Hire the best Cloud Engineers

Check out Cloud Engineers with the skills you need for your next job.

Clients rate Cloud Engineers
Rating is 4.8 out of 5.
4.8/5
based on 759 client reviews
Mahmoud A.
$65/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Microsoft Office 365
  • Microsoft Teams
  • Windows Server
  • Azure
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Microsoft Active Directory
  • Microsoft Windows Powershell
  • Microsoft Exchange Online
  • Exchange Server
  • Cloud Computing

Microsoft cloud consultant with over nine years of experience in Microsoft Solutions and Digital Transformation, for the last nine years I've been Providing Professional services, creating customized solutions to address specific customer requirements, improve overall productivity, and increase efficiency. Delivering a number of projects for large enterprises including consultation, design, scoping, planning, migration, and technical documentation. 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞 (𝐖𝐅𝐇) 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐭: * Remote Desktop Gateway Farm integrated with Azure MFA * Remote secure desktops with Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) on...

Luciana O.
$150/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Cybersecurity Management
  • Security Engineering
  • Information Security
  • Email Security
  • Information Security Audit
  • Internet Security
  • Security Management
  • Security Infrastructure
  • Security Policies & Procedures Documentation
  • Cloud Security
  • PCI
  • Information Security Awareness
  • Network Monitoring
  • System Monitoring
  • Security Analysis

I am the CEO & founder of BetterCyber Consulting, a cybersecurity consulting, technology, and managed services company helping startup, micro, small, and mid-sized companies create secure operating environments to increase business opportunities. My priority is to develop cost-effective, business-focused, and risk-driven cybersecurity solutions to help my clients secure their critical information assets against cyber threats. Before leaving corporate America, I held several cybersecurity positions, from operations to strategy and architecture, in Fortune 100 companies, such as PayPal Holdings, Inc. and Marathon Petroleum Corporation. I hold...

Christian C.
$120/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • iPhone
  • Microservice
  • Terraform
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Microsoft Windows Powershell
  • DevOps
  • Cloud Engineering Consultation
  • Android Smartphone
  • Azure App Service
  • Application Integration
  • System Administration
  • API Integration
  • Docker
  • Azure IoT HuB
  • Microsoft Endpoint Manager
  • Cloud Computing
  • Cloud Architecture
  • Kubernetes

A visionary and strategic Cloud Solutions Architect with an extensive background with various Microsoft cloud technologies and driving the overall vision, architecture, execution, and delivery strategy for mission-critical systems and platforms. I am adept at partnering with key stakeholders to identify process improvement and structuring implementation procedures to resolve tricky business and technical challenges. I'm a certified Azure Architect with over 17 years of experience in the medical and transportation, and logistics fields within Fortune 500 companies and startups. This experience includes architecting and implementing device...

Nasir H.
$65/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Ubiquiti
  • MikroTik RouterOS
  • RADIUS
  • Network Administration
  • System Administration
  • Network Security
  • PfSense
  • Network Engineering
  • Ansible
  • WiFi
  • VPN
  • Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert
  • Cloud Computing
  • Python
  • PHP

A CCIE certified networks and systems specialist with 10+ years of experience in designing, configuring, troubleshooting, and documenting diverse IT scenarios for ISPs, enterprises and startups. I have extensive hands-on experience of the following vendors' devices: - Cisco - Aruba - Ubiquiti - Mikrotik - Huawei These days I'm heavily involved with the development and integration of WiFi Captive Portals for Ubiquiti, Mikrotik, OpenWRT, Cisco and Aruba Access Points. In addition to that, I'm involved in combining web application development with networking for solving unique problems in the network automation space. I have implemented...

