title: 'What Are the 7 Key Phases of the DevOps Lifecycle?'
description: 'Master the DevOps lifecycle by exploring its 7 phases, designed to enhance collaboration, streamline processes, and deliver software with agility.'
title: '11 DevOps Principles and Practices to Master: Pro Advice'
description: 'Elevate your game by understanding this set of key DevOps principles and practices. Gain pro insights for a more efficient, collaborative workflow!'
title: 'How to become a DevOps Engineer in @currentYear@'
description: 'Want to become a DevOps engineer? Our @currentYear@ guide covers skills, certifications, and expert career advice. Start your journey today!'
'Is DevOps engineering a good career path in 2024?': '/devops/career-path'
'10+ In-Demand DevOps Engineer Skills to Master': '/devops/skills'
'DevOps engineer vs Full stack developer: Which is best?': '/devops/vs-full-stack'
'11 DevOps Principles and Practices to Master: Pro Advice': '/devops/principles'
'What Are the 7 Key Phases of the DevOps Lifecycle?': '/devops/lifecycle'
'Why Does DevOps Recommend Shift-Left Testing Principles?': '/devops/shift-left-testing'
'What is DevOps Automation? 8 Best Practices & Advice': '/devops/automation'
isNew: false
type: 'textual'
date: 2024-06-11
@ -48,9 +57,11 @@ Let’s dive into the essential skills required for a DevOps engineer.
## Skills required to become a DevOps engineer
### Operating system
A DevOps engineer should understand the operating system, especially Linux (distribution or any variant). This is because most of the servers in use are Linux-based, so having a solid foundation in the Linux OS is imperative for infrastructure management and troubleshooting.
### Solid programming fundamentals
As a DevOps engineer, you will use your knowledge of programming languages and scripting languages (bash scripting, shell scripting, etc) to:
- Automate processes and frequent tasks
@ -61,18 +72,23 @@ As a DevOps engineer, you will use your knowledge of programming languages and s
Hence, hands-on experience with programming is crucial to excel in your DevOps career.
### Version control
A basic understanding of version control is one of the essential DevOps skills required for DevOps engineer jobs. In your DevOps career, you will likely work in a team rather than alone. Systems like Git facilitate collaboration in a team while providing a centralized repository for the code.
### Networking fundamentals
Many modern-day applications are distributed systems that rely on networking. For instance, a single application could be composed of a frontend, backend, database, file server, etc., each residing on a separate server. For a seamless user experience, these separate entities should be able to communicate smoothly.
### Containerization and orchestration
Containerization (or container technology) and orchestration help solve the issues of software deployment and resource utilization. Knowledge of containerization and orchestration helps reduce deployment time and allows you to scale applications quickly without downtime, resulting in a better user experience.
### Cloud deployment
Procuring hardware to deploy the software is not always feasible and beneficial. Furthermore, once you purchase the hardware, you need more time and resources to manage the new hardware. Depending upon the complexity of the application, choosing the cloud instead of on-premise hardware can significantly reduce deployment time and cost.
### Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
IaC can be seen as a superior form of automation for a DevOps engineer. IaC tools like Terraform and Amazon Cloud CDK allow the operations team to set up and manage infrastructure by simply changing a configuration file. This makes it easier to manage and scale the application.
So, how do you learn these essential skills? In what sequence do you acquire these skills?
@ -91,10 +107,8 @@ This section presents a concise version of the DevOps engineering roadmap. It is
Programming language is essential to a DevOps engineer. I recommend you start with either Python or Go. [Python](https://roadmap.sh/python) is a popular language that is easier to learn and used in various projects involving [backend](https://roadmap.sh/backend) development, writing machine learning algorithms, automating everyday tasks, etc.
[Automate the Boring Stuff with Python](https://automatetheboringstuff.com/) is an excellent resource for learning Python and basic programming concepts. It will also come in handy when building automation tools.
To demonstrate your understanding of Python, you can create a web scraper (or other coding projects) that extracts a list of hotels, their address, prices, reviews, and locations from a site like [booking.com](http://booking.com/).
@ -120,6 +134,7 @@ Version control systems like Git make it easier for developers to track changes
For advanced concepts on git branching, [refer to this site.](https://learngitbranching.js.org/) Once you go through the tutorial, you can easily switch from Bitbucket to GitHub and GitLab, which are more popular among developers.
### Step 4: Networking fundamentals
Learning networking fundamentals becomes vital to the DevOps team when working with software components constantly communicating with other services. Knowledge of networks comes in handy when setting up resources in the public cloud. At a minimum, you should clearly understand standard protocols(TCP/IP, UDP), routing, IP addressing, subnetting, and ports.
A DevOps engineer should have a sound knowledge of web servers like Nginx. Nginx allows you to serve your application on the web while handling reverse proxy and load balancing. [Apache](https://httpd.apache.org/) is another web server that provides similar features.
@ -136,7 +151,6 @@ Docker allows engineers to create consistent development, testing, and productio
Applications rely on multiple containers that communicate with each other. To facilitate the orchestration of these containers, you can use container orchestration tools like [Kubernetes](https://roadmap.sh/kubernetes). The [Docker Roadmap](https://roadmap.sh/docker) provides essential resources to help you master Docker and Kubernetes.
You can demonstrate your understanding of containerization tools by creating a simple project with frontend and back deployed as two separate containers. If you have already developed these components in the previous stages of the roadmap, re-use them to save time.
@ -153,10 +167,10 @@ Alternatively, you could demonstrate your understanding by taking the [certifica
Once comfortable launching your infrastructure using the GUI, you should learn about Infrastructure as Code(IaC). I recommend using [Terraform](https://www.terraform.io/) for IaC as it is cloud-agnostic and popular among software developers and operations teams. Terraform allows you to set up and make changes to infrastructure resources by editing a configuration file, resulting in infrastructure automation.
### Step 7: Continuous integration and delivery
[Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyKZTKQS_EQ) (or Continuous Deployment) (CI/CD) is a set of practices aimed at automating and streamlining software changes from development to production.
Today, in practice, when you commit and push your changes to the remote repository (say GitHub), the tests kick-off; if the tests pass successfully, your changes are merged and then deployed to the staging and production server.
@ -176,15 +190,19 @@ Next, let’s discuss the mindset needed to become a DevOps engineer.
To become a successful DevOps engineer and successfully embrace the DevOps culture, you must orient your thoughts around the following:
### Automation
Software products or systems are prone to various errors, including human errors. Stress during work and the race against deadlines can increase the frequency of these errors. Automating processes helps reduce human error and eliminate boring tasks.
### Risk awareness
DevOps engineers must understand the risks entangled with changes to a software system and deployment infrastructures. The risk should be minimized by utilizing automated testing, monitoring, and incremental changes.
### Systems thinking
DevOps professionals or any member of the operations teams must understand how different components within a system communicate and interact with each other to deliver the desired solution. A graphical representation of the system can come in handy when fixing issues or knowledge transfer within the DevOps teams.
### Continuous learning
A continuous learning and continuous improvement mindset is essential across all roles in software engineering, but its importance is amplified for a DevOps engineer. A DevOps engineer must continually learn about new technologies, tools, DevOps principles, and DevOps practices and implement the ones best suited to the project.
You may not have the DevOps mindset, but that is okay. You can build this mindset as you learn and grow into the role. Let us look at some technical skills required to become a DevOps engineer.
Kamran Ahmed
1 week ago