I've worked as a sysadmin in a small to medium-sized business focusing mainly on on-prem solutions, with only a bit of experience in Azure. Recently, I've landed a new job that's completely focused on Azure. For anyone who has made a similar switch, what challenges did you face, and what advice would you have for me?
6 Answers
Congratulations on your new Azure role! I transitioned from on-prem to a cloud position and found that understanding how Azure operates was my biggest hurdle. Cloud networking, in particular, was a challenge for me at first, but once I grasped that, the rest started to make sense. Now I’m diving into DevOps tools like Terraform and Kubernetes, so it’s definitely a learning curve!
Keep in mind that a lot of resources in Azure can be billable, so be cautious! It’s easy to spin up services that can end up costing money without you realizing it.
Make sure to adjust your mindset. On-prem knowledge only covers surface concepts in the cloud; they’re quite different. For example, Active Directory and Entra are fundamentally different. Dig into cloud identity, networking, storage, and monitoring basics before you start. You might find the AZ-900 and AZ-104 courses helpful for a quick primer.
How did you land the Azure job? I'm trying to make that jump too!
Just a heads-up, everything in the cloud is flat and logical, so forget about traditional on-prem gear like switches and routers. If you weren’t a network engineer before, transitioning should go smoothly!
One key piece of advice: learn how to script! Powershell will be your best tool for automation. Also, get familiar with Bicep for deployments—it's a great starting point before getting into Terraform. Cloud networking might seem complex but it's manageable. Enjoy the journey, it's going to be a wild ride!
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