As we close out 2023, we at DevOps.com wanted to highlight the most popular articles of the year. Following is the latest in our series of the Best of 2023.
The world of technology is evolving at a rapid pace, and the past few years have introduced a new shift in digital transformation and software development. The traditional business model is no longer viable, and to remain relevant in the extremely competitive business landscape, organizations need DevOps.
As more and more companies explore what it takes to implement DevOps practices, the need for highly qualified DevOps engineers has soared. In fact, DevOps engineers are among the most sought-after professions in the IT industry.
So, if you have set your mind on becoming a DevOps engineer, your chances of getting a job are high. Yet, as demand for DevOps increases, so is your competition. Enterprises will absolutely not hire just everyone. Therefore, talent and expertise are a must.
The process of becoming a DevOps engineer requires time and dedication. So, it’s crucial to start off right. We’ve put together a guide to the steps needed to get you on the right track, along with a few resources you can take advantage of.
To successfully manage DevOps projects, you need to be familiar with programming languages. While you are unlikely to be writing source code, you will need to automate processes, integrate databases, and occasionally debug code. Therefore, working knowledge of programming languages will help you understand code and review it.
So, mastering one or several programming languages is a great place to start your DevOps roadmap. While you can get away with one, we do recommend that you pick at least two or three to be more competitive. Here are some programming languages that you can choose from: Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, C, C++, Go and Node.js.
Operating systems will power the technology the teams will be using to work and communicate, as well as run the servers you’ll deploy applications on. So, you’ll need to know how to configure your servers using the command line terminal.
Operating systems you can get started with are Linux, Windows, MacOs, Ubuntu and Unix.
Once you are familiar with operating systems, you should know how to perform systems tasks without the help of GUI or graphical user interface. So, get started on learning how to do bash scripting, text manipulation, process monitoring, system performance, networking, as well as compiling apps from source. PowerShell, Vim, Nano and Emacs are names you should get familiar with.
Cybersecurity is becoming more important by the day, especially if you walk in DevOps shoes. So, you’ll need to understand how protocols support various request types. This will prevent the risks of bad players (and there are plenty of them) intercepting your data during transfers and intercepting your applications.
As a DevOps engineer, you will have to monitor servers. They will be fulfilling requests when users request the information they need. Common web servers and related services to get familiar with are Apache, IIS, Tomcat, Linkerd, NGINX, Envoy, Istio and Caddy.
Containers gather and organize all application code, libraries and dependencies together in a portable format so code can be written once and run anywhere. Container management is the use of a platform to organize software containers. It is essential to optimize efficiency and streamline container delivery for faster application development and deployment. They combine all libraries in a deployable unit without depleting the host operating system’s CPU and memory resources.
To remain competitive in the DevOps space, you need to use the latest architecture patterns. While many still rely on miniservices, microservices architecture is the way of the future. They allow to improve scalability, system resilience and maintainability, offer greater technology stack flexibility, and enable faster deployments.
Keep in mind that miniservices are still relevant, and you should be familiar with both.
Once you master containers and container management, infrastructure-as-code (IaC) is where you should head next. It’s one of the main areas of focus for a skilled DevOps engineer and will be vital for the success of the projects that you work with.
Some tools you’ll need to familiarize yourself with are Puppet, Terraform, Docker Swarm, Ansible, Istio, Chef and more.
One of the core DevOps principles is continuous integration and continuous delivery/deployment (CI/CD). So, it’s a no-brainer that you should get familiar with the subject. CI/CD tools support various phases of the pipeline and help automate processes and handoffs that free up your teams’ hands.
The CI/CD tools for you to learn are GitHub, GitLab, Jenkins and Bamboo.
As a DevOps engineer, you will be responsible for monitoring applications and infrastructure to work on improving efficiency and resolving errors. This will require you to observe data from applications, servers, network devices and more and track metrics like hardware capacity, network throughput and uptime.
Some tools to get familiar with are Grafana, Datadog, Zabbix, Prometheus and Nagios.
Modern applications are hosted in the cloud, with cloud services providing numerous benefits such as scalability and cost reduction. As a result, it’s vital to understand the various cloud services available as well as their design patterns and best practices.
Tools you should get familiar with are AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and Heroku.
And last but not least, remember that this DevOps roadmap is just the beginning of your DevOps career. In an industry that is continuously evolving, you’ll need to continuously evolve and learn so that you know how to efficiently manage your clients’ projects, regardless of their scope. Be sure to regularly take new courses and follow DevOps development blogs for industry news and insights.
As technology is continuously advancing and evolving, the need for highly skilled and experienced DevOps engineers is on the rise. If you would like to become a DevOps engineer, follow this DevOps roadmap for 2023 and arm yourself with lots of patience (and coffee, lots of coffee).
Filed Under: Blogs, Business of DevOps, DevOps 101, DevOps Culture, DevOps in the Cloud, DevOps Onramp, DevOps Practice, Social – Facebook, Social – X Tagged With: best practices, DevOps 101, DevOps Onramp, languages
Optimizing Kubernetes infrastructure on AWS
Step 1 of 7
14%
Which best describes your role?
DevOps
Cloud/Infrastructure Engineering
Cloud/Platform Architect
IT
Platform Engineer
Software Development
Operations
What is the primary K8s/container orchestration or management service you use on AWS?
ECS
EKS
Opensource solutions (Kops, microK8s, etc.)
Other
Approximately what percentage of your AWS workloads are containerized?
0-25%
25-50%
50-75%
75+%
All
Approximately how often does your team optimize Kubernetes infrastructure resources?
Continuously
Weekly
Monthly
Quarterly
Biannually or less
Adhoc – as needed
Never
How do you optimize Kubernetes resource utilization?
Cloud provider tools
Custom scripts & automation
Manual review and adjustment
Commercial tools
Third-party managed service
We don’t optimize resource utilization
What is the biggest challenge you face in optimizing Kubernetes infrastructure?
Difficulty executing remediation of unused resources
Optimization is not a high priority relative to their tasks
Complexity and/or lack of skills
Lack of visibility
Available tools are not sufficient
We don’t face any challenges optimizing cloud infrastructure
What K8s infrastructure-related tasks has your team automated?
Resource provisioning
Rightsizing
Bin packing
K8s version updates
Utilizing spot instances
Commitment purchasing and utilization
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