Cloud & Infrastructure Topics
Cloud platform services, infrastructure architecture, Infrastructure as Code, environment provisioning, and infrastructure operations. Covers cloud service selection, infrastructure provisioning patterns, container orchestration (Kubernetes), multi-cloud and hybrid architectures, infrastructure cost optimization, and cloud platform operations. For CI/CD pipeline and deployment automation, see DevOps & Release Engineering. For cloud security implementation, see Security Engineering & Operations. For data infrastructure design, see Data Engineering & Analytics Infrastructure.
Cloud Networking and VPC Design
Designing networks inside a cloud provider: VPC/VNet topology, subnets, route tables, gateways, peering, private connectivity, and cloud load balancers. Covers segmentation, security groups and network ACLs, connectivity to on-premises, and how cloud network design differs from traditional data-center networking. Sits between the platform entries and the physical-networking entries.
Active Directory and Identity Management
Managing enterprise identity and directory services: Active Directory architecture, domains, forests, group policy, user and group management, and authentication. Covers designing and operating the directory that governs access across an organization, and integrating on-premises identity with cloud providers. The identity backbone of enterprise IT.
Networking Fundamentals and Protocols
The core model of how networks move data: the OSI and TCP/IP layers, the Internet Protocol suite, transport protocols (TCP versus UDP), encapsulation, and TCP behavior including congestion control. Covers the protocol foundations every networking and infrastructure discussion builds on, from link layer through transport. The conceptual bedrock beneath addressing, routing, and switching.
Windows Server Administration
Operating and maintaining Windows Server environments: service and process management, file sharing and NTFS permissions, PowerShell automation, performance monitoring and troubleshooting, and the broader Microsoft server ecosystem. Covers administering, scripting, and diagnosing Windows infrastructure, often in mixed multi-OS estates. The Windows counterpart to Linux administration.
IP Addressing and Subnetting
Working with IP address space: IPv4 and IPv6 addressing, subnetting and CIDR, address planning, NAT's role in address conservation, and static IP configuration. Covers designing an addressing scheme, calculating subnets, and avoiding overlap in interconnected networks. A focused, heavily-tested networking skill.
DNS, DHCP, and Name Resolution
The core network services that make addressing usable: DNS resolution and record types, zone and domain management, DHCP address assignment, and diagnosing name-resolution failures. Covers how names map to addresses, common misconfigurations, and troubleshooting resolution problems that masquerade as broader outages. Foundational infrastructure services.
Network Monitoring and Performance
Observing and optimizing network health: monitoring and telemetry, latency and throughput optimization, performance baselining, and capacity monitoring. Covers instrumenting networks for visibility, detecting and diagnosing performance degradation, and tuning for latency-sensitive workloads. The reliability and performance view of the network.
Cloud Service and Deployment Models
The foundational service models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, FaaS) and deployment models (public, private, hybrid, community cloud) and when each is appropriate. Covers the shared-responsibility boundary, on-demand elasticity, the core value proposition of cloud versus on-premises, and how service-model choice shifts operational ownership. The conceptual entry point before any provider-specific or architectural depth.
AWS Core Services and Architecture
Amazon Web Services' core service catalog and how the pieces compose into a working system: EC2, Lambda, S3, VPC, IAM, RDS, and the managed-service ecosystem. Covers service selection within AWS, common reference architectures, the AWS Well-Architected Framework pillars, and operational patterns specific to the platform. For provider-agnostic compute or storage trade-offs, see the cross-cloud entries.