DevOps Tutorial For Beginners: A Step-by-Step Guide To Learn DevOps

The term “DevOps” is a combination of many concepts and is rapidly spreading among the technical community. Most people might get confused about whether it is an approach,  movement, culture, or a mixture of all. Mastering DevOps is a complex journey and requires a lot of effort. In this DevOps Tutorial, we will start from the basics of DevOps and learn DevOps basics and all the major concepts of DevOps. Now, let’s have a look at the following concepts of this DevOps Tutorial article. 

DevOps Tutorial for Beginners 

Here, we have the list of topics if you want to jump right into a specific one:

• What is DevOps?
• How DevOps works?
• DevOps Lifecycle
• DevOps Culture
• Why DevOps is important?
• Benefits of DevOps
• How to achieve DevOps
• DevOps Engineer
• DevOps Principles
• DevOps Value
• Differences between Agile and DevOps

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a new trend in software development that enhances the interaction between development and operation teams.

The main objective of DevOps is to reduce the time required for delivering products or applications. It enables quick deployment of code into production environments in an iterative and automated way. It allows companies to serve clients in a better way and compete with others.

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How DevOps works?

Considering the DevOps model, both Dev and Ops teams are no longer isolated. There are some situations where both the units are combined into a single team, the engineers should handle the entire application lifecycle, starting from development and then testing to deployment to operations, and develop a wide range of skills not restricted to a single function.

In certain DevOps models, Quality Assurance (QA) and Security teams work simultaneously with the DevOps teams for the entire application lifecycle. When security becomes the primary focus in a DevOps team then the DevSecOps comes into action.

Related Article: SAFe vs Agile 

DevOps Lifecycle

We can gain in-depth knowledge about DevOps by understanding its lifecycle. Here, we have discussed the different phases of the DevOps lifecycle:

Development

In this phase, the software development process is carried out continuously. To accelerate the development and delivery processes, the total development process is divided into small development cycles.

Testing

The new chunk of code is tested by the QA team using some open-source tools like selenium.

Integration

In this Phase, a new feature is added to the existing code, and testing is performed. Continuous Development is achieved only because of continuous integration and testing.

Deployment

In this phase, the deployment activity is carried out continuously. It is carried out in such a way that any modification made in the code should not affect the performance of the website.

Monitoring

In this phase, the operations team will handle the abnormal behavior of the system and errors found in the production phase.

[ Related Article: DevSecOps Tutorial ]

DevOps in the cloud

The DevOps approach for cloud computing can be easily defined:

The cloud computing cluster enables DevOps automation with a typical platform for deployment, testing, and production. Some enterprise systems having distributed nature in the past weren’t a good fit for centralized software deployment. Utilizing a cloud platform solves many problems with distributed complexity.

Automation in DevOps is becoming cloud-centric. Cloud computing providers such as public and private support DevOps systemically on their platforms, in addition to continuous integration and development tools. This compact integration lessens the cost associated with on-premise DevOps automation technology and enables centralized governance. 

[ Related Article: Cloud Computing Tutorial ]

DevOps Culture

DevOps culture puts an impact on small and multidisciplinary teams, who take collective accountability and work autonomously for how primary users experience their software. There is no place like production for a DevOps team, their aim is to make the live experience of the customer better.

These teams include operations and apply agile practices in team management. DevOps team's primary focus is to improve end-to-end delivery of customer value as they work in small batches, they try to eradicate waste and obstacles along the way.

DevOps teams stick to a mindset of growth. They make beliefs clear and in detail, generate better results, and execute hypotheses as experiments. These teams use telemetry and monitoring to collect evidence in production and study results in a live environment. 

Why DevOps is important?

In the process of bringing both the development and operations teams together to complete software development, DevOps culture and set of processes play a crucial role. It enables enterprises to develop and enhance products at a rapid pace than they can with conventional software development processes.

Related Article: DevOps Vs SysOps

Rapid innovation and shorter development cycles

It becomes difficult to expect an application to be ready for operations when the dev and ops teams are existing in two different silos. When the dev teams stop the application, the operations’ cycle times last longer unnecessarily.

With a mixed effort of both the dev and ops teams, applications are usable more quickly. This is crucial, as organizations succeed depending on their ability to develop faster than their rivals do. The expert from Red Hat estimates that it becomes faster to bring an application into the market with shorter development cycles rather than following traditional approaches.

Fewer deployment failures

Due to the arising bugs while programming, the team experiences deployment failures. The smaller development cycles within DevOps develop more frequent code releases. This process becomes easier to identify code defects so the teams can overcome the number of deployment failures using the principles of agile programming. 

Enhanced communication

DevOps enhances the culture of software development, the combined efforts of the teams give rise to increased productivity. This culture aims to work combined rather than focusing on individual goals. These teams work more effectively and produce better results when the trust between them becomes stronger.