Marc W.
$145/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Microsoft SQL Server Administration
  • MySQL
  • IT Management
  • Amazon EC2
  • Amazon S3
  • Amazon RDS
  • AWS Lambda
  • Database Administration
  • AWS Server Migration
  • Security Infrastructure
  • Vulnerability Assessment
  • Application Security

Vastly experience IT expert and top ranked AWS consultant on Upwork that specializes in AWS consulting and migrating business environments, applications and data centers to the AWS cloud. Certified AWS Solutions Architect and AWS Certified Security - Specialty and specialist at creating secure, highly available and cost efficient environments in the AWS cloud that meet all modern compliance standards such as HIPAA, PCI and SOC2. AWS instructor and SME for Simplilearn, an online IT training and certification site and instructor for A Cloud Guru, world leader in cloud computing training. Over 15 years experience of in-house IT consulting...

Aman S.
$35/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Amazon Web Services
  • DigitalOcean
  • Apache Administration
  • SSL
  • DevOps
  • Jenkins
  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • CI/CD Platform
  • LAMP Administration
  • Apache Tomcat
  • cPanel
  • Cloud Computing
  • DNS
  • System Administration

✅ Redhat Certified ✅ DevOps ✅ cPanel/WHM ✅ AWS/GCP/AZURE ✅ Ubuntu/CentOS Linux Server Administrator with more than 8 years of experience . Areas of expertise: *RHCSA RHCE Redhat Certified Professional * Site Setup, Optimization and Migration Support for Wordpress, Joomla, Magento, Xcart, Opencart based websites * Amazon Web Services, G-Cloud , OVH, BlueHost, CloudWays, Digital Ocean, Godday, Hostgator, Linode, Media Temple - Hosting Setup and Management. * Apache, IIS, Nginx, Tomcat, Varnish, Mod_pagespeed, php-fpm * Control Panel: Cpanel, WHM, Plesk, Ensim, Webmin, Virtualmin, AWS, Azure, g-cloud * OS: CentOS, Debian, RHEL,...

Andrew S.
$40/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Microsoft SCCM
  • Microsoft Active Directory
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Microsoft Office 365
  • Microsoft Hyper V
  • IT Management
  • Helpdesk
  • Windows Server
  • Cloud Computing
  • Microsoft Endpoint Manager

As a Top Rated Plus Freelancer, I am one of the Top 3% Skilled Talented Freelancers on Upwork 95 Satisfied Customers on Upwork -- 2500 working hours on Upwork -- Customers from all over the globe. ✔ +14 years of working experience in the IT industry (IT Infrastructure). ✔ Proficient in MS products and a good understanding of (Office 365- Microsoft Azure-ConfigMgr (Current Branch)-Endpoint Manager (Intune)-Active directory-DNS-DHCP-Group Policies-Windows Server). ✔ Good customer support skills and infrastructure project management skills. ✔ Good communicator and good team player as part of a global IT team and projects. ✔ IT Help Desk...

Avery K.
$75/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Windows Administration
  • Cloud Computing
  • Amazon S3
  • Amazon EC2
  • Cloud Security Framework
  • Server Virtualization
  • Windows Server
  • AWS Server Migration
  • Process Improvement
  • Troubleshooting
  • WordPress
  • Amazon ECS
  • Office 365
  • Microsoft Exchange Online
  • Microsoft Exchange Server

Experienced Infrastructure Engineer with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry. Skilled in AWS, Data Center Technologies, Leadership, Business Process Improvement, Troubleshooting, and Technical Support. Strong information technology professional with a Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) focused in Information Systems Management from Keller Graduate School of Management of DeVry University.

Richard C.
$99/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Microsoft Active Directory
  • Cloud Migration
  • Cloud Security
  • Azure
  • Azure App Service
  • Infrastructure Management
  • Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
  • Network Engineering
  • Cloud Computing
  • Cloud Architecture
  • Cloud Engineering Consultation

🌟 Upwork Top Rated Microsoft Certified Azure Professional 🌟 | Cloud Implementation/Migration Strategy | Azure Virtual Desktop Specialist | Secure Infrastructure & Engineering | Azure Networking, VPN, and Azure Services Configuration 🌟 I simply help you get to the Cloud with Azure. 🌟 20+ years of professional IT experience. 🥇These client reviews, which can be found in my completed jobs section, represents the level of 100% success and satisfaction, professionalism, dedication, and value I bring to the table and outlines what you can expect from working with me: "Richard has been one of the best Upwork freelancer's that I have...

