How should I learn to build infrastructure tools with .NET?

Start with one Linux server and do the work by hand. SSH in, deploy a small ASP.NET Core app, run it as a systemd service and put Nginx in front as a reverse proxy. Add Prometheus monitoring once the app is reachable.

Then repeat the setup a couple of times. Pay attention to the commands, configuration and checks you keep repeating. Those are good candidates for a small deployment or server setup tool. I would leave Kubernetes until you understand what the manual setup is doing.

Give Linux fundamentals some real attention alongside the .NET work. Processes, signals and file descriptors are useful when a service won't start or stops behaving as expected. Learn how SSH, DNS, ports and reverse proxies fit together so you can trace how a request gets to your app.

Docker is worth learning after you can run the app directly. Compare the two setups and work out which parts of deployment each one changes. You don't have to learn every cloud service before making something useful.

For the backend side, make a small API that tracks deployment jobs or server configurations. Try separating the controller, service and database access so you can see what each part is responsible for. Wire the dependencies together manually at least once before relying on the ASP.NET Core container.

Keep the scope small enough to finish, then add one infrastructure action at a time. A management panel gets complicated quickly if you're learning the UI, database and server operations all at once.

Once a deployment tool works on one server, test it against a larger set, perhaps 10 to 15 servers. Look for race conditions, cascading failures and excessive logging. A workflow that seems fine with only a few targets can expose different problems when more jobs run together.

Use projects as the spine of the learning plan, then reach for documentation, books or videos when you hit a gap. A long course can be useful, but it doesn't have to come before every experiment.

AI can help explain an error or suggest approaches. Try writing the code yourself first, then check any suggestions against the documentation and make sure you can explain what they do.