Definitely don't need $5k to get into cloud operations (unless you're wanting to go and own the equipment). You can easily partner up with an affiliate or reseller program to allow you to resell services much cheaper. We used to own our own equipment, but we actually found it more cost effective to lease equipment (this was after we had 100+ servers of our own in operation). The flexability of using outside locations, having manned staff at the facilities on call etc - pricing plays a big part into it.

As for skills to run a system - it'll require more than knowing how to create a package and recompile apache. You need to be familiar with shell and how the operating system works, how to seek out and find exploits and spammers, how to repair aspects of mysql or various software and system updates that might be needed.

Advancing your skills in these areas will better prep you for the issues that you'll face down the road. That's not the say you can't learn as you go, but setting up a local system so you can become familiar with shell is something that should definitely be done.