{"id":38360,"date":"2022-07-06T15:03:18","date_gmt":"2022-07-06T15:03:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techrepublic.com\/?p=3981548"},"modified":"2022-07-06T15:03:18","modified_gmt":"2022-07-06T15:03:18","slug":"new-to-the-cloud-here-are-top-tips-for-getting-started","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/?p=38360","title":{"rendered":"New to the cloud? Here are top tips for getting started"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id>\n<p> Experienced cloud developers share their secrets for being more successful, faster. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3981554\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3981554\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-article wp-image-3981554\" src=\"http:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/new-to-the-cloud-here-are-top-tips-for-getting-started.jpg\" alt=\"Cloud computing diagram\" width=\"770\" height=\"513\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3981554\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image: Who is Danny\/Adobe Stock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>While it may seem that every developer spends much of their day working in AWS or OVH or Google Cloud or Alibaba, the reality is that most IT spending remains targeted at on-premises workloads, which suggests that most developers are still focused there, too.<\/p>\n<p>By AWS CEO Adam Selipsky\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2022\/06\/28\/aws-ceo-says-the-move-to-cloud-computing-is-only-just-getting-started.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener sponsored noreferrer\">estimate<\/a>, maybe 10% of all IT spending has moved to the cloud. That leaves plenty of developers that are relatively new to the cloud and wouldn\u2019t mind having someone guide them to getting started.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SEE: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techrepublic.com\/resource-library\/whitepapers\/how-to-build-a-successful-developer-career\/\">How to build a successful developer career (free PDF)<\/a> (TechRepublic)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Not to worry. Google Cloud\u2019s Forrest Brazeal <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/forrestbrazeal\/status\/1544356513141215233\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener sponsored noreferrer\">has you covered<\/a>. He asked \u201cWhat\u2019s your top \u2018cloud hygiene\u2019 tip for new cloud developers?\u201d and got a range of great answers. I\u2019ll highlight a few of the best ones below.<\/p>\n<h2>Leave no trace<\/h2>\n<p>The cloud makes deploying services easy. That\u2019s not always a good thing. As easy as it is to turn cloud services on, it\u2019s just as easy to forget to turn them off. At one of my former employers, we figured that a big chunk of our AWS bill consisted of instances developers had spun up for this or that reason, left running and forgot about.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pinbox right\">\n<h3 class=\"heading\">Must-read developer coverage<\/h3>\n<\/aside>\n<p>SADA\u2019s Miles Ward is spot on to urge developers to take a step toward inefficient peace of mind: \u201cWhen learning, do each experiment in a completely fresh, new project. When done, DELETE THE WHOLE PROJECT. It\u2019ll mean some repetitive setup steps, but hey, better than some forgotten weirdo charges.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Can\u2019t be bothered to do this? Well, you should at least \u201cset up billing alarms,\u201d said Fabian Jakobs, co-founder of Cloud9 IDE. Doing so, argued Duckbill Group cloud economist Corey Quinn, can be a literal matter of life or death if someone\u2019s experimentation with a cloud\u2019s free tier went hopelessly wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Worried about scale? Don\u2019t, suggested Richard Quinn: \u201cDon\u2019t build for infinite scalability \u2014 set scaling limits the right size for your wallet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s almost as if people have lived through or read about cloud billing horror stories, given how prevalent responses were about cost containment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAdd cost alerts from the start, especially if budget is tight and could kill your business,\u201d said Shahid Iqbal.<\/p>\n<p>And even if you don\u2019t wake up with a million-dollar bill, it still pays to be vigilant in checking, as David Erwin stressed: \u201cLook at the billing breakdowns each month and ask yourself if each line item makes sense, both in terms of the technical requirements and the business value.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And then, of course, nix those that don\u2019t make sense. What else?<\/p>\n<h2>Serverless and IaC are your friends<\/h2>\n<p>For many, serverless is the ultimate expression of what cloud computing should be. While serverless adoption is still relatively nascent, for those following Brazeal, it\u2019s a must. Quinn, for example, urged newbies to move well beyond old paradigms of servers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you find yourself dealing with an operating system (container or virtual machine) then you\u2019re doing old-school cloud,\u201d Quinn said. \u201cTry serverless everything.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By embracing serverless as much as possible, developers don\u2019t need to worry as much about needlessly spinning unused instances. The cloud will automatically spin them back down when not in use.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SEE: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techrepublic.com\/resource-library\/whitepapers\/hiring-kit-python-developer\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener sponsored noreferrer\">Hiring kit: Python developer<\/a> (TechRepublic Premium)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Arguably the most common response was the need to use infrastructure as code tools like Terraform or CloudFormation. In fact, developers like Shonn Lyga argue that developers should bypass the console and instead work in IaC tools.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t make manual changes in the AWS console, use IaC instead (CloudFormaion, CDK etc),\u201d Lyga said.<\/p>\n<p>In so doing, you\u2019ll minimize the chance of errors arising from poor configuration. Or, as <a href=\"https:\/\/aws.amazon.com\/blogs\/architecture\/field-notes-using-infrastructure-as-code-to-manage-your-aws-networking-environment\/#:~:text=IaC%20helps%20avoid%20configuration%20drift,changes%20through%20different%20stages%20consistently.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener sponsored noreferrer\">AWS put it<\/a>: \u201cIaC helps avoid configuration drift through automation, and increases the speed and agility of infrastructure deployments. It also helps reduce errors and enhances the ability to apply changes through different stages consistently.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Of course there\u2019s more, but you can read through the replies to Brazeal\u2019s tweet yourself to learn about security, separation of production and development accounts. For developers new to the cloud, it\u2019s a great way to gain some confidence in best practices so that you can start building your app.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Disclosure: I work for MongoDB but the views expressed herein are mine.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Experienced cloud developers share their secrets for being more successful, faster. Image: Who is Danny\/Adobe Stock While it may seem that every developer spends much of their day working in AWS or OVH or Google Cloud or Alibaba, the reality is that most IT spending remains targeted at on-premises workloads, which suggests that most developers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,783],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud","category-cloudsync"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}