Roadmap to Learn DevOps Effectively and Efficiently

I want to share with you how I would approach learning DevOps from scratch. This blog will cover the roadmap and focus on necessary skills and techniques to help you learn DevOps effectively and efficiently.

Understanding DevOps

DevOps is a way of working where you bring developers and operations teams together to make software delivery faster, better, and more efficient. To understand DevOps, you need to understand infrastructure automation and monitoring.

Infrastructure Automation and Monitoring

1. Starting with Linux

Linux is crucially important and you cannot do DevOps or cloud without it. We need to learn the fundamental of Linux, such as file systems, permissions, and basic commands. Start using Linux to gain a strong foundation for your DevOps journey.

Most important Linux commands for DevOps engineers:

• ls: Lists the contents of a directory.
• cd: Changes the current directory.
• pwd: Prints the current working directory.
• mkdir: Creates a new directory.
• rmdir: Removes an empty directory.
• cp: Copies a file or directory.
• mv: Moves a file or directory.
• cat: Displays the contents of a file.
• less: Displays the contents of a file one page at a time.
• grep: Searches for a pattern in a file.
• find: Searches for files or directories that match a certain criteria.
• ps: Lists all running processes.
• kill: Kills a running process.
• top: Displays a real-time view of all running processes.
• man: Displays the manual page for a command.
• sudo: Runs a command with root privileges.
• chown: Changes the ownership of a file or directory.
• chmod: Changes the permissions of a file or directory.
• ssh: Connects to a remote host.
• scp: Copies a file or directory to a remote host.
• git: A version control system.
• Docker: A containerization platform.
• Kubernetes: A container orchestration system.

2. Learning Networking

Networking is important for deploying applications and troubleshooting networking issues. Focus on topics like DNS, TCP/IP protocols and ports, gateways and routing, and subnetting.

• DNS: The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or other resources connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates domain names with their corresponding IP addresses.
• TCP/IP protocols and ports: TCP/IP is the set of protocols that define the rules for how computers communicate over the Internet. It consists of two main protocols: Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP). We use TCP to ensure the reliability of data delivery and reliability, while IP is responsible for routing data packets between different networks.

We use Ports to identify different services running on a computer. We use port 80 with HTTP protocol to transfer web pages.

• Gateways and routing: A gateway is a device that connects two networks. It routes traffic between the networks based on the destination IP address.

Routing is the process of determining the best path for a packet to travel from its source to its destination. We use routers to forward packets between networks.

• Subnetting: Subnetting is the process of dividing a network into smaller networks, called subnets. We do this to improve network performance and security.

3. Virtualization Technique

Virtualization is a powerful technique of creating multiple virtual machines on one physical machine. Learn how to create virtual machines using tools like VMware, VirtualBox, or Hyper-V.

Virtualization is the process of creating a virtual version of a computer system. This allows multiple operating systems to run on the same physical hardware, which can save space and resources. It also makes it easier to test and deploy applications, and to manage different environments.

Virtualization and operating requirement:

• Improve efficiency and scalability: By running multiple virtual machines on the same physical hardware, DevOps engineers can save space and resources. This can lead to improved efficiency and scalability, as engineers can easily scale up or down their infrastructure as needed.
• Improve security: By isolating virtual machines from each other, DevOps engineers can reduce the risk of security breaches.
• Simplify testing and deployment: By creating virtual environments that mirror production environments, DevOps engineers can simplify the testing and deployment of applications. This can lead to faster and more reliable deployments.
• Improve collaboration: By sharing virtual machines with other engineers, DevOps teams can collaborate more effectively. This can lead to faster and more efficient development cycles.

4. Python and Git

Start with learning Python for programming part and Git for for version control and managing code repositories.

Use of Python

• Automation: We use Python scripting language to automate tasks. This can save DevOps engineers time and effort, and it can help to improve the efficiency of their workflows.
• Configuration management: We use Python to manage configurations for servers, applications, and other systems.
• Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD): we use Python to automate CI/CD pipelines.
• Monitoring: This can help to identify problems early on and to take corrective action before they cause an outage or other disruption.
• Logging: We use Python to log events and metrics. This can help to track the performance of systems and applications, and it can help to troubleshoot problems.

Git Knowledge

• Allows DevOps engineers to track changes to code over time. This can be helpful for debugging problems, reverting to previous versions of code, and collaborating with other developers.
• This can help to improve the quality of code and to catch potential bugs.
• Automate CI/CD pipelines, which are processes that build, test, and deploy code automatically. This can help to improve the speed and reliability of software delivery.
• Manage releases, which are the process of deploying new versions of software to production.
• This can help to protect code from unauthorized access and modification.

