Are you a tech enthusiast with communication skills? Well, about 25.23% of companies are seeking a skillful and polished version of you in DevOps.
If you believe in yourself and are ready to take steps towards your career goal, the first one should be to gain clarity about the job role. You should be familiar with who the world calls a ‘DevOps Engineer’ and what they are expected to do. You should also know what roles you can pursue and what you must learn. There is so much to know before you finalize your decision. To help you in gaining the information you need, the DevOps beginner guide of 2024 is right here for you. Scroll and learn!
What is DevOps?
DevOps or Development Operations refers to the practices, tools and cultural philosophy aimed at enhancing the quality of application delivery. The quality here includes product improvement at high speed with the dependency on traditional processes and management. The DevOps also focuses on cross-team collaboration and technology automation.
DevOps engineer is the professional who introduces tools, processes and methodologies to ensure balanced and proper completion of the software development cycle. The responsibilities of DevOps engineers begin with coding and remain active throughout deployment, maintenance and updates. They also ensure collaboration between software development and IT operations for smooth operations and improved development processes.
Job Roles and Responsibilities of DevOps Engineer
Besides ensuring streamlined communication across the departments and enhancing the quality of product deliveries, their role also encompasses working with developers, system administrators and testers. They are responsible for eliminating or easing repetitive and non-productive tasks so that effort is targeted toward improving product quality, reliability and user satisfaction.
The responsibilities of DevOps engineers include:
Collaboration
This is the prime responsibility of DevOps engineers. They have to ensure smooth communication and collaboration of the teams and departments. For this, they need to exhibit their problem-solving, understanding and conflict-resolution skills, as these are certain to arise owing to different approaches and goals of functions. They need to show leadership qualities such that the involved teams remain on the same page and cooperate to reach the ultimate aim of product improvement.
Infrastructure Management
With infrastructure, DevOps is responsible for the optimization of networks, servers, cloud platforms and storage options. They are accountable for the 24*7 availability of connectivity and workable infrastructure. They also manage scaling and security issues through coding. They must ensure that no vulnerabilities remain in the software and systems and remove the possibility of data breaches and other security problems.
Automation
The role of the DevOps engineer includes automation to ensure high productivity of the team without the requirement to focus on simple yet time-consuming tasks. They use the tools and frameworks to automate the overall processes that the employees perform. It includes easing the procedures of building, testing, deployment and monitoring of newly developed products. To ensure automation, they work on infrastructure provisioning, configuration management and code deployment automation.
Continuous Integration and Delivery
The DevOps engineers manage the continuous requirements of deliveries with quality, scalability and stability. They implement and maintain continuous integration and delivery pipelines, such as building and deployment processes for easy processing and completion of tasks.
Continuous Monitoring
This responsibility is aimed at instant recognition of issues that hinder product development and release and hence can be termed as that of Quality Assurance. They need to implement their problem-solving and troubleshooting to minimize downtime and quickly resolve issues. They can also inform the development team to resolve the issues if the need arises. The testing often includes verifying the functionality of each task or function available in the software.
Management
The DevOps engineers can also be responsible for managing the DevOps team. However, the responsibilities vary across the organizations.
Process Orientation
Another important task of a DevOps engineer is to optimize the process. They must come up with novel solutions to streamline the process. Further, they should accomplish the task in alignment with Agile principles.
How DevOps Collaborate Developers and Operations Teams?
You must be clear by now that the DevOps engineer collaborates with the Developers and Operations team. But there remains a question: What problem do they solve? Let’s know it here:
Development Team
Their issues include immense pressure for timely delivery of incorporating new functionalities and production-ready code management. The long time gap between initial interaction and release leads to a change in requirements. These are then required to be reformed at the last minute, which adds to the burden of the team.
Operations Team
They need to work on resource management, ensure the appropriateness of the product for release and handle any changes required. They must also identify problems encountered after deployment of the product.
DevOps Approach to These Problems
DevOps manages the problems by breaking the releases into small manageable parts rather than bulk releases. It addresses the time gap problems faced by Developers’ teams. They focus on increased release frequency to compensate for the lack of features and functionality in the product. They also work on lowering the lead time and recovery time. They function by developing other strategies and practices that are mentioned as responsibilities (in the above section) to streamline the tasks in alignment with business and delivery goals.