Joydeep R.
$60/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Grafana
  • Kubernetes
  • Docker
  • GitLab
  • Prometheus
  • Amazon ECS
  • Microsoft Azure
  • DevOps
  • Azure DevOps
  • Google Cloud Platform
  • GitHub
  • Amazon SageMaker
  • Cloud Computing
  • CI/CD
  • Python

I have 10 years of industrial experience in handling dotnet development as lead and architect role. Also I have worked on various clouds on Kubernetes , Docker , Helm charts packaging and deployment , Creating infrastructure on Terraform and deploying workloads on Kubernetes . Implementing Istio as service mesh and NGINX Ingress routing configurations on kubernetes. On CICD pipelines I am proficient in working on Gitlab/Azure DevOPS as well . lease connect if you are interested . Services Provided - Cloud Infrastructure - ✔ Cloud VPC Multi cluster multi region and zonal resiliency design. ✔ Security Group and Routes audit. ✔ Subnet...

Brijesh A.
$40/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Service Cloud Administration
  • Docker
  • Scripting
  • DevOps
  • Terraform
  • Virtual Machine
  • Amazon EC2
  • Security Infrastructure
  • Git
  • DigitalOcean
  • Cloud Migration
  • Infrastructure Management
  • Jenkins
  • CI/CD Pipelines

🔸TOP RATED PLUS on Upwork. 🔸 100% Job Success. 🔸 3000+ high-quality hours. 📞 Free 30-Minute Exceptionally Helpful Consultations with an expert + AWS Cost Optimisation Assessment 📊 Just invite me to your job! ✅ 🚀 Helping Businesses Architect, Develop, and Deploy reliable Cloud Platforms and DevOps workflows on AWS, Azure, and GCP: Security, Reliability, Performance, 24x7 CloudOps, and Cost Optimisation. Just invite me to your project! ✅ I deliver high-quality solutions that work at scale, are robust, and can grow as fast as your business grows. No matter the business domain or challenges you are facing, l have deep technical...

Samson A.
$120/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Information Security Governance
  • Google Cloud Platform Administration
  • Security Analysis
  • Network Security
  • Cloud Security
  • Cloud Computing
  • Cloud Engineering Consultation
  • Information Security
  • Security Engineering
  • Security Operation Center
  • Configuration Management

passionate security enthusiast interested in assisting a team increase their security posture by providing guidance and consultation on building and improving security operation capabilities, reducing overall attack surface with proper vulnerability management, and security engineering/architectural improvements.

Vitaly D.
$65/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • AWS Lambda
  • Node.js
  • CI/CD
  • Serverless Stack
  • Serverless Computing
  • Apache Kafka
  • AWS CloudFront
  • Amazon DynamoDB
  • AWS IoT Core
  • AWS CloudFormation
  • Amazon Web Services
  • MongoDB
  • Terraform
  • AWS Development
  • TypeScript

Hello 👋 My name is Vitaly, thank you for your interest in my candidacy. For the last 10 years I develop myself as a developer, now I can help your business to avoid many mistakes with AWS. Combining a deeply analytic mindset with a passion for getting things done, I has been working as a consultant since 2018. Some of my focus points are: - Serverless (Lambda, Step Functions, ECS, DynamoDB, CloudFormation, API Gateway, CloudFront, S3, SES, SNS, GameLift, Route53) - Cost Optimization - Performance Tuning - Cloud Solutions Architecture - Data Engineering Common requests for me: "Please look at my account and see if we're following best...

Aqib M.
$45/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Machine Learning
  • Deep Learning
  • Computer Vision
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Mobile App
  • iOS Development
  • Website Development
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Data Science
  • Data Processing
  • Keras
  • Python
  • Image Processing
  • Flask
  • Python Pandas

Hi This is Aqib a Data Scientist, Researcher and AI expert with over 16 years of professional experience. I am running a company to build an end-to-end working solutions for the real-world problems. We house a team of consultants, engineers and data researcher with expertise in Business Application Solutions, Web Solutions and Mobile apps. We offer services ranging from Data Science, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, NLP, Chatbots, AI Invoice Reader, Data scrapping, Data Analytics, Mobile and Web. Data Science and Machine Learning Team: A Data Scientist/ML Engineer/Technical Manager/Architect...

