the way it is today is going to be totally different in a couple years well all the skills he knows now become irrelevant unless he changes everything and learns all the new stuff no first all the skills he has now are still crazy valuable and will be for a long time on-prem infrastructure is not going anywhere two companies don't have to go to the cloud to take advantage of cloud native technologies with solutions from vmware and dell we're seeing some cool stuff we can do on-prem and engineers like my dad can use their existing skill set to manage this new environment now i will say this it's still important that traditional engineers change and learn we are seeing the industry shift this direction containers are not going anywhere kubernetes is here to stay and by the way this is not new for anyone in it you know this you know you have to learn things the learning never stops but it doesn't have to be as drastic and scary as some of the you know news articles you might see might make it seem so let me kick that question back to you what do you think do you think the traditional infrastructure engineer role is dying are you a traditional infrastructure engineer by the way what's the count on that are you one and are you worried are you picking up these new skills let me know below well guys that's about all i have i mean it's kind of crazy right i mean today we're talking about moving traditional infrastructure to containers and companies like dell are helping make that easier for general i.t people like i am and my dad is i mean honestly they're showing a commitment to helping us deal with all these new emerging technologies making it more palatable and shoot tomorrow we might be talking about you know ai and quantum computing and all this crazy stuff and honestly i'm not worried what we do now in i.t our jobs it's gonna change and we're gonna roll with it and the vendors we work with are gonna you know help us work with their stuff so if we are doing quantum computing next year it's gonna be kind of cool and we're gonna be doing some cool stuff yeah that's all i got i'll catch you guys next time you

Channel: NetworkChuck

Views: 133,019

Rating: 4.9439363 out of 5

Keywords: cloud, hybrid cloud, infrastructure engineer, it engineer, dell, dell technologies, dell apex, aws, gcp, azure, amazon web services, vmware, virtualization, virtual machines, hyper v, hyper-v, active directory, systems engineer, system engineer, vsphere, vcenter, vxrail, cloud computing, aws cloud, what is cloud, cloud computung 101, devops, dev ops, devops engineer, how to cloud computing, what is cloud computing

Id: HwSZe00ZSuU

Length: 15min 30sec (930 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021