The DevOps Engineer’s Ultimate Guide

You want to be a DevOps engineer, right?

Why wouldn’t you? It’s an intriguing career path, with outstanding job prospects, the ability to work on creative projects, and the opportunity to build a wide range of transferable skills.

In this article, we’ll go through what it takes to become a DevOps engineer, including job criteria, skills required, relevant resources, and 10 advice for new DevOps engineers based on my personal experience.

But, before we get started, it’s critical to grasp what DevOps entails.

What Exactly Is DevOps?

DevOps is a culture and manner of working in which developers and operations engineers collaborate to achieve a common goal.

There was a clear distinction between operations and development in traditional software development. Developers were only tangentially involved in the operation of the software they built, and they had limited knowledge of where or how it was used. Meanwhile, operations (sysadmins) knew very little about what the program did or how it was designed, and they had to hope it worked well.

This concept throws two teams against one another, one with the ultimate objective of stability and the other with the ultimate goal of change. Because of the resulting friction, upgrades were performed seldom in order to avoid disturbance.

Because release cycles were so few and far between prior to DevOps—and because neither operations nor developers understood what the other was doing—every change languished in handovers between development and operations, requiring many weeks and a lot of overtime to be implemented properly and frequently causing significant downtime.

DevOps tries to address this by creating more coherent collaboration between developers and operations engineers, as well as overlapping duties.

Changes are made regularly, ideally many times per day, and full automation and testing are used to minimize downtime and swiftly resolve issues. All of this leads to better business outcomes by increasing software quality, reducing overtime and downtime, and getting your ideas into the hands of your customers faster.

What Exactly Is a DevOps Engineer?

DevOps Engineer is a job title that gets bandied around a lot, and it signifies different things to different individuals.

Some argue that the title DevOps Engineer should not exist because DevOps is a “culture” or “style of functioning” rather than a role.

The same folks would argue that adding another silo contradicts the point of overlapping roles and having different teams collaborate.

These are not incorrect arguments. In fact, some businesses that understand and practice DevOps engineering successfully don’t even have a function with that name (such as Google!). The truth is that when you see DevOps Engineer positions listed, it may be for an infrastructure engineer, a systems reliability engineer (SRE), a CI/CD engineer, a sysadmin, or another position.

As a result, the definition of DevOps engineer is fairly broad.

To be a DevOps engineer, you must have a solid understanding of the DevOps culture and practices, as well as the ability to bridge any communication gaps between teams in order to achieve software delivery velocity.

In this article, I’ll assume you’re looking to break into any role that falls under the “DevOps engineer” umbrella, and I’ll outline some of the most common and important skills to master in order to gain a job in this field.

What Is the Role of a DevOps Engineer?

While the word “DevOps” can refer to a variety of positions, there are some tasks that are shared by all of them:

• Infrastructure spinning up and automation
• Developing CI/CD Pipelines
• Developing and deploying container orchestrators
• Collaboration with developers to create well-designed microservices architectures
• DevOps strategies should be created (Roadmap of infrastructure and deployments)
• Creating observability platforms and making recommendations for a variety of teams.
• Advising and recommending platforms and infrastructure to development teams.
• Assuring the security of all workloads and infrastructure.

What Qualifications Do DevOps Engineers Require?

It’s difficult not to become overwhelmed by the prospect of deciding what to learn first. Even after years of doing this, it is easy to become overwhelmed by all of the existing and new technologies because the list is vast and ever growing.

So the question usually arises, “What should I learn first?” AWS? Google Cloud Platform? Kubernetes? Docker? Jenkins? Terraform? Ansible?

I’m going to divide the list into the following sections:

Core technical skills:

General knowledge required for all DevOps tasks. They must absolutely be learned. There is no picking, no ifs or buts – you must know it thoroughly.

DevOps Technical skills:

Tools and processes that are commonly used in DevOps roles but may not be used or required in every role. Although not all roles require all of these, it is beneficial to be conversant with them.

Soft skills:

These are talents that will help you advance in your job and deal with people on a regular basis, as opposed to technical skills.

You can’t develop DevOps technical skills until you first master the fundamentals. However, you do not need to be an expert in any of the basic skills to begin learning DevOps. Interpersonal skills are also important because DevOps tasks need establishing and sustaining efficient communication throughout the Organizational Domain.

What Kinds of DevOps Courses and Qualifications Are Available?

Certificates are not required for a DevOps career; in fact, most employers value experience far more than certifications. They are, nevertheless, a good approach to get you motivated to learn more. They’re also useful for building a résumé if you don’t have a university degree and no experience. When they become available, I will add foundational certifications for each skill that you can take to get started.

Fundamental Technical Abilities

These six technological abilities will be required for all DevOps roles. Once you’ve learned these principles, you’ll be ready to apply for entry-level employment or internships as you go up the learning ladder toward DevOps technical skills:

• GNU/Linux (OS fundamentals)
• Basic programming abilities.
• Bash
• Git
• Fundamentals of Networking
• Fundamentals of the Cloud Platform

GNU/Linux (OS Fundamentals)

Linux is a Unix-based open source operating system (OS). While you might focus on Windows if you want to follow a Microsoft path in your DevOps journey, Linux and all the open source materials available for it make studying operating systems and how they function easier.