Awais T.
$100/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Spring Boot
  • Solution Architecture Consultation
  • WordPress
  • CI/CD
  • AWS Fargate
  • Apache Spark
  • Database
  • Containerization
  • NoSQL Database
  • Java
  • Amazon ECS
  • DevOps
  • Data Engineering
  • AWS CloudFormation
  • Microservice
  • React
  • Cloud Computing
  • Spring Framework
  • Serverless Stack

— TOP RATED PLUS Freelancer on UPWORK — EXPERT VETTED Freelancer (Among the Top 1% of Upwork Freelancers) — Full Stack Engineer — Data Engineer ✅ AWS Infrastructure, DevOps, AWS Architect, AWS Services (EC2, ECS, Fargate, S3, Lambda, DynamoDB, RDS, Elastic Beanstalk, AWS CDK, AWS Cloudformation etc.), Serverless application development, AWS Glue, AWS EMR Frontend Development: ✅ HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Javascript, React, Angular Backend Development: ✅ JAVA, Spring Boot, Hibernate, JPA, Microservices, Express.js, Node.js Content Management: ✅ Wordpress, WIX, Squarespace Big Data: ✅ Apache Spark, ETL, Big data, MapReduce, Scala, HDFS, Hive,...

Sumeet K.
$45/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Technical Support
  • Cloud Computing
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Azure

Microsoft Certified Azure Architect, Administrator, Security Engineer, Network Engineer and Trainer (MCT) with great skills and experience on Azure and its services. Certifications: AZ 103, AZ 300, AZ 301, AZ 700, AZ 500, DP 900 Key Capabilities: Azure Compute services, Azure Security, Azure Backup and DR solution, Azure Networking, Azure Monitor, Azure Storage, High Availability, Azure Cost management and optimization and various other Azure IaaS and PaaS services. ARM template, Terraform, Azure PowerShell and Azure DevOps Overall Experience: 10+ Years Azure Experience: 7+ Years

Sahil D.
$25/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Terraform
  • Cloud Computing
  • Linux System Administration
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Docker
  • AWS CodeDeploy
  • DevOps
  • Amazon ECS
  • CI/CD
  • AWS CloudFormation
  • DevOps Engineering
  • Containerization
  • System Automation
  • Kubernetes

🎖🎖Certified AWS Architect/DevOps Engineer, having 10+ years of experience Achievements: ✌✌4500+ hours on Upwork ✌✌ 61 successfully delivered projects ✌✌Top Rated Plus Badge ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Skills and Experience • CI/CD • Docker • Terraform • Jenkins • Kubernetes • DevSecOps • Amazon Web Services (AWS): EC2, ECS, S3, IAM, Lambda, Route 53, CloudFront, CloudFormation, RDS, etc; • Automated Tests • Architecture Solutions • Ansible • Apache, Tomcat, and Nginx • Git/SVN • Linux (Ubuntu/RedHat/CentOS) • Bash Script • Powershell • SQL/ NoSQL • Programming Languages (Python, Java, PHP,...

Luiz T.
$95/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Python
  • Machine Learning
  • Data Science
  • Data Analysis
  • Data Visualization
  • Statistics
  • Data Modeling
  • Cloud Implementation
  • Cloud Computing
  • Cloud Architecture
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Data Science Consultation
  • Dash
  • Python Scikit-Learn
  • Plotly

I am a Computer Scientist passionate about analysis and modelling. I am the founder of and Chief Data Scientist at Tauffer Consulting, where I focus on tailored solutions to small/medium sized business that need expert guidance in the extremely promising, but many times overwhelming, world of Data Science, Machine Learning and Cloud infrastructure. The key to a successful incorporation of Data Science or Machine Learning solutions to a project lies in the integration of the technical expertise with the client’s domain knowledge. I strongly believe in that and give special attention to the specificities of each project. The core strength...

