Understanding DevOps : A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners
Tags: devops, operations, webdev, beginners
Published: 2024-01-30 23:03:27

**Developer Operations(DevOps)** refers to a comprehensive set of practices, tools, and cultural principles aimed at fostering seamless collaboration between development and operations teams. This collaborative approach is driven by effective communication and coordination to enhance application development and fast product releases. DevOps is not a technology but a methodology.

Imagine a sports club where player development and overall club maintenance are traditionally handled independently. DevOps, in this scenario, is like the club owner bringing these two teams together for improved efficiency and quicker achievement of goals.

In the sports club scenario:

**Development Team:** This is like the team responsible for developing players, enhancing their skills, and preparing them for matches. In DevOps, this is similar to the development team creating and improving the application or software.

**Operations Team:** This is similar to the team that looks after the club's facilities and infrastructure and makes sure everything functions properly. This is equivalent to the operations team in DevOps, which is in charge of deploying, overseeing, and maintaining the software.

**Fundamentals Aspects and Practices Of DevOps.**

By using our previous example as a guide, we will delve deeper into various devOps practices and elements. 

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**Communication:**

**_DevOps Illustration:_** The club owner encourages open communication between the player development and maintenance teams to align goals.

**_DevOps Practice:_**In software development, frequent communication ensures everyone is on the same page, enhancing collaboration and problem-solving.

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**Collaboration:**

_**DevOps Illustration:**_ Players and maintenance staff collaborate to address challenges and achieve the club's overall success.

_**DevOps Practice:**_ Development and operations teams collaborate closely to integrate code seamlessly, streamline processes, and enhance product reliability.

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**Automation:**

**_DevOps Illustration:_** Imagine if repetitive tasks in player training and club maintenance are automated to save time and reduce errors.

**_DevOps Practice:_** Automation in the software development lifecycle reduces manual efforts, minimizes errors, and accelerates the release of high-quality software.

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**Continuous Integration and Deployment:**

_**DevOps Illustration:**_ Regular training sessions (integration) and swift player deployment to matches (deployment) keep the team in top form.

_**DevOps Practice:**_ Continuous integration and deployment ensure that code changes are consistently and automatically tested, integrated, and deployed, leading to a more reliable and efficient development process.

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**Continuous Integration and Deployment:**

_**DevOps Illustration:**_ Regular training sessions (integration) and swift player deployment to matches (deployment) keep the team in top form.

_**DevOps Practice:**_ Continuous integration and deployment ensure that code changes are consistently and automatically tested, integrated, and deployed, leading to a more reliable and efficient development process.

By adopting DevOps practices, development and operations teams work harmoniously, just like the player development and maintenance teams in the sports club, resulting in faster, more reliable software releases that meet the evolving needs of the organization.

**Benefits of DevOps**

- Aids in clear communication and collaboration between the development and operations teams.

- Ensures customer satisfaction and faster release of product.

- Improved scalability and availability.

- Better workload management.


**Who is a DevOps Engineer**

A DevOps Engineer is a flexible engineer with extensive experience in development and operations. They are proficient in coding, infrastructure, system management, and devOps toolchains. DevOps engineers have strong interpersonal and non-technical abilities, which allow them to collaborate and establish a cohesive and conducive atmosphere. Their talents are diverse, including code reviews, unit testing, and adhering to agile standards. 

A DevOps Engineer reduces the disparity between the actions required to alter an application and the tasks that ensure the app's reliability. DevOps is all about integration and automation. A DevOps engineer must comprehend both the software development lifecycle and the devops lifecycle, practices, philosophy, and culture.

**Responsibilities Of A DevOps Engineer**

- Building and deploying application code.

- Deploying and maintaining servers, storage and networking resources necessary for hosting applications.

- Foster communication and collaboration between development and operations teams to streamline workflows.

- Automate infrastructure deployment and management using tools like Terraform, Ansible, or Puppet.

- Utilize cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud for scalable and flexible infrastructure.

-  Implement and maintain CI/CD pipelines to automate the software delivery process.

- Set up monitoring tools and logging systems to track application performance and troubleshoot issues.

- Manage version control systems like Git to track changes and facilitate collaboration among team members.

-  Implement containerization (e.g., Docker) and orchestration tools (e.g., Kubernetes) for scalable and portable deployments.

- Stay updated on industry trends, new tools, and technologies to bring innovative solutions to the team.


**DevOps Tools**

Understanding devops is critical, as are the tools used in devops. We will walk through the devops lifecycle and the tools used at each stage. 

- **Discover:** The team researches and defines the scope of the project, goals and requirements. Tools involved include, Jira, Trello and asana. 

- **Plan:** The team plans tasks and further  divide tasks into smaller achievable and deliverable task. They engage in sprint planning, set timelines and allocate resources and budget needed. Tools include, Click-up, Microsoft planner, e.t.c

- **Build:** This is the development phase where the dev team develop and integrate the code. This is were CI/CD(Continuous Integration and Delivery/Deployment) takes place. Tools include Gitlab CI, GitHub actions, Jenkins, git. 

- **Test:** Automated tests are done to ensure code quality and functionality. Tools include Jira Xray, Junit, Jest. e.t.c.

- **Deploy:** The application is released to the production environment for deployment. Tools include, Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible and terraform. 

- **Monitor:** The team monitor the application status, the services and the infrastructure performance. Tools include, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack. 

- **Continuous feedback:** The team collects continuous feedback for  continuous improvement. Tools include, Slack, teams, GitHub issues and Microsoft teams. 

To summarize, DevOps is a transformational methodology that combines development and operations, promoting communication, collaboration, and automation throughout the software development life cycle. DevOps helps teams develop high-quality software faster and more efficiently by integrating tools and techniques across stages such as planning, coding, testing, deploying, monitoring, and getting continuous feedback. This iterative and collaborative process emphasizes adaptability, scalability, and continual improvement, making it a foundation for modern software development practices. DevOps is more than simply a set of tools; it is a cultural transformation that enables teams to produce, deploy, and maintain software with speed and quality. To get started with devOps you can take the  devOps course on kodeKloud(Highly recommend for beginners)or Microsoft devOps course(Advanced devs) or Amazon devOps course.