What is DevOps?

The term DevOps was coined by Netflix in 2010. In short, it means bringing together software development and operations teams to create better software faster. Since then, the term DevOps and “DevOps Culture”  has gained tremendous popularity in the software development community. This approach helps companies reduce costs, improve quality and increase innovation.

DevOps helps reduce the number of handoffs that have to be made to make the code production ready. This can lead to improved quality, faster time-to-market, and less need for manual intervention.

DevOps is built around the idea of continuous integration and delivery. A CI/CD pipeline consists of multiple phases, including build, test, release, and operations. Each phase is automated, allowing developers to focus on building and delivering great products.

Build

The first step in the CI/CD pipeline is the build. When a change is made to source code, the build runs tests against the code to verify that it doesn’t break anything. If something goes wrong during the build, it is reported immediately.

Test

After the build, the next step is testing. Unit tests, functional tests, and performance tests are run to check that the build didn’t introduce any serious bugs.

Release

Once everything passes the tests, the product is ready to be released. This includes deploying the application to production environments as well as updating its version numbers and publishing documentation.

Operations

After the app is deployed, it needs to be monitored regularly. Monitoring tools such as Prometheus can alert operators when there are errors or unusual activity. These alerts allow administrators to take action quickly if needed.

By combining these steps into one pipeline, DevOps automates most aspects of software development. With automation comes increased efficiency and lower costs.

What is a DevOps Engineer?

A DevOps engineer helps in automating build systems, deploying and running CI/CD infrastructure, and monitoring critical production applications. They operate across all layers of IT stack. Besides that they are also responsible for ensuring that the code is production-ready, coordinating with other departments within the company, and keeping systems running as efficiently as possible.

Related Blog: Beginners Guide to DevOps

What is the salary of DevOps Professionals?

DevOps professionals are paid handsomely. As per Randstad’s Salary guide, if you have decent experience, you can demand as much as $137,830 USD. As per Glassdoor, average salary of a DevOps engineer is $131,842.

So, if you are looking for a lucrative and rewarding career, check out the skills listed below that will help you get there. 

What are the DevOps Skills you need to be successful?

In order to be a successful DevOps practitioner, you need a good understanding of technology and software development. You also need to be able to work effectively as part of a team.

Some key skills that are necessary for success in DevOps include:

1. Cloud – Understanding how cloud technologies work and being able to deploy and manage applications in the cloud. With more companies adopting cloud, knowledge of public cloud like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is of utmost importance.

A DevOps engineer can help developers with:

– Deploy infrastructure with code

– Scaling up/down the infrastructure

– Monitoring and telemetry

– Building resilient systems

2. Automation and scripting skills: Automating tasks can save time and help ensure consistency across multiple servers and applications. Scripting tools make it easy to create custom scripts to handle specific tasks or automate common actions.

Knowledge of one of the common scripting languages like Python, Shell, Bash, Ruby is must have to be successful in this role. These programming languages can be used with a wide variety of DevOps tools like Azure DevOps, GitHub, Jenkins, Maven, Chef, Puppet. DevOps tools make it easy to manage the software development process, including deploying applications and automating tasks.

3. CI/CD: CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment and is crucial to any DevOps environment!

Back in the day, when we deployed software, it was usually done by copying large amounts of code from one server to another, manually editing configuration settings, and then manually restarting servers. With CI/CD pipelines and combined with automation, the entire process from committing code to deploying to production can be triggered automatically with no manual intervention.

Good DevOps engineers know how to use a variety of development tools, including version control systems (VCSs), build automation tools, and testing tools. Knowing these tools can save time and help you track progress.

4. Experience with containerization: Containers help expedite deployment to any infrastructure. These containers can run either on a virtualized infrastructure or on a bare metal server, either on-premise or in the public cloud. Containerization helps reduce vendor lock in which is driving big tech companies adopt it across the board.

Containers are a key component of modern software development, and developers who are familiar with this technology will be in a better position to work on projects that involve them.

5. Communication and collaboration skills: Gone are those days where only technical skills mattered. Soft skills are key, too, and can help you build relationships with co-workers and clients. With more technologists working remote, a good understanding of communication techniques, such as white-boarding or videoconferencing, is critical for effective teamwork.

Effective developers must be able to work well with others in the organization, whether that means collaborating on code or negotiations.

If you are looking to invest in your career, check out this DevOps Foundation Certification course.

Related Blog: Recipe for success in IT field – Important soft skills you MUST HAVE!!

Conclusion

DevOps teams are key to success in software delivery. They not only help speed up application delivery on the cloud but are the key bridge between developers and operations. DevOps practices are ever evolving , and as such, developers who are up-to-date on the latest tools and technologies will be in a better position to succeed in the industry.

That said, to get your next DevOps dream job, make sure you have a good hands-on experience under your belt. 

Further Reading

Agile, DevOps, CI/CD – How are they related?

Understand an important concept of automation – Infrastructure as Code (IaC)