DevOps Life Cycle
The DevOps lifecycle consists of a combination of steps from the Developers and Operations team. The components and prominent tools used in each cycle are:
Development
- Plan: The first step involves defining the requirements and method of action. It also includes the usage of lean principles. Tools: Kanboard, Trello, Mattermost.
- Code: The step includes building or writing the code for the desired product. Tools: Git, Jenkins, Bugzilla.
- Build: It includes a built program version on the extension based on the programming or scripting language being used. Tools: Packer, Gradle, Apache Maven.
- Test: It includes testing of the developed products. The process is generally automated to save time and effort while easily identifying the issues. Tools: Apache JMeter Selenium, Cucumber.
Operations
- Release: It involves overseeing the actions or management of the product in different environments before deployment. Tools: XLRelease, Tasktop Integration Hub and Octopus Deploy.
- Deploy: Here, artifacts and code files of applications are executed on the server. Tools: Juju, GoCD and Shippable.
- Operate: It is the real-life usage of the product. Tools: Apache ZooKeeper, Zuul and Kubernetes.
- Monitor: It marks the gaining of information critical to ensure customer satisfaction and enhance the product. Tools: Prometheus, Fluentd and Prometheus.
Difference Between DevOps Engineer v/s Azure Engineer
The difference between the two roles is tabulated as follows:
| Factor | Azure Engineer | DevOps Engineer |
| Role | The prime responsibility includes deployment, management and continuous review of cloud applications and services | The prime responsibility includes developing the tools and processes for software development while maintaining IT infrastructure |
| Collaborations | Developers, IT professionals and business stakeholders | Software developers, IT staff, system operators and managers |
| Responsibilities | Design cloud solutions, setting and configuring Azure resources and security management | Project planning, systems analysis, development of IT solutions, deployment updates, maintenance and troubleshooting |
| Skills | Basics of cloud computing, Azure services and solutions, automation, scripting, security and networking | Communication, collaboration, working knowledge of operating systems, automation and configuration management, programming language, vulnerability identification |
| Certifications | Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305), Azure DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-400), Azure Security Engineer Associate (AZ-500) | AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert, Puppet Certified Professional, Docker Certified Associate (DCA) |
DevOps Terminologies to Know
Being new to the field, you might encounter terms that can be incomprehensible to you. Here are those to get you better acquainted with DevOps:
Container: It refers to the software unit comprising the code and other dependencies essential for the effective running of the software on the infrastructure where it is running.
Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery: It is to be understood as the set of principles that allow frequent and quality release of the product. Continuous integration encompasses automating the task of code development and testing for early identification of issues in the product. Continuous delivery refers to the automation of tasks concerning product release and deployment.
Infrastructure as a Code Framework: It is the framework that assists in writing infrastructure code by offering the best practices and guidelines. It helps maintain and reuse the codes by allowing consistency.
Orchestration: It can be interpreted as automating IT tasks like container management and infrastructure configuration using the tools built specifically for the purpose.
Pipeline: It is the network of steps and actions that automate the software delivery process. The different steps here are artifact creation, code compilation, monitoring and others.
Service Level Agreement: SLA is the contractual agreement constituting the expectations in service and performance from the service provider.
Version Control: Also referred to as Source Code Management, version control is responsible for monitoring and managing the changes in source code files.
How to Become a DevOps Engineer in India?
Here are essential things to know to become a DevOps engineer in India.
Eligibility Criteria for Learning Devops Course
The eligibility criteria for learning DevOps include aspects that can ease and quicken the learning process. Hence, candidates with a background or knowledge of software development and IT operations can gain an advantage in pursuing the course. Further, they must also be familiar with scripting and task and process automation. Some of the requirements that can aid in the process are:
- Operating Systems: UNIX or LINUX
- Programming language: Any one or more like Python, Perl, R, Java or others
- Networking and Infrastructure
- Management Tools: Puppet, Ansible or any other
- Software development methodologies: Agile or Scrum
Candidates without a background in the IT sector and software development are also open to taking the course. But, the process may become lengthy as there will be the requirement to clear the basics first. However, their experience in different domains such as management, process, or other areas can be an added advantage in carrying out the requirements of the role.
