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, NAT, and peering, plus private connectivity through VPC endpoints and cloud load balancers. Covers segmentation, security groups and network ACLs, hybrid connectivity to on-premises data centers over VPN or dedicated links like Direct Connect and ExpressRoute, IP address planning across many VPCs and accounts, and how cloud network design differs from traditional data-center networking.
Routing Protocols and Configuration
How traffic finds its path across networks: route selection basics (administrative distance, longest-prefix match, control plane versus forwarding plane), static and default routing, interior gateway protocols (OSPF, IS-IS, EIGRP, RIP), BGP, and multicast routing. Covers protocol selection and migration, OSPF area and IS-IS level design, EIGRP feasible successors, BGP path selection, communities, route reflectors and policy, route redistribution, summarization and filtering, VRF-Lite and VRF route leaking, convergence tuning with BFD, ECMP path selection, BGP-based inbound and outbound traffic engineering, multi-homed internet edge and full-table scale, RPKI origin validation and containing route leaks, route flap and oscillation analysis, graceful maintenance drains, first-hop gateway redundancy (HSRP, VRRP, GLBP), and verifying and troubleshooting routing on real devices. Excludes network-wide topology and MPLS or segment-routing backbone design, Layer 2 switching and VLANs, general layered fault isolation and packet capture, cloud VPC routing, and firewall or ACL security.
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.
IP Addressing and Subnetting
Working with IP address space: IPv4 and IPv6 addressing, subnet masks and CIDR notation (including why classful addressing was abandoned), VLSM calculation, route summarization from an addressing standpoint, private (RFC1918), ULA, link-local (including 169.254 self-assigned) and public ranges, and multicast address ranges. Covers designing hierarchical addressing schemes for sites, VLANs, security zones, DMZs and data centers, laying out prefixes so ACL and QoS policy stays compact, NAT and CGNAT for address conservation, static versus DHCP-assigned addressing, IPAM practice, renumbering after mergers or overlaps, and IPv4-to-IPv6 transition (dual-stack, tunneling, NAT64/DNS64). Boundary: routing protocol operation, cloud VPC topology, DNS and DHCP service operation, and firewall design are covered elsewhere.
Infrastructure as Code and Automation
Defining, provisioning, and automating infrastructure programmatically. Covers declarative IaC with Terraform and comparable tools like CloudFormation (resource and provider model, state management and remote backends, module design and reuse, workspaces, drift detection, and safe plan/apply workflows), plus the broader automation discipline: provisioning pipelines, golden-image and machine-image building, scripting glue, self-service platforms, and end-to-end environment stand-up. The authoring, lifecycle, and automation of infrastructure code that reduces manual toil across provisioning workflows.
Google Cloud Platform Services and Architecture
Google Cloud Platform's core services and architecture: Compute Engine, Cloud Run, GKE, Cloud Storage, VPC, managed databases (Cloud SQL, Spanner, Firestore, Bigtable), and BigQuery-adjacent data services. Covers GCP service selection, networking, IAM and security specifics, cost and quota management, and reference patterns for building on the platform. For provider-agnostic compute, storage, or networking concepts, see the cross-cloud entries.
DNS, DHCP, and Name Resolution
How names and addresses are served and kept working on a network. DNS: resolution flow (stub, recursive, authoritative, root/TLD referrals), host-side resolver configuration and why one machine or process resolves differently from another, record types and their pitfalls (including apex aliasing, MX, SRV and CAA use), zones, delegation and glue, caching, TTL and negative caching, split-horizon and private zones, reverse DNS, zone transfers (AXFR/IXFR, TSIG), DNSSEC and key rollover, resolver and authoritative fleet design, forwarding versus running recursion, encrypted DNS (DoH/DoT), truncation, TCP fallback and EDNS, DNS-layer attacks (cache poisoning, amplification, spoofed-source floods), DNS health from the user's point of view, and DNS changes, mail and registrar migrations and outages. DHCP: address assignment and leases, scopes and sizing, reservations, relay across VLANs including relay agent information (option 82), redundancy and failover, and rogue or exhausted-scope failures. Includes diagnosing resolution failures that masquerade as wider outages. Excludes the layered network fault-isolation method and general packet capture, Active Directory-integrated DNS on domain controllers, DNS-based service registries for microservices, load-balancing algorithm design and global traffic steering, incident-command process and SLO or error-budget design, and generic scripting or infrastructure-as-code tooling.
Kubernetes Architecture, Operations, and Troubleshooting
How Kubernetes works, how to run it, and how to debug it. Covers control-plane and node components, the scheduler and API server, cluster design, high availability and multi-cluster topologies, and platform-level operations; the workload primitives (pods, deployments, services, controllers), cluster upgrades, and designing Kubernetes as an internal platform; and the operational depth inside a cluster including pod and service networking, ingress and the CNI model, service mesh, persistent volumes and storage classes, resource requests and limits, and systematically diagnosing scheduling, networking, and storage failures. The full architecture-through-day-two-operations span of Kubernetes.
Switching, VLANs, and Layer 2 Segmentation
Layer 2 switching and segmentation: MAC learning, aging and forwarding (including unknown-unicast flooding and cut-through versus store-and-forward), VLAN design and 802.1Q trunking (tag format, native VLAN, DTP trunk negotiation, VTP, voice VLAN, private VLANs, Q-in-Q), spanning tree (STP, RSTP, MST and edge protection such as PortFast, BPDU guard and root guard), EtherChannel/LACP and MLAG, multicast handling with IGMP snooping, and the hand-off between layer 2 and layer 3 (SVIs, router-on-a-stick, routed ports). Covers access and trunk port configuration and verification, switch-level fault diagnosis (trunk and native VLAN mismatches, MAC flapping, broadcast storms, bundles that will not form), campus, small-office and data-centre VLAN plans, and migrating or renumbering VLANs with minimal downtime. Boundary: attack and defense mechanics (MAC flooding, DHCP snooping, ARP inspection, VLAN hopping), routing protocol configuration, VXLAN/EVPN overlays, fabric and whole-campus topology choice, device automation, and the generic layered troubleshooting method are covered elsewhere.