Mohit S.
$50/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Google Cloud Platform Administration
  • DevOps Engineering
  • Cloud Engineering
  • Ansible
  • Terraform
  • Cloud Architecture
  • Deployment Automation
  • Automation
  • Kubernetes
  • Cloud Security
  • Jenkins
  • GitLab
  • Docker
  • Containerization
  • Amazon ECS

Hi 👋🏻, I am Mohit Solanki, Senior google cloud engineer has 4+ years of experience and certified GCP Professional Cloud Architect with a background in cloud services, information security and cyber security. ✅ Knowledgeable about the Google Cloud Platform, Oracle Cloud and Amazon Web Services.🌩️ Working familiarity with the automation and Devops tools Terraform, Jenkins, and Ansible.⚙️ Experienced with container orchestration tools including Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, Helm and Anthos.🛳️ Strong engineer with a Master of Computer Applications in Computer/Information Technology Administration and Management from Rajiv Gandhi...

Stephen P.
$50/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Sales
  • Market Research
  • Business Development
  • Management Consulting
  • Business Planning & Strategy
  • Sales Strategy
  • Marketing Data Analytics
  • Sales Analytics
  • Computer Network
  • Data Science Consultation
  • PyTorch
  • Machine Learning
  • scikit-learn
  • TensorFlow
  • Data Science

I am the founder of Cryptius, a full stack development, UX/UI, and machine learning consulting company based in beautiful Miami, FL. As an entrepreneur, I have written business plans for over 20 companies, many of whom I have a direct involvement with as a strategic board member. My Sales and Marketing Strategies have grossed over $1mm in revenue for a few companies I have been involved with. My sales and marketing abilities have helped international companies expand into the US and US companies grow their business domestically.

Vladislav M.
$90/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • DevOps
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Linux System Administration
  • Network Administration
  • MySQL
  • Unix Shell
  • Docker
  • Infrastructure as Code
  • CI/CD
  • Deployment Automation

Top-ranked self-motivated professional DevOps and Cloud architect with strong work ethic and productive self-starter – proven with success being a freelancer at Upwork(ex-oDesk). Team player - Participated in multiple projects, joining large teams, effectively co-working with other professionals. Among my long-term customers: - Stanford University - Motorola - Bwin Interactive - Fairchild Semiconductor - Texas Instruments Effective leader - Took over leadership and managed team resources to achieve goals meeting deadlines Experience: 24+ years as an Systems Administrator 17+ years as Network Engineer 12+ years as Cloud Expert and...

Luke J.
$140/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Cloud Computing
  • SQL
  • AWS Server Migration
  • DevOps
  • Enterprise Architecture
  • Solution Architecture
  • CI/CD
  • Azure
  • Terraform
  • Containerization

I have 20 years experience in providing consultative technical strategy. I am an analytical problem solver with a broad (and deep) skillset, focused on solution architecture and cloud strategy. The solution and business impact are always greater than the project. I am a business-oriented technologist. AWS Certified Solutions Architect AWS Certified Developer

Mariusz F.
$99/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Azure App Service
  • Amazon ECS
  • AWS Lambda
  • Alexa Skill Kit
  • Windows Server
  • Linux System Administration
  • Microsoft Azure SQL Database
  • Microsoft Office 365
  • Microsoft Exchange Server
  • Disaster Recovery
  • Database Administration

I am a professional freelancer with THIRD PARTY LIABILITY INSURANCE for over two and a half million dollars, so you are in safe hands. I am Microsoft Certified Trainer, Office 365, GCP, AWS, and Azure Expert. Honored as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in Azure area. I cover architecting, security, administrating, and migration of all three major clouds – Azure, AWS, and GCP. Apart from the main area of Cloud expert in the field of infrastructure servers Windows Server 2003-2016, Microsoft Active Directory, Hyper-V Private Cloud, IIS, System Center, SQL. Private Cloud, System Center, Hyper-V, Open Stack Expert, and all Microsoft...

