Devops is the current uproar tech domain, and although widely used not widely understood. Let’s dissect and grasp it.
A DevOps engineer plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between application development and operations. They make that an application is developed, deployed, and maintained efficiently. To fulfill these responsibilities, a DevOps engineer needs to have knowledge of various tools and concepts. Let’s look into each of those as follows :
Development Part
Application developers use tools like Git to program and test the application.
DevOps engineers should understand the Git workflow and how the application is configured to interact with other services and databases.
They should also have knowledge of automated testing and other development concepts.
Operations Part
DevOps engineers are responsible for creating and configuring servers to deploy the application.
They need to have a good understanding of Linux and be comfortable using the command line interface.
Basic knowledge of networking and security is also required.
Containerization
Containers have become the new standard for running applications.
DevOps engineers need to understand virtualization and container concepts.
They should be able to manage containerized applications using tools like Docker.
Continuous Integration and Deployment
DevOps engineers are responsible for continuously releasing new application versions.
They need to understand build automation and use tools like Jenkins to connect the pipeline with the Git repository.
Code changes are continuously tested and deployed to the server using a continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) pipeline.
Infrastructure as a Service
Many companies use cloud platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure for their infrastructure.
DevOps engineers need to learn the specific features and services of these platforms to manage the infrastructure.
Container Orchestration
For larger applications with multiple containers, a powerful container orchestration tool like Kubernetes is needed.
DevOps engineers should understand how Kubernetes works and be able to administer and manage the cluster.
Monitoring
DevOps engineers are responsible for setting up monitoring for the application, Kubernetes cluster, and servers.
They need to know monitoring tools like Prometheus or Nagios.
Automating Infrastructure
Creating and maintaining infrastructure for multiple environments can be time-consuming and error-prone.
DevOps engineers should automate this process using infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform or Ansible.
Configuring and deploying applications on infrastructure can be done using infrastructure as code tools. This involves using an infrastructure provisioning tool like Terraform and a configuration management tool like Ansible or Chef. Knowing these tools can make your work more efficient and your environments more transparent.
Scripting
As a DevOps engineer, you’ll likely need to write scripts or small applications to automate tasks such as backups, system monitoring, cron jobs, and network management. For this, you’ll need to learn a scripting language, such as Bash, PowerShell, Python, Ruby, or Go.
Python is the most popular and demanded language in the DevOps space. It’s easy to learn, read, and flexible. It has libraries for databases, operating system tasks, and different cloud platforms.
Too many tools! I know, DAUNTING! And what is makes it more difficult is multiple tools that more or less perform the same functionalities? When it comes to learning these tools, it’s best to start with the most popular and widely used ones in each category. Once you understand the concepts well, it becomes easier to adapt to alternative tools if needed.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the number of technologies to learn, take a step back, write down a list and get cracking, always helped me.
Let me know in the comments which concept you’d like me to cover. Thank you for reading, have an amazing day :))
