How to become a DevOps engineer?

 


DEVOPS ENGINEER - CAREER PATH, JOB SCOPE, AND CERTIFICATIONS


How to become a DevOps engineer?

 

A DevOps engineer is a good career choice in 2021 as the demand for it is increasing considerably. The need for a skilled DevOps engineer is expanding within the market. But there are still some misconceptions and confusions regarding this career choice. Well, let's dig into this article to clear your doubts and confusion regarding DevOps engineers.

In this technology-driven era where information and data are fed into computers, almost every company is implementing cloud services to maintain their working professional environment. Learning DevOps is necessary if you are an aspirant with an IT background who aspires to be a part of the IT sector. Let's go from the basics to understand the career path of a DevOps engineer.

 

What is DevOps?

Before we understand what and who is DevOps engineer let's know and understand the importance of DevOps. One should know the importance of DevOps to understand the role of DevOps engineers. DevOps is defined as an approach or practice that bridges the gap or combines the software development (Dev) and IT operations (op). There isn't a universal definition for DevOps created by academics and practitioners other than its use to refer to the cross-functional combination. It is applicable in a different context, but it is mainly characterized by combination or shared ownership, which aims at the same goal.

 

With DevOps, organizations aim to develop an agile relationship between software and IT to create and release features and regular updates and incorporate feedback much more quickly than the traditional waterfall method. It aims to provide effective and continuous service as promptly as possible. Eventually, this is applicable with utmost collaboration removing any barriers between two parties. The benefits of such cooperation are fewer software fatalities and failures and less time consumption between fixes. DevOps is not easy to develop as it involves a lot of development, testing, and implementation of automated CI/ CD pipelines.

 

Importance of the CI/CD domain

Most people expand CI/CD as Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery, respectively. These are two fundamental concepts required to develop DevOps. These two concepts are fundamentally basic tools and approaches as this make the development of DevOps different and unique from traditional methodologies. The conventional methods are time-consuming and outdated. In today's era where people have so little time, they require more advanced methodologies to save up their time and get the best quality service. They are required to do with one stage following up another, whereas DevOps gives the benefits of running these stages simultaneously within a short amount of time. In today's fast-paced era, it is a necessity than a luxury.

 

There are specific tools for DevOps engineers which are used to develop better applications and software. Following are some of the DevOps tools you need to know:

  1. Git and GitHub: These are required to manage source code. Git is a version control system required to manage your source code history, whereas GitHub is a cloud-based service to manage Git storage.
  2. Jenkins: It is an automation server used to build, test, and deploy software by developers worldwide. It assists in the formation of great CI/CD pipelines. Apart from Jenkins, Bamboo is another automation tool that is highly recommended for developers.
  3. Selenium: Selenium is an available tool used that automates web browsers and is mainly used for automation testing. It has a single interface that lets developers write test scripts programming like Java, C++, Python.
  4. Docker: With the help of Docker, developers can bring their applications and ideas to life by building, developing, and running applications. It is a Software Containerization Platform that allows developers to conquer the complexity of app development. Kubernetes is also such a containerization application.
  5. Ansible: It is one of the simplest automate used for configuration, management, deployment, and continuous service. For configuration management, there are other tools available, namely puppet Enterprise and Chef
  6. Nagios: These are referred to as monitoring software as it helps the developers to monitor and configure any issues and take immediate action to provide satisfactory results. Raygun is also another monitoring software that is used widely.
  7. Jira and Tello are two project management tools unique to DevOps, but it is worth using as it would help the developers keep track of their projects. They can use it to supervise the project's progress according to the deadline and identify any fatalities which can improve. There are more DevOps engineer tools, but these are some famous tools widely used by developers.

 

What is a DevOps Engineer?

A DevOps engineer is an IT professional who facilitates and processes automation throughout the software development cycle on CI/CD basis. They have to balance between coding to deployment and maintenance to upgrading. They understand and skill of various automation tools to develop digital pipelines, namely CI and CID pipelines.

Development teams and IT operation teams come together to bring out the best application with new features. Even if both these teams aim at the same goal, they both retain different skills. Developers are keen to add new features while the latter group thinks about preserving the application's stability. If the DevOps role is about amalgamation and combining processes, DevOps engineers are needed for automation, application management, and maintenance. All these tasks are performed to understand the development cycle and practice, philosophy, and tools of development cycles. DevOps engineers are expected to work with IT staff, software developers, and operators to supervise and facilitate code releases or deployment.