Hadley J.
$60/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Business Writing
  • Technical Writing
  • English
  • French

My clients look for results. Power Pages Pro (that's me!) gets them what they need, when they need it. With a writing career in a variety of business sectors, I write for sales, marketing and technical briefs. Services include web content, sales texts, blog articles, ebooks, white papers, manuals, and training courses written in the subjects chosen by my clients. Additionally, I also write and translate in both english and french (expert/bilingual).

Kostiantyn V.
$75/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Desktop Application
  • Cloud Architecture
  • Docker
  • C#
  • Microservice
  • Service-Oriented Architecture
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Cloud Engineering Consultation
  • Solution Architecture Consultation
  • Database Architecture
  • PaaS
  • Serverless Computing
  • Software Architecture & Design
  • Azure App Service

15+ years of experience in software development strong theoretical grasp and breadth of experience in OOP, data structures, algorithms, relational database design, architecture, and development. 🔹 Recognized expert with multiple certificates in:: ✔ Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert ✔ Google Cloud Certified: Professional Cloud Architect ✔ IASA Certified IT Architect (CITA-Foundation) ✔ SEI Software Architecture Professional Certificate ✔ Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert ✔ Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate ✔ Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate ✔ Microsoft Certified: Azure...

Sergey K.
$40/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Laravel
  • AngularJS
  • Node.js
  • MySQL
  • Vue.js
  • React
  • React Native
  • TypeScript
  • PHP
  • JavaScript
  • MongoDB
  • MySQL
  • Mobile App Development
  • Mobile Development Framework

I am seasoned Full Stack Engineer with 12+ years of experience in backend and frontend development. I posses deep understanding of OOP principles and knowledge of patterns. Worked in small, medium and enterprise applications using modern web and mobile technologies. Core skills and area of expertise: - React Native, TypeScript - JavaScript and JS frameworks: ReactJS, VueJS, NodeJS, AngularJS, Angular 8, - Knowledge of HTML5/CSS3 + LESS/SASS/SCSS - responsive design (Bootstrap, GridLayout, Zurb) - MySQL, No SQL solutions - RabbitMQ, Memcached, Redis, Sphinx, Elasticsearch - MEAN and LAMP stack - Amazon AWS: EC2, Lambda, S3, DynamoDB,...

Manish M.
$60/hr
  • Trophy Icon Cloud Engineer
  • Ionic Framework
  • Magento 2
  • Shopify
  • Laravel
  • OpenCart
  • Drupal
  • Flutter
  • React Native
  • Node.js
  • HIPAA
  • WordPress
  • PHP
  • Python
  • XML
  • Electronic Data Interchange

I am active member of the Forbes Technology Council. Mobile and Web Application Developer with strong experience of Workflow Expert and Product Development in various domain like Logic, E-commerce, Healthcare, CRM and Custom Workflow Application. I worked on multiple healthcare-related projects HIS, EMR, EHR, and EDI, with HIPAA compliance and other security norms. Integrated REST, SOAP API, Omni Channel, Mautic and Workflow implementationI also know PHP and its WCM/CMS & Frameworks like Laravel, OpenCart, Magento, Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, and many more. Recently, I started focusing on ADA (American Disability Act) compliance. My...

$NaN/hr

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Moving to the Cloud: What to Know & Who to Hire

What is “The Cloud”?

The cloud is synonymous with modern computing. A majority of businesses—from startups to massive corporations—use it in some capacity to augment or streamline their existing operations, data storage, hosting, and app deployment. So what is the cloud and how is it changing traditional server setups across the globe?

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines the cloud as “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”

In short, it’s allowing companies to reengineer their back-end architectures (servers, databases, application software, and more) and put them in virtual environments where they can be accessed remotely, without requiring physical server hardware of their own. Cloud services (also known as web services) are a blanket way to describe these computing capabilities.

