“Currently, DevOps is more like a philosophical movement, not yet a precise collection of practices, descriptive or prescriptive.” — Gene Kim, TripWire
The software industry is buzzing with a new keyword these days; from the coders to the ones taking care of processes, DevOps is the talk of the town. However, understanding DevOps and its functions are easier said than done. Most developers unnecessarily complicate DevOps and end up making it their foe. Understanding and simplifying DevOps is the key to harnessing its potential. Most organizations these days are deploying DevOps to enhance their processes and yield better results.
Naturally, professionals with expertise in DevOps are in demand. So for those looking to stay ahead of the competition, it’s quintessential that they get well-versed with DevOps. After all, understanding is the key to innovation and improvisation. Modern-day organizations will surely expect their DevOps professionals to initiate and lead the way towards streamlining their workforce. So for those looking to gain an upper hand in this highly desired skill, below is a comprehensive guide on understanding DevOps and the several ways a professional can gain expertise in it!
Key Summary
- What is devops, in short: the culture and practices that close the gap between development and operations teams through shared ownership and automation.
- It emerged to fix slow, risky, siloed software releases — the same problem Agile addresses for planning, DevOps addresses for delivery.
- This guide keeps the original article fully intact and adds new sections covering why DevOps emerged, how it differs from Agile and SRE, and what an actual DevOps workflow looks like.
The software industry is buzzing with a new keyword these days; from the coders to the ones taking care of processes, DevOps is the talk of the town. However, understanding DevOps and its functions are easier said than done. Most developers unnecessarily complicate DevOps and end up making it their foe. Understanding and simplifying DevOps is the key to harnessing its potential.
Most organizations these days are deploying DevOps to enhance their processes and yield better results. Naturally, professionals with expertise in DevOps are in demand. So for those looking to stay ahead of the competition, it’s quintessential that they get well-versed with DevOps. After all, understanding is the key to innovation and improvisation.
Modern-day organizations will surely expect their DevOps professionals to initiate and lead the way towards streamlining their workforce. So for those looking to gain an upper hand in this highly desired skill, below is a comprehensive guide on understanding DevOps and the several ways a professional can gain expertise in it!
Why did DevOps emerge, and what was wrong with how software was released before?
Before DevOps, development and operations worked in separate silos with conflicting goals: developers shipped features, operations kept systems stable, so releases became rare, risky, all-night events. Manual handoffs caused miscommunication and finger-pointing when deployments failed. DevOps emerged in the late 2000s to close that gap, borrowing from Agile and Lean manufacturing to make releases frequent and boring instead of occasional and terrifying.
What is DevOps? Understanding DevOps
DevOps can be a multi-headed foe for those who are looking to understand it by its definitions; simply put, DevOps integrates the two words in its etymology – Development + Operations. With the markets expecting businesses to be more agile and productive rather than stable, DevOps is a perfect way to keep up with the changing pace while ensuring the proper allocation of resources at hand.Essentially a culture, rather than a tool, DevOps focuses on enhancing the communication between the Development and Operations team.
With their combined expertise, their organization can focus on core strengths while delivering the software to the markets at a rapid pace. Also, the key focus of DevOps is ensuring consistent quality and maintaining security, not just between the various levels of an organization, but also between the organization and its customers.
DevOps is responsible for reliable work processes as well. It guides the operations team in analyzing and reporting issues, while also aiding the development team in resolving these issues at a tremendous pace. With the help of DevOps, organizations can optimize their work processes to yield faster and stable results.
What is DevOps and what problem does it solve?
What is devops, in practical terms? It’s the practices and culture that close the gap described above — shared ownership, automated pipelines, and continuous feedback between the people who build software and the people who run it. The core problem it solves is slow, unreliable releases: automating testing and deployment lets teams ship smaller changes more often, with far less risk per release.
Is DevOps a job role, a set of tools, or a way of working?
All three, which is why what is devops engineer confuses people. DevOps started as a philosophy emphasizing collaboration and automation. Over time, companies hired people to build that automation, creating the “DevOps engineer” title. The tools on this list support the philosophy but aren’t DevOps by themselves; a team can own every tool here and still not be practicing DevOps if the underlying collaboration never happens.
How is DevOps different from Agile, SRE, and traditional IT operations?
Agile governs how a team plans and builds software in short iterations; DevOps extends that philosophy to how software gets released and operated. Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Google’s approach to operations, is often described as one concrete implementation of DevOps principles. Traditional IT operations, by contrast, typically sits separate from development, prioritizing stability over speed — the exact divide DevOps was built to close.
What are the DevOps Tools ?