Skills Required for Devops Engineer
The skills required to become a DevOps engineer are:
Communication
Since the prime role of DevOps engineers is to ensure efficient collaboration among the different teams and departments, communication skills are of utmost importance to be a good professional. The DevOps engineers must be able to resolve conflicts, understand each other’s perceptions, and offer solutions that are acceptable to both. They will have to close the gaps or differences, if any, among the departments.
Software Development
As DevOps engineers have to deal with software production and exhibit their coding knowledge, familiarity and experience with the domain are essential. The potential professional must gain knowledge and handling abilities in scripting languages such as Java, JavaScript, Python, R, Perl, and others. They must also be experienced in handling DevOps tools and technologies.
Coding and Scripting Skills
The DevOps engineers must know how to write codes. Various languages are used in the organizations. One must gain proficiency in more than one language, which can include JavaScript, Java, Perl, Python or others.
Testing Skills
The testing needs to be automated in product development. Hence, DevOps engineers are required to be well-versed in the same and have efficiency in virtualization. They must be skilled in working with testing tools, automation procedures, best practices and integration of the relevant tools.
Configuration Management
Configuration management tools are also widely used by numerous organizations. These are required for task automation, which expands from deployment to security, making them an important skill for any professional aiming for the job. Some of the tools that a candidate should be proficient in include Ansible, Puppet or Chef.
Container Orchestration
It is another important and widely used technique in Docker among companies. However, the usage requires proficiency and hands-on experience to encounter challenges faced in the process.
System Architecture and Provisioning
DevOps engineers are also expected to design and manage both cloud and computer ecosystems. Hence, knowledge and familiarity with system architecture, infrastructure as a code, and other associated skills are necessary for work. The experience and ability to work in Amazon Web Services, AWS CloudFormation or Terraform is expected.
Cloud Skills
Since the prime work of DevOps engineers is to work on cloud computing, the relevant skills are highly essential to becoming a successful professional. The candidates must be familiar with the usage of cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GPC), Microsoft Azure and others.
Analytical Mindset
Encountering problems in day-to-day duties is common in the role of a DevOps engineer. There can be the requirement to identify shortcomings and/or vulnerabilities, offer quick fixes, and much more. Besides technical capabilities to solve the issues, a mindset of finding the easiest way possible out of the problem is also necessary for the role.
Can a Fresher do a DevOps Course?
Freshers with a computer background have prior knowledge of certain aspects covered in the DevOps course. However, freshers from different backgrounds need to start from scratch. A combined roadmap to help you learn is as follows:
Gain Technical Understanding: Stepping into a new field or course, your first action will be to become familiar with technical and core concepts and principles. You have to begin by learning about cloud computing, the platforms, associated processes and skills. You will also gain knowledge of continuous testing, delivery and integration, scripting and the ability to work on different operating systems. You will also explore source code management, tool building and all the technical aspects listed in the previous section.
Become Proficient with Tools: You must also get familiar with different types of DevOps tools, such as source control, team management, continuous integration and visualization tools. Examples include Buildbot, Agile Manager, Jira, Subversion and others. You will also need to have experience with Linux and cloud platforms like Google Cloud and others.
Work on Project: Working with tools, programming languages, and operating systems will familiarize you with the work of a DevOps engineer. However, you need to be aware of the structure of work, gain an overall view, and perform it yourself. You must learn about the different problems that a DevOps engineer faces while working on the project. Working on the project gives a real-life working experience relevant to the role.
Gain Experience: The projects are generally covered in DevOps courses. Based on the skills gained through the work on projects, you can aim for internships or entry-level jobs in the field. These help increase exposure to the field while adding to your experience and further enhancing your skill set.
Earn Certifications: DevOps is a dynamic field that progresses with technology. Employers want you to remain updated to meet their needs as per the changing marketplace. Certifications not only help you remain in alignment with changing needs but also act as proof of your will to learn and your capability to work on the role. There are a variety of certifications to earn, with the popular ones listed in the comparison table.