5. Learning Cloud

Choose a top cloud provider like AWS, Azure, or GCP and start with the foundational certification. Learn the core services required for everyday DevOps activities, such as EC2, S3, RDS, VPC, and more.

Cloud computing is a way to deliver hosted services over the internet. It offers a number of benefits for DevOps engineers, including:

• Agility: Cloud computing can help DevOps engineers to be more agile and responsive to change.
• Cost-effectiveness: Cloud computing can be a cost-effective way to deliver IT services.
• Security: Cloud computing can offer a high level of security for data and applications.
• Compliance: Cloud computing can help DevOps engineers to comply with regulations.

Gain knowledge of deploying infrastructure and applications on the cloud.

6. Infrastructure as Code

Learn infrastructure as code using tools like Terraform. Understand resources, provisionary, providers, variables, and outputs. Master Terraform and set for certification.

Important of IaC:

• Improves reliability: IaC can help to improve the reliability of infrastructure by making it easier to reproduce and manage. This makes it easy to track changes to the infrastructure and to roll back changes if necessary.
• Increases agility: IaC can help to increase the agility of infrastructure by making it easier to deploy new changes. This can help DevOps engineers to deploy new changes more quickly and easily.
• Reduces costs: IaC can help to reduce the costs of infrastructure by making it easier to manage and optimize. This is because the infrastructure can be defined in code and can be managed using automation tools. This can help DevOps engineers to identify and fix inefficiencies in the infrastructure and to optimize the infrastructure for cost-effectiveness.
• Improves security: IaC can help to improve the security of infrastructure by making it easier to track changes to the infrastructure and to implement security best practices. This is because the infrastructure can be defined in code, which can be version controlled and stored in a central location. This makes it easy to track changes to the infrastructure and to roll back changes if necessary.

7. Ansible Tool

Learn Ansible, a configuration management tool used to configure multiple servers at a time. Understand playbooks, roles, and how to manage configurations using Ansible.

Ansible is important for DevOps engineers because it can help them to:

• Improve efficiency: Ansible can help DevOps engineers to automate repetitive tasks, which can save them time and effort. This can help them to focus on more strategic tasks, such as improving the reliability and security of their infrastructure.
• Increase agility: Can help DevOps engineers to deploy changes to infrastructure more quickly and easily. This can help them to respond to changes in the business environment more quickly.
• Reduce costs: This tool can help DevOps engineers to reduce the costs of infrastructure by automating tasks that would otherwise be done manually. This can help them to free up resources that can be used for other purposes.
• Improve security: Ansible can help DevOps engineers to improve the security of their infrastructure by automating tasks that would otherwise be done manually. This can help them to ensure that changes to infrastructure are made in a safe and secure manner.

8. CI/CD

Automate the process of building, testing, and deploying applications using CI/CD tools like GitLab, Jenkins, or CircleCI. Learn the principles of automation and continuous improvement. Set up pipelines and deploy code safely and efficiently.

CI/CD stands for continuous integration and continuous delivery (or deployment). It is a software development process that combines two essential practices:

Continuous integration (CI): This involves developers regularly merging their code changes into a shared repository, where they are automatically built and tested. This helps to identify and fix bugs early on, before they can cause problems in production.

Continuous delivery (CD): This involves automatically deploying code changes to a staging or production environment after they have been successfully built and tested. This helps to ensure that new features and bug fixes are made available to users quickly and reliably.

CI/CD is a powerful tool that can help DevOps engineers to improve the quality, speed, and cost-effectiveness of software delivery. By understanding how to use CI/CD, DevOps engineers can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their workflows.

9. Containerization

Containerization is a technology that allows applications to be packaged into isolated containers. These containers can then be deployed to any environment, regardless of the underlying infrastructure. This makes containerization a valuable tool for DevOps engineers, as it can help them to:

• Improve the portability of applications: can be deployed to any environment, regardless of the underlying infrastructure. This can help DevOps engineers to avoid vendor lock-in and to deploy applications to a variety of environments, such as on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment.
• Increase the scalability of applications: can be easily scaled up or down as needed. This can help DevOps engineers to ensure that applications can handle fluctuating demand.
• Improve the reliability of applications: Containers are isolated from each other, which can help to prevent problems in one container from affecting other containers. This can help to improve the reliability of applications.
• Reduce the costs of application development and deployment: Help to reduce the costs of application development and deployment by automating tasks such as provisioning infrastructure and deploying applications.

10. Docker and Kubernetes

Docker is a popular containerization platform that makes it easy to create and manage containers. Kubernetes is an orchestration platform that can be used to manage and deploy containers at scale.

Together, Docker and Kubernetes can help DevOps engineers to improve the portability, scalability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness of their applications.

Thanks for reading! I hope you found this blog post helpful. I regularly post on these topics, and I would love to have you as a part of my community. Cheers!!

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