The benefits of using cloud and web service providers

Adopting an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or a platform-as-a-service model (PaaS) from a provider like Heroku can take some of the responsibilities of hosting, maintaining, updating, and scaling up server operations off the hands of developers and IT managers. An IaaS will provide you with all the components you need to build a backend architecture, offering flexibility and plenty of scalability. Note that deploying a site or app’s back end to the cloud with an IaaS requires more configuration, while deploying with a PaaS doesn’t require as much configuration—just enable the services you need within the platform’s environment, push the code to it, and it handles the rest.

While their clients benefit from a virtual environment, cloud service providers themselves have massive data centers that are as big as multiple football fields. These servers are usually set up in a way that some can fail (or, even a majority of them), but not in a way that all of the services will be taken down. It’s important to know that it’s still possible for cloud computing to have a single point of failure, or to have certain services fail.

This has brought about the need for more engineers who know how to integrate, work with, and fix cloud-based operations. You may not need a full-time network engineer if you’re operating in the cloud, but you’ll definitely need a skilled development operations professional to ensure things run smoothly.

Here’s a look at a few of the top providers in the cloud services market:

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS): Popular with startups looking to get things going in the cloud for cheap, this platform is also powerful enough for large, enterprise operations.
  • Google Cloud Platform: This popular PaaS offers cloud computing, storage, big data and API services so you can build and launch sites or complex applications in the cloud. It offers things like SQL and NoSQL database services, analytics, virtual machines, all of which can be mixed and matched to suit your needs.
  • Microsoft Azure: An enterprise-level Paas and IaaS cloud provider, it offers mobile and web app deployment and scaling, database services, virtual machines, mobile back ends, machine learning, and more.
  • Heroku: A popular PaaS where applications can be completely built, deployed and run in the cloud.
  • Rackspace: This PaaS offers cloud computing through its infrastructure (either dedicated servers, public cloud, or private cloud, all of which can be mixed and matched for a hybrid environment), or their partnerships with Azure and AWS.
  • Cloud Foundry: This open-source PaaS written in Ruby and Go offers cloud computing services with an enterprise-grade option, Pivotal.
  • Xen Cloud Platform (XCP): This open source virtualization solution that provides cloud computing and back-end virtualization. XCP includes an enterprise-ready set of tools with the Xen Hypervisor, with the Xen API for cloud, storage and networking operations.
  • Oracle: This enterprise giant has made recent updates to its cloud capabilities, helping big businesses leverage the cloud, but also offering small- to medium-sized businesses cloud computing services.
  • Apache Cloudstack: a free, open-source cloud software for creating and deploying cloud services that has excellent support for virtualization and the AWS API.

Beyond data centers: making the move to the cloud

With the rise of the cloud, the server landscape is rapidly changing, with more server-side operations being pushed off-site. Small, medium, and enterprise-level companies can easily expand the size, storage, and processing power of their servers in a way that takes less time, and less money.

For startups in particular, these cloud-based platforms take server upkeep and support off their plates so they can focus on growing their businesses. They also offer flexibility and speed, with the ability to scale up quickly when needed. Scaling up can be hard to do in a physical data center: ordering new hardware, provisioning, and racking, and stacking can take anywhere from three to six weeks. In the cloud, you can provision capacity on the fly.

The key to moving to the cloud is striking the right balance for your organization—whether that’s a hybrid approach or all-in.

Adopting a hybrid cloud approach

A majority of businesses are finding that a hybrid approach works best, leaving some things on traditional, local servers and moving more resource-heavy applications to the cloud. This can be a permanent strategic solution, or a stop along the way to going 100% cloud-based. There are benefits to leaving certain portions of your back-end infrastructure on virtualized local servers or co-located data centers, while moving more resource-heavy applications to the cloud.

For example, migrating a back-end architecture to Amazon Web Services (AWS) allows for automatic scaling, the ability to fail over multiple availability zones, its accommodations for peaky traffic and intensive operations (e.g., some of our machine learning models), and the ability to free up a team to focus on application-specific work rather than solving problems Amazon can address.

Public cloud vs. private cloud

A common approach is to divvy up a server’s workload with a mix of private (onsite) and public (cloud services) clouds. Larger, enterprise companies often opt for a private cloud/onsite server architecture. One reason? Protecting sensitive data.

