Kazeem Razaq @K.Razaq / 4:00 PM EDT. May 3, 2022.
Let's face it -- the world of IT is changing rapidly. For the last decade, IT has been recognized as the fastest-growing field in the world... and as the globe is increasingly dependent on digital technology, the importance of IT will just keep increasing. Having the right skills at your disposal is crucial. No matter where you are in your IT career, having the right resources available will help to make your job easier. Believe it or not, there are several tools out there that can help anyone become a DevOps engineer, even if they don't have any experience.
Make no mistake -- becoming a DevOps engineer does not happen overnight. It requires the right mindset, and many months -- if not years -- of learning and gaining hands-on experience. There are also many technical skills you have to have to succeed as a DevOps engineer. These skills can make or break your career as a DevOps engineer. Beyond the necessary technical requirements, there are also countless soft skills that you need to have a successful job or career within the industry.
The soft skills required to be a successful DevOps engineer include communication, collaboration, creative problem-solving, tenacity, open-mindedness and technical writing skills. For this reason, it's helpful to understand some of the key technologies within development and operations -- both from an infrastructure perspective as well as an application perspective.
The most important of these is understanding how the infrastructure works within the organization before you begin implementing any solutions that are related to improving performance, reliability and security.
If you're wondering, "What do I need to learn to become a DevOps engineer?", then this post will answer your question. Keep reading to discover everything you need to know to become a DevOps engineer.
What are the Major Responsibilities of a DevOps Engineer?
A DevOps engineer's primary responsibility is implementing the software development life cycle (SDLC) within an organization. To do this, a DevOps engineer must have a solid grasp of all of the people, processes, and technologies that make up each stage. Read on to learn about the ten most important skills that a DevOps engineer must have along with some related job titles.
In my opinion, being a good technical developer not only means knowing how to code -- but it also means knowing how to design robust solutions. It's important to know how to build software that works well with other developers and the rest of your team.
So what do you need to know to be a DevOps engineer?
1. Familiarity with Linux OS
DevOps is not just about developing and deploying software; it also includes maintaining and managing servers. Therefore, DevOps professionals must be skilled in using Linux. In addition, they should be comfortable with using command-line tools.
2. Fundamental knowledge of networking
Understanding network architecture and network layers help in troubleshooting the entire process of application deployment. To overcome networking issues, one should be aware of concepts like TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, OSI model and MAC address.
3. Scripting skills
When there are hundreds or thousands of servers involved in a project, scripting makes it easy to automate things like installers and deployments. Plus, scripting also helps find bugs that can cause server crashes once an application goes live. A basic knowledge of scripting languages — such as Ruby, Perl or Python — is essential for DevOps engineers.
4. Experience with a technology/product or industry/company -- or both
This is what makes you an expert in those fields and gives you credibility when talking about them—and helps you stand out from other job candidates who don't have that experience.
5. Base skills
Here are the soft skills that are generally required by anyone working in the tech field, regardless of speciality:
Good communication skills.
Technical abilities and experience.
A strong aptitude for problem solving and analysis.
A passion for logic and reason over emotion and intuition
A willingness to take initiative and think on your feet.
The desire to learn new technologies and always be improving yourself
A willingness to collaborate with peers and work in a team environment
6. Strong collaboration skills
To be a successful DevOps engineer, you need to have terrific interpersonal skills -- collaboration is essential. You have to be able to work directly with development teams, quality assurance (QA), product management, infrastructure teams and security teams in order to create an effective DevOps environment. You must be able to communicate with all these different roles effectively.
7. Master Unix command
Unix commands are inbuilt programs that can be invoked in multiple ways.
Here, we will work with these commands interactively from a Unix terminal. A Unix terminal is a graphical program that provides a command-line interface using a shell program.
8. Know the basics of networking and TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol)
TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol and it is a suite of communication protocols used to interconnect network devices on the internet. TCP/IP is also used as a communications protocol in a private computer network (an intranet or extranet).
9. Learn the cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform)
Getting started with cloud technologies can be daunting with the number of cloud providers in the market and also hundreds of services, in the form of building blocks, offered by each cloud provider. But it is important to understand these services or building blocks that are used to create and deploy any type of application in the cloud.
10. Become a master of automation tools, such as Puppet, Ansible, and Chef
Chef, Puppet, Ansible, and SaltStack are industry-wide used DevOps tools, included in DevOps Certification. They are all “configuration management” tools, which means they are designed to deploy, configure and manage servers.
Bonus: Learn Git and Github for version control systems (VCS).
Back-up control allows you to keep track of your work and helps you to easily explore the changes you have made, wether it is data, coding scripts, notes, etc. You are probably already doing some type of version control if you save multiple files such as Dissertation_script_25thFeb.R, Dissertation_script_26thFeb.R, etc. This approach will leave you with tens or hundreds of similar files, making it rather cumbersome to directly compare different versions, and is not easy to share among collaborators.
With a version control software such as Git, version control is much smoother and easier to implement. Using an online platform like Github to store your files means that you have an online backup of your work, which is beneficial for both you and your collaborators.
Git uses the command line to perform more advanced actions. We encourage you to look through the extra resources we have added at the end of the tutorial later to get more comfortable with Git. Here, we offer a gentle introduction to syncing RStudio and Github so you can start using version control in minutes.
DevOps Engineering is one of the most desirable careers out there. It is a cutting edge IT field with a very competitive, high salary. However, the skills required to have a successful career in DevOps Engineering are in no way naturally acquired, and many try to go about it the wrong way -- and fail.
At BusyQA, with our comprehensive curriculum and highly experienced instructors, we have designed an easy and straightforward route for you to become a professional DevOps Engineer and land the career of your dreams. To find out more, click can to see our schedule.