[ Related Page: DevOps Testing Tools ]

Increased efficiency

This helps to enhance the development process and avoids further errors occurring. There are different ways to automate tasks in DevOps. The process of testing code is automated by Continuous integration servers, decreasing the amount of required manual work. Now the software engineers can concentrate on completing tasks that can’t be automated.

To increase efficiency, Acceleration tools play an important role. For example:

• • • Scalable infrastructures, like the cloud-based platforms, multiply the access the teams have to the hardware resources. This leads to the speeding up of testing and deployment operations.
    • Faster compiling of code requires building acceleration tools.
    • To avoid delays, parallel workflows are embedded into the continuous delivery chain.
    • Using a single environment avoids the tasks which are not required for transferring data between environments. This means you are not restricted to develop, test and deploy on various environments.

Reduced expenses

All of the DevOps benefits translate to a decrease in overall expenses and requirements of IT headcount.

[ Related Article: What is AIOps]

Benefits of DevOps

Technical benefits:

• Continuous applications delivery: DevOps comprises the custom of continuous delivery, where your codebase has been made accessible for testing or production on a daily basis as a fundamental part of its own principles. Companies like Amazon used Continuous delivery to roll out a brand new feature in production at an unbelievable average time of 11.6 seconds between deployments. As we will discuss below, Continuous delivery is a critical factor in supplying the other advantages of DevOps. 
• Less intricate issues to fix: Since DevOps is about regular incremental improvements, developers' changes have a tendency to be smaller for a given installation. This usually implies that the issues introduced during deployment are similarly smaller and for that reason easier to troubleshoot or rollback. 
• Faster resolution of issues: By supporting collaboration between the various portions of one's business, DevOps utilizes the mental abilities of the whole organization to solve issues more quickly. You do not need to wait around for another team to fix the issue, instead, you can jump in and begin solving it yourself.

Business benefits:

• Faster delivery of attributes: Continuous delivery implies which features are deployed in production right after they have been developed. Another factor in the enhanced speed of DevOps is the utilization of automated processes for tasks like testing, cloud infrastructure, logging, and monitoring. 
• More stable working environments: Since continuous delivery decreases the severity of possible problems, it also has a tendency to result in greater stability. The observations by the Puppet study revealed that high-performing DevOps organizations became stable 96 times faster from downtime.

[ Related Article: DevOps Interview Questions -2021 ]

How to Achieve DevOps

The following practices are important to achieve DevOps as it is not just one thing, it is a bunch of ideas that address a wide range of issues:

• Continuous integration: Operates the current testing and merging of code, which leads to identifying bugs in the early stages. Other advantages include saving time with fighting merge issues and quick response to the development teams.
• Continuous Delivery: Frequent delivery of software solutions to the environments of production and testing support organizations to fix bugs quickly and respond to constantly changing business requirements.
• Version control: Version control (using GIT), enables teams around the world to interact effectively between regular development activities besides integrating with software development tools for tracking activities like deployments.
• Lean and Agile: Lean project management and agile planning techniques are used to organize and separate work into sprints, handling team capacity and support teams to swiftly adapt to the changing business needs.

DevOps Engineer - Hiring Process, Salary, and Skills

Professionals with DevOps skills are in huge demand as most businesses rely on DevOps for the best results.  The main priorities of DevOps include Improving the relationship between development and operations, maintaining better communication, and having collaboration between the two teams. It may look easy as said, but there are many aspects for a DevOps engineer to successfully deploy the code and bind the two units. The average DevOps Engineer salary as displayed on PayScale.com is $91,274.

[ Related Article: DevOps Engineer Roles and Responsibilities ]

Hiring DevOps professionals

Organizations that rely on DevOps required people who naturally resist organizational silos. A unique way to find these people with rare skills (such as generalists, polymaths, or comb-shaped people) was by considering their wide range of interests and non-linear career paths.

The approach used for recruiting people for DevOps was different from the traditional method of recruiting. DevOps hiring is described as the more effective model for searching, recruiting, and retaining non-commodity expertise in heavily competitive markets. This process of recruiting is based on the core principles of DevOps and can be used for hiring positions with a lot of demand in any part of the organization. 

Leave an Inquiry to learn DevOps Training in London

Skills required for a DevOps engineer:

Flexibility

Coding is a constant process that needs to be updated regularly. To become an ideal DevOps engineer, the candidate must showcase the abilities like developing and integrating new systems into the code. He should be flexible to work and adapt to the changing code.

Security skills

Comparing to other skilled areas security is a crucial factor, particularly in coding. This is an area where the hackers show their expertise to get into systems for manipulating the secured data. In DevOps development and deployment of code is at a rapid pace, which means there is a risk of code being exposed to cyberattacks. Hence, engineers must adopt the skills of writing secure code to protect it from unwanted attacks.

Scripting skills

Scripting skills are a must for any developer, whether it's Python, Ruby, Perl, or Javascript, a perfect DevOps engineer should have the ability to write code seamlessly. 

Decision making

You don't hire a candidate who is lacking in decision-making skills. the successful DevOps engineer should have the capability to take wise decisions instantaneously in an unbalanced condition. As the code is constantly changing, there should be a person available to fix the incoherent code elements. When employing a DevOps engineer, decisiveness is an important factor to consider.

