Skills for a virtualized/cloud future.

I am interested in the theory, programming and administration of Operating Systems and Networks. I am interested in Open Source exclusively, hence Linux.

From my research and a little intuition, I forsee a future in which most business IT infrastructure will migrate to the cloud. This will cause a split in the traditional role of the system administrator; some will specialize in configuration, monitoring, management, scripting, deployment, automation; they will use the associated tools and work with cloud providers on behalf of their clients (the clients of the system administrator). The other side will be hardware specialists working primarily at the data-centers.

I am tyring to position myself with regards to a flourishing future career. I think most jobs in accordance with my interests as laid out on the first line will be in system and network administration in a cloud/virtualized environment. Concerning the aforementioned split in system administration, and considering I will be more interested in the software side (versus the hardware side) what skills should I aim to develop?

I have concluded the following through research: Scripting/programming, indepth knowledge of TCP/IP stack and associated tools for network management, configuration and monitoring (chef, puppet, zabbix, nagios....), knowledge of Amazon AWS + other providers of cloud infrastructure solutions, good knowledge of OS theory and administration, good knowledge of network theory and administration, scripting and programming of network software and OS software....

I am basically interested in a career in which I can continuously learn about Operating Systems, networking; from a theoretical point of view and from an administrative point of view.

Thanks in advance,

Alex.

Continue reading...