Numerous networking engineers found my cloud webinars (AWS, Azure) useful when preparing for a cloud migration project. Here’s what one of them wrote:

We are beginning to migrate some of our offerings to Microsoft Azure and I need to get up to speed with Azure products. I found this webinar very informative, and Ivan explained the concepts in a clear manner and easy to follow along. I would recommend watching these webinars and then read Microsoft documentation to get a thorough understanding.

Want to have some hands-on work sprinkled on top of that? You’ll find deployment examples in the Networking in Public Clouds GitHub repository.

Matthias Luft concluded his part of Introduction to Cloud Computing webinar with a case study: how can you migrate an existing workload into a cloud environment?

It didn’t make sense to update Amazon Web Services Networking webinar before the re:Invent conference – even though AWS introduced only a few networking features during the conference, at least one of them made a significant impact on the materials.

However, once the conference was over, I went over the to-do list that has been slowly accumulating for months and spent days updating over a dozen videos¹. The major changes include:

I planned to write a few interesting blog posts last week, but then got sucked into updating Azure Networking webinar. At least I got that completed 😊; the webinar materials now include these new Azure services:

• Azure Firewall
• Azure Private Link
• Azure Gateway Load Balancer

I also added descriptions of numerous new features:

With AWS re:Invent 2022 being just a few days away, it’s time for another cloudy Friday video: using infrastructure-as-code principles to provision public cloud resources by Matthias Luft (part of Introduction to Cloud Computing webinar).

Last week I completed the first part of the annual Azure Networking update. The Azure Firewall section is already online; hope you’ll find it useful. I already have the materials for the Private Link and Gateway Load Balancer services, but haven’t decided whether to schedule another live session to cover them, or just create a short video.

Then there are a half-dozen smaller things I found while processing a year worth of Azure networking News. You’ll find them (and links to documentation) in New Azure Services and Features document.

I could spend days writing riffs on some of the more creative (in whatever dimension) comments left on my blog post or LinkedIn¹. Here’s one about uselessness of network automation in cloud infrastructure (take that, AWS!):

If the problem is well known you can apply rules to it (automation). The problem with networking is that it results in a huge number of cases that are not known in advance. And I don’t mean only the stuff you add/remove to fix operational problems. A friend in one of the biggest private clouds was saying that more than 50% of transport services are customized (a static route here, a PBR there etc) or require customization during their lifecycle (e.g. add/remove a knob). Telcos are “worse” and for good reasons.

Yeah, I’ve seen such environments. I had discussions with a wide plethora of people building private and public (telco) clouds, and summarized the few things I learned (not many of them good) in Address the Business Challenges First part of the Business Aspects of Networking Technologies webinar.

One of the overused buzzwords of the cloudy days is the Cloud-Native Environment. What should that mean and why could that be better than what we’ve been doing decades ago? Matthias Luft and Florian Barth tried to answer that question in the Introduction to Cloud Computing webinar.

I keep hearing numerous variations of the following argument from people believing in the unlimited powers of multi-cloud¹ (deploying your workloads in multiple public cloud providers):

We don’t install all our servers in the same DC. But would you trust one Cloud Server Provider with all your applications? That’s why you should use multi-cloud.

I’ve been hearing similar arguments for at least 30 years, including:

It’s so refreshing to find someone who understands the impact of latency on application performance, and develops a methodology that considers latency when migrating a workload into a public cloud: Adding latency: one step, two step, oops by Lawrence Jones.

Serverless computing (marketing term for code running on servers managed by other people) is one of the must-have terms if you’re playing a Buzzword Bingo, but what does it really mean and how does the whole thing work?

Matthias Luft and Florian Barth illustrated the concept during the Introduction to Cloud Computing webinar with a short demo in which they build a simple AWS Lambda function. For a more network-centric view, read the Can We Ping a Lambda Function blog post by Noel Boulene.

Remember the Cloud Models, Layers and Responsibilities video by Matthias Luft? He continued his introduction of cloud services with Cloud Services Hierarchy, explained the differences between infrastructure, platform, function and software as a service, and concluded with a there’s no free lunch message.

If you find smart NICs interesting, you’ll like the latest blog post by James Hamilton explaining how AWS emulated Xen environment on Nitro hardware to keep old VM instances running on new hardware.

I don’t think I’ve ever met someone saying “I wish my web application would run slower.” Everyone wants their stuff to run faster, but most environments are not willing to pay the cost (rearchitecting the application). Welcome to the wonderful world of PowerPoint “solutions”.

The obvious answer: The Cloud. Let’s move our web servers closer to the clients – deploy them in various cloud regions around the world. Mission accomplished.

Not really; the laws of physics (latency in particular) will kill your wonderful idea. I wrote about the underlying problems years ago, wrote another blog post focused on the misconceptions of cloudbursting, but I’m still getting the questions along the same lines. Time for another blog post, this time with even more diagrams.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ve probably realized there’s still need for networking in public clouds, and mastering it requires slightly different set of skills. What could you as a networking engineer to get fluent in this different world? I collected a few hints in the last video in Introduction to Cloud Computing webinar.