 

Roles and responsibilities of DevOps Engineer

DevOps Engineers have to take on a great many responsibilities on a day-to-day basis. Role of DevOps engineer includes such tasks:

  1. DevOps engineers are often the evangelist or preachers to lead and manage a team to implement DevOps. They are decision-makers responsible for who and how the project shall work to be successful. They are required to make their colleagues aware of the management and deadline of the project. They are needed to tackle complex codes and scripting with development staff.
  2. A DevOps engineer is the one whose job is to ensure the successful release of a quality product. They are the ones to provide healthy collaboration and cooperation to design and improve IT infrastructure. They are the release manager in charge of managing quick releases.
  3. As a DevOps engineer, you have to unlock the achievement of automation and orchestration of tools. Apart from standard works, the task of a DevOps engineer is to manage automation to reduce time and lighten up your colleagues' load by developing useful software plugins.
  4. The DevOps approach aims for frequent deployment and testing sessions. They act as software testers required to develop and test codes. Another primary job is to evaluate and develop a reliable and effective DevOps role, including performance testing and benchmarking.
  5. Day-to-day activities of DevOps include them to optimize release cycles. They are expected to reduce and minimize TTD (time to detect) errors and TTM (Time to minimize) errors in the process.
  6. There are types of DevOps engineers, such as security-focused DevOps or SecDevOps, responsible for monitoring and keeping the security center of products. It includes implementation, building infrastructure design, and release schedules.

 

There is broad scope in this field and various roles to play. There are multiple roles and titles to choose from being a DevOps engineer. Aspirants can look forward to positions such as QA lead, whose primary job is to ensure quality and state. Also, they mainly apply Agile practices to QA and Operational teams to validate the deployment and development of software systems. SecDevOps engineer who is primarily responsible for security purposes, Automation expert whose job is to configure codes and troubleshooting issues, Software tester and Release manager. There is also a cloud DevOps engineer. A professional cloud DevOps engineer's role is to balance the reliability and speed of the product. Also responsible for developing and executing operations. Google DevOps aims to improve the reliability and velocity of the software. Principles and disciplines of SRE guide the performance in Google cloud (Also stands for Site reliability engineering).

 

 However, the role of a DevOps engineer does not follow a linear path. Their profession can evolve from the backgrounds of other occupations. There might as well be some overlapping of job descriptions depending upon the organization you choose to work with in the future. Full-stack DevOps engineers can run the entire application development, deployment and command the highest salary. At the same time, DevOps software engineers can deal with the production of software development and software engineering as they have multifaceted experience and background. A DevOps support engineer is required to perform all sorts of tasks and methodologies. DevOps developers are employed to deploy, automation and configure management technology. In contrast, development operation engineers are employed and tasked with observing and monitoring the functioning system and are required to give feedback and reports on the performance results. The DevOps networking engineer has to keep up with the automation trend as the technologies keep getting evolutionary.

 

What are the skills required to become a DevOps engineer?

This broad field has a lot of scope and opportunities to provide. There are some common skills and traits which need to be the possession of every aspirant. These skills and qualifications will add emphasis while seeking job opportunities and employment. Employers nowadays require these skills and DevOps experience for expertise:

  1. Candidates must have a vast and detailed background and knowledge of OS administration such as Linux, Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS, Google, etc.
  2. Candidates must have strong experience in automation and configuration management tools such as Puppet and Chef. It is necessary skill employers are seeking in DevOps engineers.
  3. A basic understanding of coding and scripting of common programming languages like PHP, Python, Perl, and Ruby is beneficial. A performance of Agile methodology would also help as it is conducive and applies beyond the software development team.
  4. Aspirants must know one of the major programming languages like Java or C++ to program and decode as these languages are pretty common and widely used in the IT industry.
  5. DevOps engineers are praised for their analytical skills and ability to identify, assess and integrate open source technologies and complex cloud services.
  6. Must have a strong background in IT hardware and operations. It will be highly considered if candidates have hands-on experience installing, monitoring, and evaluating servers, storage, and device networks. These practices are usually regarded as vital as they are required for fault-tolerant and high availability and complex projects and operations.
  7. As a DevOps engineer, you will work primarily in teams unless you are freelancing. So you need to have supportive, collaborative, and cooperative skills is much needed as it would also lead you to success. Apart from working with a team, you are expected to deal with customers, so one must manage customers.
  8. Virtualization technologies are a must need for any DevOps engineer. A robust baseline of visualization technologies and container technologies would add to your identity. VMware vSphere for VMs and tools like Docker are required to be practiced.
  9. As discussed earlier, the essential tools are vital to excel as a DevOps engineer. You have to acquire ideas on the contents and implement them. Tools like GitHub, Prometheus, and Jenkins are primarily used in such fields.
  10. You need to gain as much experience with IT tools and a diverse range of management tools and applications such as Cloudflare to deal with various projects and operations.

 

There are DevOps engineering training courses available online and offline for your to choose from within the list. This training would prove the credibility or accuracy of your workflow and methodologies. The pieces of activity are the deciding factors to expedite your development, designing, and implementing skills. With the right skills, DevOps is unmatched and highly effective.

 

Suggested Read – DevOps Engineer Interview Questions and Answers 2021

 

 

Certification Requirements for a DevOps Engineer

 

Qualifications for DevOps engineers are as much required and essential as skills. To be a DevOps engineer, one needs to complete DevOps engineering courses such as computer science, technology, and Information technology. Best certification for DevOps engineer from reputable credentials would add to your resume and command you a secure job. Formal education and DevOps engineer training are typically essential as they allow the candidates to practice the essential skills required for their job. The DevOps engineer training courses might cost a little. Still, it is worth going for it as they provide essential practice such as continuous integration, coding, monitoring, observation, etc. But top DevOps engineer certifications from AWS or Azure certification in public cloud services are also considered necessary.


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