I’ve been in IT for a while at this point (20+ years) and have worked with loads of businesses. Something that seems to be constant is that most never seem to take full advantage of the functionality they’ve already bought. Between virtualization and Cloud technologies, there are capabilities baked-in that would not only save time and improve quality of life, but save money. It’s like buying an expensive car and never using the air conditioner, or the Eco function of a lot of newer cars. If you’re moving to the Cloud, and you’re doing everything exactly as you were in your physical data center, you’re 100% guaranteed to increase your costs.

But how can we take the opposite, extreme approach? How could we use the capabilities Cloud enables to manage the infrastructure of a business most efficiently using self-service and automation, while also prioritizing security and resilience? Once we start making progress on this, efficiency and cost reduction don’t just apply to the technology, but to the people as well.

Managing IT is complex and time-consuming. Even with the necessary skills, oftentimes you simply don’t have enough time in the day to properly manage everything. Humans can’t scale quite like the infrastructure. So, taking advantage of what Cloud offers would free people up to spend more time on the “fun” stuff like projects and upskilling. Seriously, nothing hastens burnout more than toil and boredom.

So….where to start?

Let’s look at this from the perspective of being the sole IT operator for a small to medium-sized business with an environment that is either moderately sized or moderately complex. All decisions should prioritize cost and efficiency. This is the beginning of a series that I hope will ultimately provide a playbook that will go from hitting the ground on Day 0 leading to Day X and ongoing operations. The path I aim to follow will be:

  1. Gain Access and Perform Discovery – Gaining and securing initial access to the environment and figuring out what we have to work with.
  2. Establish Foundational Management and Security – Hardening network and security along with implementing disaster recovery
  3. Implement Automation and Optimization

I aim to provide:

  • Recommended tooling
  • Discussion (hit me up on LinkedIn, tell me where I’ve gone wrong. 🙂 )
  • Reference architectures
  • Code examples

With that being said, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Plus, I have ADHD and kids with ADHD, so…I’ll do my best. 🙂