There are numerous online resources to help you learn Linux. Looking out the LPIC exam syllabus and taking the certification exams could be a good place to start.

Resources

A Linux Beginner’s Guide

The Unix Programming Environment:

You don’t have to understand everything in this book, but it’s interesting to learn how Linux works.

Unix Power Tools —

A comprehensive collection of tools that are often included with Linux. Don’t be intimidated by the size; you’ll probably only use approximately 20% of it.

Three Easy Pieces –

A good book that explains how operating systems work.

• Commands that are often used in Linux
• Linux Instructions
• Certifications
• Linux Comptia
• LPIC I
• LPIC II
• RHCSA RedHat

Programming Fundamentals

You don’t have to be Dennis Ritchie to be a DevOps engineer. In fact, you don’t even have to declare yourself a coder to begin working in many DevOps roles.

However, you must be familiar with basic programming concepts such as loops, variables, arrays, lists, and so on. These will be useful not only while reading or modifying code, but also when scripting and automating your duties.

I recommend that you study the fundamentals and begin with Python because it is simple, then work your way up to intermediate by completing a variety of tasks on websites such as Edabit. When you reach that level, you should have no trouble scripting and doing most automated tasks that come your way.

It’s also a good idea to become acquainted with common design patterns and algorithms at some point during your learning journey. These are not required to get started with DevOps, but they will come in handy later on.

Resources

• Codecademy Programming Fundamentals
• Python Interactive Tutorial for Free

Edabit –

This is a website containing programming tasks; once you’ve mastered the fundamentals, start with the most basic and work your way up.

• Another website for challenges is Hackerrank.
• Algorithms That Everyone Knows
• Patterns in Design
• Certifications
• Certifications in Python

Bash

Bash is the most important scripting language in the Unix environment for automating operations (Powershell would be the Windows equivalent). Even if you prefer Python or another language for programming, bash is the most generally available, and you will struggle to complete this task if you don’t know how to use it.

You don’t have to be a programming genius to complete most of the jobs you’ll encounter on a regular basis, but basic programming knowledge surely helps.

Resources

• Beginner Bash Instructions
• Guide to Advanced Scripting
• Interactive Bash instruction
• Interactive Challenges by Bash
• The Bash Manual
• Katacoda Bash
• The Bash Cookbook

Fundamentals of Networking

You don’t have to be a network engineer to start a career in DevOps, although having a fundamental understanding of networking, such as:

• An ip
• Difference between a subnet and a subnet mask?
• A path?
• Difference between a router and a switch?
• A VPC?

Learning the foregoing and more is critical for troubleshooting and subsequently designing VPC methods in your cloud infrastructure.

Resources

• Computer Networking Bits and Bytes
• Networking Course on Udemy
• Certifications
• The Comptia Network

Git

Git is a distributed version control system that is widely used by all software engineering and operations teams to track code changes. I strongly advise you to spend some time getting acquainted with it and the concepts of branches, rebase, merging, and so on.

Resources

• git — A Beginner’s Guide
• Learn Git Branching Is an interactive course with exercises.
• git Katacoda Interactive
• Control of Versions

Fundamentals of the Cloud Platform

To begin your adventure, you can choose from a variety of cloud platforms. AWS, GCP, and Azure are the three largest.

Most people would advise you to begin with AWS because it is the most extensively utilized and required in job advertisements. However, it is also the most saturated market.

Personally, I would recommend starting with GCP because it is simple to use. You also get $300 in free credit, and their certifications feature a cloud-agnostic syllabus, which means it will prepare you for learning AWS or other cloud platforms. Azure is also a wonderful option if you enjoy working in a Microsoft environment and want to advance your career in that direction.

Resources

• Google Cloud’s Free Service
• Quicklabs​
• Azure
• Amazon Web Services’ Free Tier
• Google Cloud Courses for Free
• Free AWS and Cloud Computing Agnostic Courses
• Certifications
• GCP Cloud Digital Leader certification
• Associate Cloud Engineer in GCP
• AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification
• Fundamentals of Azure
• Engineer, GCP Cloud Network

Technical DevOps Knowledge

Once you’ve mastered your fundamental technical skills, you can go on to becoming more familiar with the tools and techniques used in DevOps positions. This is by no means a full list, but it covers the most frequent skills and subjects encountered in most DevOps professions.

Containers

Containers are a method of packaging and isolating running applications. This not only makes your running environment more secure, but it also makes it more deterministic because a container will always execute in the same way, regardless of which server or machine it is running on.

Containers are frequently utilized in CI/CD pipelines, as well as production workloads and microservice designs, hence understanding them is vital. As we will see later, container orchestrators are also commonly used these days.

Tools

Docker is the most popular container runtime environment; learn more about it.

Docker-compose –

This tool allows you to configure and orchestrate numerous containers on your computer, which is particularly handy if your application uses multiple containers or if you need to bring up the same container repeatedly.