For some organizations in regulated industries, like finance, there are restrictions on what information they can store in the cloud. Because of this, they have to strike a balance between storing sensitive information on-site while still making it available in the cloud, so they can take advantage of the agility and scalability the cloud offers.

Critical apps are often better suited for a private cloud for security and reliability reasons. The main concerns with critical apps are performance (speed, reliability, and no downtime) and security of your information. A privately hosted cloud is a good bet for these, giving you more control along with the flexibility you want.

Less critical apps like web servers, backup services, and infrastructures are safer in the public cloud. There, you’ll get servers that allow you to free up space on-site, plus the benefit of temporary scalability if you need it, with increased capacity just a click away. Also, a public cloud configuration can even be treated like software code and placed in a repository where developers can edit, adjust, and run tests against your current configuration, which is helpful for ensuring a successful deployment, and for getting the most out of the cloud.

Should you move to the cloud? What to consider before deploying to the cloud

For small businesses, there are some clear advantages to using the cloud—whether it’s going entirely to the cloud, or using a hybrid approach that breaks up your server workload between an on-site infrastructure and the cloud.

The benefits? It’s an invisible, offsite server that you can scale up when and how you want. If you have an application that requires a lot of space, data, or resources, you can shift that over to the cloud while freeing up space in your current setup.

Small businesses can strike a strategic balance between traditional on-site servers and cloud servers, so it’s important to ask yourself a few questions about your setup before choosing the one that’s right for you. And if you're not sure you can always seek the advice from cloud consulting specialists.

  1. Take a look at your existing back-end infrastructure. What are your requirements, and what are your end-user’s requirements? What will diversifying to the cloud do to help with these? Consider compatibility of your server-side software. While some businesses don’t move all of their server-side architecture to the cloud, it’s helpful to ensure cloud compatibility in the components they keep on-site.
  2. Decide what should go where. Plan how you’ll virtualize your back end. If you’re a small business, basic server functions like an email server or an app server could probably stay on-site. Or, apps that don’t require as much data storage could stay local, too. Be sure to prioritize your needs. You may opt to divvy up the workload with a hybrid cloud environment, keeping mini servers on-site to handle smaller workloads, like file sharing servers. These can even be designed to sync up with cloud drives.
  3. What’s your budget? This will help narrow down which cloud service is right for you. The great thing about the cloud? Flexibility. If you start out small and find you need more, you can easily upgrade subscriptions or buy more data—no need to switch out hard drives.
  4. Who should you hire or have on your team to help? Do you have a server professional available to help with maintenance or fixes? Because you don’t have to worry about hardware with cloud servers, it can be a more seamless integration for IT professionals, but it’s not without its quirks. Make sure you have a dev ops engineer who has plenty of experience integrating with the cloud and handling issues with network reliability that can arise.
  5. How scalable does it need to be? How much growth you anticipate in terms of traffic and data for your application or site’s server play a very important role in how you decide to set up your server. You’ll want to be able to expand your server space without having to totally replace it, whether that means starting with a setup that allows you to switch out hard drives for hard drives with more memory, or virtualizing your setup across numerous smaller servers.
  6. Security. Security is always a big concern—if you have very sensitive information being stored on your server, you may opt to keep that on-site while moving less sensitive information to the cloud. Or, go for a private cloud/hybrid cloud environment that allows you to maintain a more secure environment, and lets your IT professionals keep tighter control on what data is stored/shared where.

The need for cloud engineers

From a talent standpoint, running your server operations in the cloud means you won’t need the same network and storage engineers on hand to take care of day-to-day server issues—but maintenance and support won’t be totally off the table.

Look for a cloud server architect with plenty of experience deploying operations to the cloud. Some key skills and expertise to look for in a dev ops engineer are:

  • Configuration management skills: Chef, Puppet, Ansible, etc.
  • Virtualization experience: VMware, Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), Xen, etc.
  • Public cloud experience: Amazon Web Services, Google, Rackspace
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