The dream of everyone is to earn a high salary, DevOps is one way to reach this dream. Anyone can learn DevOps and get placed with a large corporation. This article will help you to gain complete knowledge about what are the roles and responsibilities of a DevOps Engineer.
Introduction to DevOps
DevOps is a compound of Development and Operations. DevOps is the combination of practices, and processes that increase the organization's ability to provide qualified applications to add value to the customer businesses. In simple terms, DevOps is a methodology in which operations and development engineers collaborate during the service lifecycle from design to development to production support.
Roles and Responsibility of DevOps Engineer:
There are two main parts to creating an application and maintaining it using DevOps, development and operation.
- Development (Software developers build the application
and test it) - Operation (The application is deployed and maintained on a server)
What Skill Set Does an Engineer Need?
- A programming language (e.g. Python, PHP, Java).
- Server Knowledge - usually on a Linux distro
- Cloud Computing (AWS or Microsoft Azure).
Qualification:
- At least have an Undergraduate degree (Computer/IT is an added advantage).
- Proficient knowledge or experience in scripting and experience in cloud computing
- Basic understanding of Software Development Life Cycle.
- Creative thinking about deployment automation.
Supporting Software of DevOps:
DevOps works with a lot of supporting 3rd party software to deploy and maintain an application. A high level overview would include these technologies listed below:
- Cloud (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud)
- Provisioning (Jenkins, Ansible, Maven)
- Virtualization (Docker, VMWare)
- Service Management (Jira, ServiceNow)
- Database (MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server)
- Monitoring (Splunk, Zabbix)
- Collaboration (Slack, Microsoft Team)
Controlling the Code in DevOps:
The development team develops the application with different programming languages, build tools, etc. As DevOps Engineers, we will not be programming the application but we need to understand the concepts of how developers work with repository tools. They will have a code repository to work on the code within a team. One of the most popular code repositories is Git. Any DevOps automations can require pulling the latest code to deploy a new version of the application. This requires writing deployment scripts. The configured scripts will communicate with other services to ready the release after the testing process gets completed.
Linux Command Line:
The application needs to be deployed on a server so that eventually users can access it. The application will need some infrastructure to deploy the application to a server. These servers are usually in the cloud and need to be created and configured to run our application. The DevOps engineer is responsible for preparing the infrastructure to run the application. In most cases, servers used to run the application are Linux servers. DevOps engineers need to know Linux, and be familiar with Linux commands. The DevOps Engineer will be doing most of the work on the server using the command-line interface. So, knowing the basic Linux commands, installing different tools and software on the server, and understanding the Linux file system are absolute requirements to operate the
server.
server.
Networking and Security:
Another thing the DevOps deployment script may need to configure is a network firewall. The application may need to establish a secure connection to an outside resource. There may be a need to white list the application and allow it a few ports to make sure the application is accessible from outside. As a DevOps Engineer, we need to understand how the ports, IP addresses, and DNS works in the cloud as well as basic routing.
Operation in DevOps:
Usually, there are professionals with advanced OS, networking, and security skills who administer the servers individually. They specialize in these specific areas only. DevOps will need to consult with these individuals to understand these areas and how they might affect how the application may behave. That way, we are able to prepare the server to run our application but don’t have to completely take over the management of the servers and the whole infrastructure.
Some On-Demand Tools a DevOps Engineer Should Know
1. Docker: Containers have become a new standard. We will probably run our applications as containers on a server. This means we need to generally understand concepts of virtualization and containers. Also DevOps must be able to manage containerized applications on a server. One of the most popular container technologies is Docker, so we definitely need to learn it.
2. Jenkins: We need to automate the build process in such a way that the build package is created periodically rather than manually created every time. The popular Build automation tool is Jenkins. This is part of the continuous integration process. The code is pulled from the code repository to get continuously tested using the build image created using Jenkins. The new feature or bug fix is deployed to the server after the application is tested. There could be some additional steps like sending the notification to the team about the pipeline status or the handling of a failed deployment.
CI/CD - Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment: These two concepts are the heart of many CI/CD pipelines is the heart of DevOps tasks and responsibilities, so as a DevOps engineer we should be able to configure the CI/CD pipeline for our application. CI/CD pipeline is the unofficial logo of DevOps which is an infinite cycle because the application improvement is infinite. We have developers, who are creating new features and bug fixes continuously. We have infrastructure or servers which need to be managed and configured to support this continuous application deployment. After bug fixes, these applications need to be released periodically to the customers. This is the main task of the DevOps Engineer. The major focus of DevOps is to do this continuously in an efficient, fast, and automated way.
AWS:
Amazon Web Services is a subsidiary of Amazon. Though Microsoft has made inroads with Azure, AWS remains the main deployment target for most DevOps pipelines. It provides on-demand cloud computing platform and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). These services are available to individuals, companies, and governments. This is provided on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. The major cloud computing service in AWS is Amazon EC2. This is the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, which allows customers to have at their disposal a virtual cluster of computers. They can be brought online when needed.
Amazon Nimble Service:
Amazon Nimble Service is the new service that is in creative studios. From the storyboard sketch to the finished deliverable, the Amazon Nimble service can be used to create visual effects, graphics, and immersive content completely in the cloud with AWS. Customers can use Nimble Studio's virtual workstations, elastic file storage, and farm capability on demand. It also has built-in IP confidentiality, permissions, and collaboration automation software. This may become a fertile ground for DevOps as content deployment may end up requiring similar scripts.
Conclusion:
Infinite deployment loops help to develop, configure and maintain the Application which we create by using DevOps. This loop can be used to create an enhanced application that is released using version number. These versions are useful to fix the bugs and upgrade our application. So, DevOps serves as a powerful methodology to continuously integrate the plan, deployment, and release of an application to a customer in a periodic interval. The complete understanding establishes the roles and responsibilities of the DevOps Engineer.