Becoming a DevOps “expert”
Tags: devops, learning, tools
Published: 2017-09-23 22:09:23

---
title: "Becoming a DevOps “expert”"
published: true
tags: DevOps,Learning,Tools
canonical_url: https://learncodeshare.net/2017/08/31/becoming-a-devops-expert/
---

### I’ve decided to learn more about DevOps.

I’ve always been a believer in automating repetitive tasks and letting machines do as much of “my” work as they can. &nbsp;The way I learn best is (as you can tell by the name of my blog) I learn about the topic, I build something from what I’ve learned and I share my experience.

Given that DevOps is a very big topic, it will take more than one or two posts to do it justice. &nbsp;This post is the first in a series of blog posts, videos and presentations that I plan to create as I learn more. &nbsp;I think the best place to start is with what I “think” I know now.

### What is [DevOps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps)?

A couple years ago I was using Jenkins to create a [continuous delivery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_delivery) pipeline for a project I was working on. &nbsp;I was the only one working on the project and after seeing a CD demonstration at a conference I figured I’d give it a try. &nbsp;I had everything working and I was quite pleased with myself. &nbsp;Then I started hearing the term DevOps and assumed it was just a term for what I was already doing. &nbsp;I was partially right.

DevOps is more than just automating the software delivery process, it’s also a cultural mindset. &nbsp;It’s developers and operations working together throughout the full lifecycle of a project instead of in separate silos. &nbsp;Since I was working solo on that project I missed out on this aspect. &nbsp;Currently, I’m not working on any project where I can experience the full cultural aspect so I plan to mentally assume different roles as I work through the learning process.

If you’d like a better definition, there is plenty of material available on the web from real experts. &nbsp;I only wanted to document what DevOps means to me as I start to learn more.

### My current plan.

I have been working on an open source application used for demonstrations and learning called [DinoDate](https://github.com/oracle/dino-date). &nbsp;I am going to build a DevOps process around this application. &nbsp;I will be building this process using the [Oracle Developer Cloud Service](https://cloud.oracle.com/developer_service) against an [Oracle Cloud Database](https://cloud.oracle.com/database)&nbsp;and other Oracle Cloud services, as well as other tools such as Jenkins against an [Oracle Database on a VM](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/databaseappdev-vm-161299.html).

##### Plan Steps:

1. Define the steps to manually deploy DinoDate as is.
  1. Automate the build and deploy process which currently is, run some scripts and scp the code to an [Oracle Compute](https://cloud.oracle.com/compute) instance where I have already setup Python and NodeJS.
  2. Deploy the NodeJS and Python apps to an [Oracle Application Container Cloud](https://cloud.oracle.com/acc) instance.
2. Add some open source tools to improve the process.
  - Build script using Gradle.
  - Schema object version control using Liquibase.
  - Unit tests for the PL/SQL using&nbsp;UTPLSQL.
3. Automate creating the infrastructure (DB, Compute instance) from scratch then deploy, test and destroy.
4. Reproduce the entire CD pipeline using Jenkins (or another tool) against a VM.

Once I’m satisfied with my understanding of the tools and workflow, I’ll find a project that would benefit&nbsp;from a DevOps environment and ~~pester~~ encourage them to switch to a DevOps process with an offer to act as the DevOps “expert”.

### More to come.

Keep an eye out here and on my [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/BlaineCarter) channel for how-to and â€˜lessons learned’ posts that I’ll make as I go. &nbsp;Feel free to post a comment if you see that I’ve already got something wrong or if you have a specific interest you’d like me to focus on as I go.

_This post was originally published on [learncodeshare.net](https://learncodeshare.net/2017/08/31/becoming-a-devops-expert/)_