Go For Networking: There are two reasons why this is recommended. One is to help you discover new opportunities and know more about the role and influential people in the community. The second reason is that it polishes your communication skills. You get experience dealing with people and talking about business. Anyway, it is the most important soft skill essential for the candidate to function as a DevOps engineer.
How to Learn DevOps in 3 Months?
For candidates interested in learning DevOps, the course can be molded to the desired period. However, as you decrease the period, the amount of effort and hard work required to achieve the goal will increase. Learning the DevOps in three months requires dedicating 30 to 40 hours a week. You will have to dedicate the first month to building the foundation and the second month to continuous integration, delivery, and automation. Lastly, the third month will include a focus on advanced topics and projects.
Month 1: Foundations
During this month, the candidates need to become familiar with DevOps’s principles, methodologies, processes, and practices. You must learn the concepts of continuous integration and delivery, automation, version control, and code infrastructure. Here, you should also work to gain hands-on experience with version control systems, operating systems and essential tools. In version control, you can familiarize yourself with branch management and repository creation.
The operating systems to be worked on include Linux or Unix, and tools include Puppet, Ansible and others. When working on operating systems, you should learn scripting skills in Python or any other language. Your focus should also be on familiarity with the management principles of Agile or Scrum.
Month 2: In-depth Concepts
You will now head to continuous integration concepts and practical exposure. You can learn here how to set up continuous integration pipelines and automation procedures to be performed by Jenkins or GitLab. Further, learn about containerization and container orchestration. Get hands-on experience with tools like Docker (the most used technology in DevOps) for building images and Kubernetes for deployment. Moreover, do work on additional tools for a deeper understanding of metrics handling. The list here includes Grafana, DynaTrace, Prometheus, and others.
Month 3: Advanced Concepts
This is the final month. Here, you must introduce to yourself how to function on cloud platforms for deployment and application management. You can go with AWS or Google Cloud. You will also learn the intricacies of security measures to take for identifying vulnerability and for secure coding and access controls. The tools you should familiarize yourself with are Veracode, Phabricator, and Gerrit. Your conceptual clarity should be on IPV4, firewalls, OSI model and DNS. Additionally, learn the method of development of scalable systems followed by working on a project that tests all your skills and capabilities.
Which Language is better for DevOps? Java or Python
Programming and scripting languages are crucial for DevOps engineers because of their significance in application deployment and automation. The tasks encompass provisioning, infrastructure as code, cloud orchestration, configuration management, continuous delivery and monitoring. There are a variety of options in languages for DevOps engineers to work on. However, deciding the appropriateness of the language must be based on several factors, such as scalability, consumption of computer resources, tool integration, code readability, maintainability and community support.
Concerning the two types, Java is a programming language, while Python serves as a scripting language. However, Python can be used for both types and hence is a versatile choice for DevOps engineers and learners. Java is another equally versatile language that allows the development of products for a variety of platforms, offers easy integration, and supports object-oriented programming. To help you decide between the two languages, here is a tabulated form of comparison:
| Factors | Python | Java |
| Used For | Scripting, automation, infrastructure configuration, website and app development and is adaptable | Building and maintaining automation tools creating software and web apps and also allow adapting to new technologies without the need for change in code |
| Performance | Comparatively slower | Fast |
| Compatibility | Across various platforms, including Linux, Windows and macOS | Compatible across different platforms. Also used in embedded systems |
| Learning time | Less | Comparatively more |
| Scalability | Upto medium-sized projects | Upto enterprise-level projects |
| Used In | NASA, Google, Dropbox | Amazon, Oracle, Google |
Salaries of DevOps Engineer
The salary earned by a DevOps engineer in India at different levels is as follows:
| Level | Designation | Salary (INR per year) |
| Entry-level | DevOps Engineer | 8,00,000 |
| Mid-level | Senior DevOps Engineer | 18,00,000 |
| Senior-level | Lead DevOps Engineer | 21,54,381 |
Is DevOps in Demand
The work of DevOps holds the prime responsibility of working on servers and cloud computing. With the progress of technology, usage is likely to increase, and hence, there will be bright future opportunities for professionals. The possibility of the occurrence of new roles is also possible. Further, with around 23.8% of DevOps in demand, the lack of skilled candidates has challenged around 18.58% of recruiters in filling the vacancies.
