1. Understand the Basics#

The foundation of DevOps lies in fostering collaboration between development and operations teams to streamline software delivery, improve quality, and shorten release cycles. It combines cultural philosophies, practices, and tools to enhance an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services efficiently.

Key Learnings:#

• The DevOps lifecycle: Plan, Develop, Build, Test, Release, Deploy, Operate, Monitor.
• Agile methodologies and Scrum basics.
• Key terminologies like CI/CD, IaC, Monitoring, and Observability.

Best Practices:#

• Focus on collaboration and communication between teams.
• Develop a mindset of continuous learning and improvement.
• Document processes to ensure clarity and consistency.

2. Master Version Control#

Version control systems (VCS) help teams manage and track changes to source code. It allows multiple developers to collaborate efficiently and ensures the integrity of the codebase.

Key Learnings:#

• Git basics: commits, branches, merging, rebasing.
• Popular platforms like GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket.
• GitOps principles for deploying infrastructure and applications.

Best Practices:#

• Use professional and meaningful commit messages.
• Follow a branching strategies like master/main, develop, feature, release, hotfix.
• Regularly review and test pull requests.

3. Operating Systems and administration#

Operating systems are the backbone of servers, containers, and cloud platforms. A strong understanding of OS concepts helps in system administration and troubleshooting.

Key Learnings:#

• Linux fundamentals: shell scripting, file systems, user management.
• Windows Server/Agent management.
• System performance monitoring and tuning.
• patch/Updates rollout.
• Script Execution.

Best Practices:#

• Use configuration management tools like Ansible or Chef for system consistency.
• Harden operating systems with security patches and best practices.
• Automate routine OS tasks to minimize human error.

4. Networking and Security protocols#

Networking ensures the connectivity of systems, while security protects them from unauthorized access and vulnerabilities. DevOps engineers must bridge these domains effectively.

Key Learnings:#

• Networking basics: DNS, load balancing, firewalls, VPNs.
• Cloud networking concepts (VPCs, subnets, NACLs, and NSGs).
• Security protocols, encryption, and compliance frameworks.
• Port configuration for the servers.

Best Practices:#

• Implement the principle of least privilege.
• Use automated security scans and vulnerability assessments.
• Regularly review and update network and security configurations.

5. Containerization & Orchestration#

Containers encapsulate applications and their dependencies, ensuring portability. Orchestration platforms like Kubernetes help manage containers at scale.

Key Learnings:#

• Docker basics: images, containers, volumes, networks.
• Kubernetes: architecture, Pods, Deployments, Services, Ingress.
• Advanced topics: Helm charts, Kubernetes Operators, and RBAC.

Best Practices:#

• Use lightweight images to optimize performance.
• Monitor resource utilization to avoid overprovisioning.
• Adopt GitOps for Kubernetes deployments.

6. Cloud Platforms#

Cloud platforms provide scalable and on-demand infrastructure, enabling rapid application development and deployment.

Key Learnings:#

• Key services of AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud (compute, storage, databases, networking).
• Serverless computing and Function-as-a-Service (FaaS).
• Cloud cost management and optimization techniques.

Best Practices:#

• Use multi-cloud or hybrid cloud strategies to avoid vendor lock-in.
• Implement infrastructure as code (IaC) for consistent deployments.
• Continuously monitor cloud usage and costs.

7. Infrastructure Automation (IaaC)#

Infrastructure automation involves using code to provision and manage IT infrastructure, ensuring scalability and reliability.

Key Learnings:#

• Tools like Terraform, CloudFormation, and Pulumi.
• CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure automation.
• IaC testing and validation frameworks.

Best Practices:#

• Maintain modular and reusable IaC code.
• Version control your infrastructure code.
• Regularly test and validate infrastructure changes.

8. Monitoring & Observability#

Monitoring provides insights into system health, while observability focuses on understanding the internal state of applications based on external outputs.

Key Learnings:#

• Tools like Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, and Datadog.
• Logging, tracing, and metrics collection techniques.
• Implementing SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs.

Best Practices:#

• Use centralized logging and monitoring systems.
• Set up alerts with actionable thresholds.
• Regularly review system performance and capacity planning.

9. Popular DevOps Tools#

These tools facilitate various stages of the DevOps lifecycle, enabling teams to deliver software faster and more reliably.

List of Tools:#

• CI/CD: Jenkins, Azure Devops, Code pipeline, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, CircleCI, ArgoCD.
• Version Control: Git, Azure repos, CodeCommit, GitHub, Gitlab, Bitbucket.
• IaaC: Terraform, ARM(Azure Resource Manager), CloudForm, Pulumi.
• Containerization: Docker, ACS, ECS, Podman, Hyper-V Containers, LXC.
• Orchestration: Kubernetes, AKS, EKS, GKE, Openshift, VMWare Tanzu, Rancher.
• Configuration-Management: Ansible, Chef, Puppet.
• Artifact Management: Nexus, JFRog, ECR, ACR
• Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana, Elastic Search, Logstash, Kibana, Dynatrace, Node Exporter, CAdvisor.

Best Practices:#

• Select tools that align with your team’s workflow and scalability needs.
• Regularly update and maintain tools to prevent security vulnerabilities.
• Integrate tools to ensure seamless automation across the DevOps pipeline.

Conclusion

This is it! Keep evolving, stay curious, and embrace the exciting DevOps adventure that lies ahead!. If you have any doubts/issues/errors with the above contents, feel free to contact me. Cheers, Happy learning.