Part 7 — Cloud Networking & NetDevOps

Why Network Engineers Must Understand Cloud Networking

The shift to cloud is unavoidable. Enterprise networks are increasingly hybrid: on-premises infrastructure + AWS + Azure + GCP. Network teams must automate across all environments.

AWS Networking Fundamentals for Automation

VPC (Virtual Private Cloud): Your network space in AWS.

Core components — VPC, Subnets, Internet Gateway, NAT, Route Tables, Security Groups — are implemented as code via Terraform or cloud-native SDKs.

Terraform: Infrastructure as Code for Networks

Terraform is a dominant IaC tool for cloud networking because it is declarative, idempotent, and provider-agnostic.

Basic Terraform Example: VPC with Subnets

provider "aws" {
 region = "us-east-1"
}

resource "aws_vpc" "main" {
 cidr_block      = "10.0.0.0/16"
 enable_dns_hostnames = true
 tags = { Name = "enterprise-vpc" }
}

resource "aws_subnet" "public" {
 vpc_id      = aws_vpc.main.id
 cidr_block    = "10.0.1.0/24"
 availability_zone = "us-east-1a"
}

output "vpc_id" { value = aws_vpc.main.id }

Run terraform apply to provision cloud networking reproducibly and place the code in Git for audit and reuse.

Hybrid Network Automation: On-Premises + Cloud

Hybrid automation commonly uses Terraform for the cloud side and Ansible for on-prem devices. Both live in the same Git repo and can be coordinated in CI pipelines.

Key Takeaway

Cloud networking extends traditional networking; Terraform becomes a critical skill for NetDevOps engineers managing hybrid infrastructure.

Try this now: Build a small Terraform module that provisions a VPC and single public subnet in a sandbox environment.