We talked about who and why will need skills in creating an infrastructural platform using Kubernetes in the near future, with the instructor , lead engineer .
Where does the demand for platform engineers come from?
Recently, more and more companies recognize the need to create an internal infrastructural platform that serves as a unified environment for developing, preparing releases, deploying, and operating the company's digital products. Such a platform encompasses systems and services for managing computing and network resources, a continuous integration system, an artifact repository, monitoring systems, and other services used by your development teams. The movement towards building internal platforms and forming platform teams began several years ago. Evidence of this can be found in reports , and books like .
The main advantages of the platform approach to managing the company's infrastructure are as follows:
- Product teams are not distracted from the development of their products to solve infrastructural problems.
- The platform team, responsible for the development of the infrastructure platform, considers the needs of product teams within the company and creates solutions specifically for internal needs.
- The company accumulates internal experience that can be easily reused, for example, when launching a new product team or establishing standards or best practices within the company.
If a company manages to adopt this approach, over time, the internal infrastructure platform can become more convenient for development teams than the services of cloud providers because it was created considering the features and needs of the teams, accumulating their experience and specifications. All this leads to increased productivity of product teams, which is beneficial for the business.
Why Kubernetes?
Different tools can be used as a foundation for creating an infrastructure platform. Previously it was Mesos, and now, in addition to Kubernetes, you can use Nomad, and of course, no one is stopping you from creating your own 'bikes.' Nevertheless, the majority of companies prefer to build their platform specifically on Kubernetes. Here’s what it is valued for the most:
- Support for modern engineering practices such as 'infrastructure as code.'
- A multitude of necessary mechanisms 'out of the box' for teams. For example, management of computing resources, mechanisms for controlled application deployment, and ensuring their fault tolerance.
- A vast ecosystem that includes tools for solving various problems, along with support from cloud service providers.
- An advanced community: dozens of conferences worldwide, an impressive list of contributors, availability of certification and certified specialists, and educational programs for this tool.
Kubernetes can be considered the new industry standard; it’s only a matter of time before your company starts using it.
Unfortunately, all of this comes at a cost: with the arrival of Kubernetes and containerization technologies, many processes and tools that the team uses in their daily work undergo significant changes.
- The approach to managing computing resources is evolving.
- The method of deploying and configuring applications is changing.
- A different approach to organizing monitoring and logging services is necessary.
- There is a need to create new integrations between the services that make up the platform and adapt existing automation scripts.
Even the local development environment and the application debugging process are undergoing changes.
Companies can transition to an infrastructure platform and manage it on their own, developing employee skills or hiring necessary specialists. There are also frequent cases when it's advisable to delegate these processes, for instance, if the company cannot shift the team's focus from product development to building new infrastructure, lacks the capacity for extensive internal R&D, or faces unacceptable risks associated with independently creating new infrastructure and transitioning product teams onto it—this is where seeking help from companies that have already gone through this journey is preferable.
New competencies for working with the infrastructure platform will be needed not only by administrators (a profession that is currently evolving into an infrastructure engineer) but also by developers. Developer A developer must understand how their application is launched and operates in production; they should be able to maximize the use of the ecosystem, debug the application, or modify deployment and configuration procedures. These skills are also essential for team leads: a significant amount of R&D is required to select suitable tools, study their limitations, find integration approaches among the tools included in the platform, and anticipate various scenarios for using platform services by product teams.
While deploying Kubernetes, even on the infrastructure of cloud providers, is not overly complex, migrating all development and operational processes, adapting applications, and integrating a dozen new tools for the team is indeed a challenging task requiring a deep understanding of processes and extensive communication with all participants involved in creating your products.
We have compiled all this information in our online course 'Infrastructure Platform Based on Kubernetes'. Over 5 months of practice, you will learn:
- How Kubernetes is structured
- How DevOps practices are implemented using it
- Which tools in the ecosystem are already mature enough for use in production and how to integrate them with each other.
Unlike other educational programs, we focus on the ecosystem and nuances of operating Kubernetes clusters, where many companies encounter difficulties when transitioning to their own infrastructure platform.
Upon completing the course, you will possess the qualifications of a platform engineer and be able to independently create an infrastructure platform within your company. In fact, some of our students undertake this as a project, receiving feedback and support from instructors. You will also have enough knowledge and skills to prepare for the CNCF certification.
It is important to note that mastering these skills requires a solid understanding of . According to our observations in the job market, after training, such a specialist can confidently expect a salary of 150-200 thousand rubles.
If you are that specialist with experience in using DevOps practices, we invite you to .
Source: habr.com
