What is to be Cloud Automation Developer - real life (in the context of VMware technologies)?

What is to be Cloud Automation Developer in real life (in the context of VMware technologies)?

If you are an IT guy (in any IT domain) and ask yourself questions like: What do I need to become Cloud Automation Developer? Or Can I even be Cloud automation developer? What is to be Cloud automation developer? What is it like to become VRO automation developer? What do I need to become vRO (vRA-VRO or SDDC) automation developer? Etc.

Who might be interested in the questions above or similar questions? Well  for example newly rising engineers, who want to get more into automation and programming. Or for example all IT engineers who want to change from another IT domain to programming or automation. Like being  professional in something in hardware or software management to automation and programming for the same domain. Actually being an IT guys means you constantly need to change and improve - every few years you need to learn new technology or gain new skill. That is the life of IT engineers, the domain of proficiency almost doesn't matter, IT is constantly changing so the job market, and job requirements.

Last year and half I had to do some development for the infrastructure and services for the Implementation, Continues Integration (CI) and Delivery of a VMWare based Private Cloud implementation. So I had the chance to add to my R&D development knowledge and experience some Cloud Automation Development experience. That's why now I can try to answer the questions above from my own experience and by this to provide my humble opinion on the topic from my perspective.

SDDC in the context of VMWare technologies
Ok let's try to give some proper answers on questions above. First of all if you ask yourself those kind of questions, you should already have idea what is Data Centre, Data Centre Infrastructure - from Hardware and Software sides, what is Virtualization and in specific what are VMware Virtualization Technologies, what is Software Defined Data Center, what is Cloud (public and private) and what is Automation and in particular VMware vRealize Automation Suite technologies and what kind of tasks or work is usually performed in Virtualized Data Centres or Cloud Environments. Actually understanding or having initial knowledge on the questions above is a good start if you want to become vRO automation developer. And I guess you already know what off course is vRO abbreviation stands for: vRealize Orchestrator. (vRO is part of VMware vRealize Suite).

Automation Development

Ok so far good, next thing we need to be familiar with, is what is automation development. Let us try to give simple explanation on what is automation development.  Actually automation development is all about to automate certain specific repeatable tasks, or to automate certain complex processes in order to simplify them for the end users, or to automate data migrations - import or export, while having to perform certain steps in specific order to achieve the migration, or just make things that are not possible when done manually, but possible when done with the automation tools. So basically that it is one way to explain what is automation development.

SDDC Automation
Next important thing is to place Automation Development in the Virtualized Data Centres or Cloud Environments, in the context off course of VMware vRealize Automation System and Tools - and actually merge the two topics above. What this means is, that as a result vRO automation development is automation development for the Virtualized Data Centres or Cloud Environments, in which environments we can automate all kind of daily tasks, processes, migrations. Or implement new functionality for managing, monitoring, secure, integrate or extend current cloud implementations. Automate all kind of stuff related to the Services that are provided from the Cloud implementation, or related to the Hardware or Software including: network, storage, compute, firewall etc, physical or virtual - actually everything.

Knowledge in coding and IDEs
Ok, to climb the ladder further in answering our initial questions above, we need to give proper answers on how the automation is being performed. How we can automate anything at all? Well here comes the fun part. To automate anything you need to have basic understanding in the tools (IDEs - Integrated Development Environments) and have knowledge in coding, scripting or just programing. In context of vRO you need to learn what is vRO and how vRO  works as an IDE that allows SDDC and Cloud Infrastructure automation and orchestration. And you need to know basic knowledge in Java Script or any scripting language as a start. To be fare in order to become proper Automation Developer in the context of VMware SDDC or Cloud implementations you need to have knowledge in VMware vRA or VMware vRealize Automation Portal, but that is the easiest of the two above - If you have experience in coding/scripting then it is very easy to learn vRO and vRA and become very fast Cloud Automation Engineer. Off course if you have experience in other orchestrator tools (like the ones from Microsoft or HP) this will help you a lot as well.

So as a summary what you need to become Cloud Automation Developer (in order of importance):

• Have knowledge or experience in coding/scripting or good will to learn hard into that direction.
• Have knowledge in what is Cloud or SDDC or just Data Center Virtualization technologies and processes.
• Have knowledge in VMware vRealize Suite or just vRA-vRO.
• Knowledge in Shell Scripting, REST, SQL, AD etc helps, but not critical.

How to get knowledge in coding/scripting:

• you can use free trainings in Internet on different technologies:
• Like for Java Script: https://www.w3schools.com/js/
• you can use free mobile applications like SoloLearn:
• https://www.sololearn.com/

How to get knowledge on VMware Cloud technologies(incl. vRA-vRO):

• Find some good free tutorials and training in internet:
• https://theithollow.com/2016/01/11/vrealize-automation-7-guide/
• http://federicocinalli.com/blog/item/218-starting-with-vmware-vrealize-orchestrator

• Find official VMware training services and do the trainings:
• https://www.vmware.com/nl/professional-services/learning-zone.html
• 
  

Summary
And as a summary what you will do if you become Cloud Automation Engineer:   you will automate certain specific repeatable tasks, or automate certain complex processes in order to simplify them for the end users, or automate data migrations - import or export tasks, while having to perform certain steps in specific order to achieve the migration, or just make things that are not possible when done manually, but possible when done with the automation tools. This all in the context of VMware Cloud technologies. Mainly this is need for the implementation of brand new Clouds implementations for initial services and integrations setup. As well you can become DevOps engineer, and to automate some day to day operations as a part of the CI (Continues Integration and Delivery) of the already implemented cloud.

How Cloud Automation Development differs from R&D development?

R&D development (or Research & Develop Development) differs from Automation Development in many aspects, but the main aspect is that usually R&D development builds all the systems and tools you will use to implement SDDC or the Cloud. While Cloud Automation development concentrates on implementing tasks to manage, monitor, secure, integrate or extend the cloud implementation. For R&D development you will need more knowledge and experience in core development technologies and languages like Java or .Net, as well as good understanding in Algorithms, Data Structures and development frameworks like Spring, Hibernate etc. While in in Cloud Automation development you will need to have more knowledge and experience in how the Cloud implementation and technologies works, as well you need only basic knowledge in coding mainly in some scripting of the scripting languages like Java Script, Python or Ruby.

How Cloud Automation Development differs from Cloud Administration and Operations?

Well that is easy question, Cloud Automation Development is mainly to automate the operations task, not to perform them manually. It is about the automation of the setup or configurations in the Cloud, not to perform them manually, it is to Automate the monitoring and security and behaviour analysis tasks and reports not to perform them manually. Off course now we have the modern term called DevOps, which kind a try to merge both. But anyway that is not always true, as Cloud Automation engineer usually can become DevOps engineer, but he can as well participate in initial implementation of the services in the Cloud, while the focus of DevOps engineers is to perform the CI and maintaining already implemented Cloud solution.

I will try to come with more posts and info on how to grow in Automation Development knowledge skill and experience.