[ Related Page: Best Release Management DevOps Tools ]

Collaboration

In order to make great DevOps teams, senior workers like managers should play a crucial role in assisting coworkers in solving problems that arise while working in a team of DevOps.

A better DevOps engineer works in small batches to make others work easy, like starting from performing code reviews to writing acceptance tests.

DevOps Principles

Here are some basic DevOps principles outlined to guide you through:

Customer-Centric strategy

Nowadays it is crucial to have short feedback loops with end-users and real customers, and that all tasks in developing it products and services surround around these clients. In order to meet these customers’ needs, DevOps organizations should face the challenges to act as lean startups that innovate continuously, pivot when a particular strategy is not working, and spend money in services and products that will gain a great level of customer satisfaction.

Build with the End in Mind

Organizations should equip new methods while leaving the traditional waterfall and process-oriented models behind, where each individual or unit works for a certain role without supervising the entire process. They need to function as product companies that clearly focus on building working products sold to real customers, and all the employees need to adopt the mindset of engineering that is required to imagine and realize those products.

End-To-End Responsibility

In the process where the organizations create IT solutions and then pass them over to operations to deploy and manage these solutions, the teams in a DevOps environment are organized into different stages such that they are totally accountable from start to end. All the IT products and services built and supplied by these teams are maintained by the stable groups. These teams give performance support, till they become unstable, which boosts the level of responsibility felt and the quality of engineered products. 

Autonomous Cross-Functional Teams

Product organizations having responsible and vertical teams need to be totally independent throughout the entire lifecycle. This requires a very balanced set of skills and requires fully efficient professionals instead of traditional IT specialists who are only proficient in testing, coding, and requirement analysis. Employing these teams becomes a hotbed of personal growth and development.

[ Related Page: Difference between Agile and DevOps ]

DevOps Value

For better value metrics, Splitting the DevOps goals into 3 categories such as optimal, foundational, and transformational. For example,

Optimization

• Robustly right-size infrastructure scale.
• Re-use existing business services and platform services from the resource pool rather than re-building a solution stack

Foundation

• Requires time and effort to design a new application environment
• Requires time to re-deploy an application
• Requires time to elevate the application into a new phase of its lifecycle.

Transformation

• Requires time and effort to integrate business process, event processor – developing a complex application
• Expenses to operate application for a single user or transaction.
• Requires time and effort to apply policy across tenants.

[ Related Article: What is Site Reliability Engineering]

Differences between Agile and DevOps

Metric	Agile	DevOps
Definition	Agile is an iterative approach, which concentrates on interaction, customer evaluation, small and large deliveries	DevOps is regarded as a way of bringing development and operations teams together.
Need	Agile is useful in handling big scale projects	The fundamental concept of DevOps is to handle the end-to-end engineering process
Work	Agile concentrates on continuous changes	The main focus of DevOps is Continuous Testing and Delivery
Implementation	Agile  Methodology is implemented with the help of some strategic frameworks like scrum, sprint, etc.	As the objective of DevOps is enhancing interaction, no framework is required for implementing DevOps
Focus	Agile mainly focuses on software development procedures for developing software. After the software is delivered, it is least bothered about it.	DevOps main focus is delivering the software product in less time and with high quality
Goal	It deals with the customer requirement and development and testing teams	It deals with the gap among development, testing, and operation teams
Important	Developing software is essential for agile	Bridging the gap between the development and operations team is important for DevOps
Tools used	JIRA, Bugzilla is a popular Agile tool	Jenkins, Puppet, a chef are some popular DevOps tools
Quality	Agile develops the best applications suitable for the user requirements	In addition to automation, timely bug removal DevOps helps to create better quality
Documentation	The agile method gives priority to the system working on the complete documentation	In DevOps, automation reduces the effect of documentation, but in the case of complicated projects documentation is necessary.

[Related Article: Uber Interview Questions]

Conclusion

So look beyond including a title as ‘DevOps Engineer’ and various tool names (such as Chef, Puppet, Salt, and Puppet) onto your resume. DevOps is all about practices, principles, and developing a collaborative environment that enhances software delivery and improves business value. With a large number of resources available on the web, you can stay updated and can adopt a DevOps way of thinking.

Are you looking to get trained on DevOps, we have the right course designed according to your needs. Our expert trainers help you gain the essential knowledge required for the latest industry needs. Join our DevOps Certification Training program from your nearest city.

DevOps Training Chennai, DevOps Training Dallas, DevOps Online Training Bangalore, DevOps Training Hyderabad, DevOps Training Mumbai, DevOps Training Chicago,  DevOps Training Gurgaon, DevOps Training Pune.

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Here are the other DevOps courses offered by MindMajix:

Build and Release Engineer	Jenkins
TeamCity	Nuget
Chef DevOps	Octopus Deploy
Continuous Integration	Git & GitHub