Adding more to statistical data that proves the essence of DevOps, the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20.5%. Job opportunities in DevOps are possible and currently exist in a variety of multinational companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Intel, TCS, PayTM, Wipro, Tech Mahindra, and many more.
Career Opportunities for DevOps Engineers
DevOps is a multidisciplinary field that offers a variety of career opportunities. These are:
- System Engineer: The role involves working on the company’s IT infrastructure. They must design, deploy and maintain the storage systems, networking, software and hardware.
- DevOps Lead: Task automation and continuous integration are some of the prime responsibilities of the DevOps lead.
- DevOps Architect: Their work focuses on DevOps infrastructure. They are responsible for building architectures that support continuous delivery and automation.
- DevOps Cloud Engineer: These professionals are required to develop cloud-based applications with constant and efficient functionality.
- Security Engineer: Acting as a highly responsible designation in the company, the security engineers safeguard digital data from cyber attacks. They are also tasked with risk assessment, vulnerability testing, and other similar work.
- Release Manager: The professionals working as release managers hold responsibility for the quality release of the products. They need to work on time to deliver quality, functional and reliable products.
- DevOps Automation Expert: These experts are tasked with creating continuous integration infrastructure.
Trends in DevOps
Some of the trends to expect in the field with the progress of technology include:
Serverless computing: It is an innovative and widely used approach where services and applications can run without dependency on servers.
MLOps and AIOps: MLOps helps resolve the issues caused by the deployment and management of ML models. On the other hand, AIOps contributes to IT process and operation automation.
GenAI integration in AIOps: It is effective for root cause analysis, anomaly detection and automation.
DevSecOps: The trend can be witnessed to act in the identification and risk mitigation of DevOps systems. It is helpful in enhancing security and automating it.
GitOps: It is applicable to improving DevOps workflow by controlling, monitoring, and automating infrastructure.
Microservice Architecture: It refers to segregating large applications into small tasks that are easy to manage. The impact is seen in the simplification of processes like testing, development, deployment and software delivery.
Conclusion
If you are from a non-technical background, stepping into the field of DevOps might overwhelm you with technical knowledge. If you have a technical background, there is still a lot to learn. Harboring core to advanced concepts, such as cloud computing, the field requires knowledge of scripting language, infrastructure, continuous integration and delivery, the ability to work on different systems, and much more.
Learning all these is possible, easier and interesting with an accomplished and experienced mentor. Offering you the same with access at your fingertips, LearnBay provides you the opportunity with an Advanced Cloud Computing and DevOps certification program. Available in collaboration with IBM and Microsoft, you can get project-based learning with assured job assistance. For career guidance and general assistance, connect with us now.
FAQs
Q1. Which industries play a role in DevOps?
The DevOps job roles can be found in networking, industrial and home automation, video surveillance and medical device-based industries.
Q2. What are the benefits of DevOps for organizations?
Organizations can benefit from DevOps through faster, quality and reliable deliveries, collaboration among the IT and operations departments, cost savings, increased productivity and better customer satisfaction.
Q3. What are the 7 Cs of the DevOps lifecycle?
The 7 C’s in the DevOps lifecycle are continuous integration, continuous development, continuous testing, continuous deployment, continuous feedback, continuous operations and continuous monitoring.
Q4. How is DevOps implemented in a project?
DevOps implementation in a project includes a 3-step standard approach. Firstly, an assessment is done to identify the areas for improvement, and then a Proof of Concept (PoC) is created. If it is approved, tasks like version control, integration, testing, deployment, delivery and monitoring ensure project readiness for DevOps implementation.
Q5. How is continuous delivery different from continuous deployment?
Continuous delivery ensures the readiness of code deployment in production, while continuous deployment refers to the automatic incorporation of changes after passing the tests.
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