Introduction

 

So, here we come up with a fancy term DevOps. After Learning multiple programming languages working around with Git, Cloud, and Microservices,  you might have landed here or wanted to become DevOps Engineer and want to know what it takes to get there?

 

I remember days back when Filezilla used to be an important tool to push code to host servers. Cpanel used to be the primary tool to operate PHP websites. Things have changed now: We now want to use microservices where our server and application instances are designed to perform the designated tasks. We want the freedom to work in any language of our choice and want to depend on the seamless service that each cloud application/service provides. After increasing use cases on REST API and the ability to get HTTP responses quickly, we have started to look into a new horizon.

 

 

What is DevOps?

 

DevOps simply means Development and Operations. Development means the creation of code and Operation means the Execution of services. Companies small or big have multiple teams to handle code base and operation base. Developers may claim the features they add regularly in products and Operations may claim that they are running everything well. Now when a problem arises it starts a blame game between developers and operators. So to bridge this gap and bring new features and services with zero error target DevOps are adopted by many organizations.

 

DevOps is not only about using development and operational tools, it’s an approach that we use to make development and deployment easy and automated using DevOps tools as per our requirements.


 

DevOps always exists

 

On a small or big scale, DevOps always exists. What I mean here is if we have a simple website which code we maintain. We might maintain code using Source Code Manager(SCM) like Git. Now we may use services like Github or  Gitlab. We will write code, test it and push a successful build. We later pull that build on your cloud instance. So, it has two cycles. As git only updates new files a kind of automation is already there as git is keeping track of file changes for you.

 

On other hand, Imagine services like a news portal that operates on a global level. As more and more people are using the internet, and heavily relying on APIs to fetch data let’s assume requests on servers always are high. Data keep on piling up and storage needs to be added each next month. A small error can block many users from viewing news. In such cases where so many people are dependent, developers add and maintain code base, editors post news, server admins to maintain up-time, third-party applications to access news, and end-users. Also, let’s assume that to balance load we process requests in multiple servers. In such cases, a code we push might be required to publish in one server, test user experience, and on successful deployment, we want to replicate on other servers. Let’s say this occurs each month and we want to automate it. DevOps now becomes a critical and complicated area where engineers structure it for zero downtime. For such a structure, we can have more robust version control, SCM management, configuration management, infrastructure management, etc. We can have multiple tools like Git, Jenkins, Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker, Fastly, etc which can create a sophisticated DevOps pipeline.

 

Even after the implementation of DevOps lot of issues can arise. It depends on how big the problem is and how well the pipeline is created and does it resolve all the critical development and operation errors.

 

 

Issue with DevOps

 

DevOps itself doesn’t have any problem as it’s just an approach. If approaches are not documented sometimes it can be a problem as engineers may miss some critical configurations, steps, and execution. Also, DevOps might need scaling with other resources where it’s likely engineers miss some critical steps during infrastructure upgrades. Also as DevOps involves many tools and services security needs to be implemented on all very important levels.

 

 

Where now?

 

So by now, your concept of DevOps might have been clear and you want to do some DevOps. So, identify your needs, seek the DevOps tools that can make your work easier and save time in the long run and adopt it on your project pipeline.