For those looking to gain expertise in DevOps, it’s quintessential for them to understand the various tools which can aid a DevOps engineer in their work.
Since the primary focus of a DevOps engineer is to optimize and enhance the software development life cycle, the tools required to do so are versatile and can be a game-changer if they are explored adequately.
For coding and configuring, tools like Gitlab, Github, IBM, and Bitbucket are extremely helpful. For testing software releases and enhancing their development process, tools like Flawcheck, SonarSource, and Skytap are highly recommended.
For managing software changes and deploying them to their production cycle, software tools like Clarive, BMC, Flexagon, and VMware are irrevocable important and recommended. For managing infrastructure as code, Ansible, Chef, Otter, and Salt need to be checked out. For monitoring processes, Plumbr and Wireshark top the Google list for monitoring tools of 2018.
These tools have been known to significantly enhance a DevOps engineer’s work, and researching about them is a sure-shot way gaining an advantage in a professional’s DevOps career.
How To Become A Better DevOps Engineer
To stay ahead of the game, software engineers need to know as much as they can about DevOps. Competition is ruthless, and organizations want the very best, so DevOps engineers need to constantly update their information and learn more about what’s working in the current market and how to upgrade their existing skills.
Quora is an excellent platform to communicate and collaborate with fellow DevOps engineers. Experienced DevOps professionals often conduct Q&A sessions on Quora which can be an interactive way to learn more about this profession. The same can be said about Reddit; several Reddit threads openly communicate about the developments in DevOps, and how to maximize one’s potential as a DevOps engineer.
Social media is a great platform to learn about the trends of the global market and where it’s heading currently. Software groups on Facebook like the DevOps community and Docker DevOps group constantly circulate new research material amidst their group members; Twitter is another great platform to stay in touch with reputed software professionals. For those who want to connect with other DevOps engineers, LinkedIn is the go-to platform for them; it’s also a great way to explore prospective jobs.
Podcasts are also a fantastic medium to explore DevOps. The audio format is a boon for those who do not want to scroll through heavy walls of written information. Podcasts like Arrested DevOps, The Ship Show, DevOps Cafe, and DevOps Chat are highly recommended. They explore new DevOps topics weekly, and are worth checking out!
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What does a DevOps workflow actually look like from code commit to production?
A typical flow: a developer commits code to a shared repository, which triggers a build. Automated tests run; if they pass, the code moves to staging for further checks. Once approved, the same pipeline deploys to production, often gradually, with monitoring watching for errors. If something breaks, the same automation that shipped the change can roll it back — no manual file copying anywhere in the path.
How To Become A Better DevOps Engineer
To stay ahead of the game, software engineers need to know as much as they can about DevOps. Competition is ruthless, and organizations want the very best, so DevOps engineers need to constantly update their information and learn more about what’s working in the current market and how to upgrade their existing skills.
Quora is an excellent platform to communicate and collaborate with fellow DevOps engineers. Experienced DevOps professionals often conduct Q&A sessions on Quora which can be an interactive way to learn more about this profession. The same can be said about Reddit; several Reddit threads openly communicate about the developments in DevOps, and how to maximize one’s potential as a DevOps engineer.
Social media is a great platform to learn about the trends of the global market and where it’s heading currently. Software groups on Facebook like the DevOps community and Docker DevOps group constantly circulate new research material amidst their group members; Twitter is another great platform to stay in touch with reputed software professionals. For those who want to connect with other DevOps engineers, LinkedIn is the go-to platform for them; it’s also a great way to explore prospective jobs.
Podcasts are also a fantastic medium to explore DevOps. The audio format is a boon for those who do not want to scroll through heavy walls of written information. Podcasts like Arrested DevOps, The Ship Show, DevOps Cafe, and DevOps Chat are highly recommended. They explore new DevOps topics weekly, and are worth checking out!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What is DevOps in one sentence?
DevOps is a culture and set of practices that unites software development and IT operations to make releases faster, smaller, and more reliable through automation and shared ownership.
2. What is a principle of DevOps?
One core principle is continuous feedback: automating testing, monitoring, and deployment so problems surface immediately, rather than being discovered weeks later at release time.
3. What is a DevOps engineer?
A DevOps engineer builds and maintains the automation — CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, monitoring — that makes DevOps practices possible, bridging development and operations work directly.
4. Do you need to be a developer to work in DevOps?
Not necessarily, but coding and scripting skills help significantly, since DevOps engineers automate processes that would otherwise require manual, repetitive work.
5. What’s the difference between DevOps and a DevOps engineer?
DevOps is the philosophy and set of practices; a DevOps engineer is the job role built around implementing those practices, particularly the automation and tooling side.
