DevOps Engineer day-to-day Activities | DevOps Engineer Responsibilities | Edureka Rewind

Key Takeaways

hello guys this is arvind here from edureka and I welcome you all to this amazing session on devops engineer day-to-day activities so before we move any further let us have a quick look at the agenda for today's session so as you can see on the screen these are the topics that we'll be covering starting with who exactly is a devops engineer after that we will discuss what are the various roles and responsibilities that a devop engineer has moving on we will discuss what are the skills required for a devops engineer and finally we will discuss the main part of the session that is devops engineer daily tasks or you can say day-to-day activities so without any further Ado let us begin with our first topic who is a devops engineer so before that let's have a quick look at what exactly is devops so devops is a software development strategy which Bridges the gap between the developers and the ID staff with devops organizations can release small features and incorporate the feedback which they receive very quickly if you talk about the benefits of devops the first benefit is that it has fewer software failures compared to the previous traditional software development methods such as waterfall and the agile and also the lead time between the fixes of issues is significantly reduced in devops devops overcomes all the limitations of the traditional waterfall model devops process involves a lot of development testing and deployment Technologies for developing automated CI CD Pipelines so this was a quick definition of devops and now if you talk about what are the tools that are used in devops so the first tool that is used in devops is for source code management or you can even say Version Control Systems and these tools are get and GitHub there's one more tool called Jenkins here which is an automation server and which has built-in plugins for developing the CI CD pipelines after that we have selenium for automation testing and Docker which is nothing but a software containerization platform you have must have also heard about the tool called kubernetes which is basically the container orchestration platform and then we have puppet chef and ansible which are basically used for configuration management and deployment and finally there is a tool called naggers which is used for the purpose of continuous monitoring so these were some of the tools that are used frequently in devops so now coming back to our previous question who exactly is a devops engineer so a devops engineer is somebody who understands the software development life cycle and has the outright understanding of various automation tools for developing the cicd pipelines devops engineer works with developers and the IT staff to oversee the code releases so they are either the developer also get interested in the deployment and network operations or system admins who have passion for scripting and coding and move into the development side where they can improve the planning of test and deployment so this was an overview of who exactly is a devops engineer so now let us just move on and discuss our next topic here the roles and responsibilities of a devops engineer so let me first tell you about the roles that are present in devops so the first role in devops is that offer devops evangelist so he is someone who's responsible for implementing the overall devops life cycle right from planning and coding till the monitoring phase evangelist is someone who's responsible for implementing the entire devops pipeline so next comes the release manager okay so the release manager is someone who releases new features and ensures Post Release product stability after that we have automation expert who is responsible for achieving Automation and orchestration of tools and we also have developers and testers who develop and test the code after that we have QA guys who are responsible for the quality of the product and they check whether the product is as per the requirements and finally we have a security engineer who always monitors the products health and security so these were some of the roles that are present and devops and now if you talk about the responsibilities so some of the key responsibilities of a devops engineer are administration of the ID infrastructure next choosing the right deployment models and finally conducting the testing protocol and critical monitoring and also if you face a question in an interview that what is your responsibility as a devops engineer then you can say that as a devops engineer you're responsible for the build and release process and you are also responsible for managing the user access on resources after that you have also responsibility of managing the various branches of git so git is basically in the continuous development phase a tool that is used in continuous development phase after that you are also responsible for the automation of repetitive tasks as a devops engineer it is your your responsibility to provide the server support and the application support and finally you have to ensure that the backup is sufficient and if there isn't any sufficient backup then you have to create a backup policy as well so these were some of the responsibilities that a devops engineer has so now let us just talk about the devops skills before coming to the actual part of this session that is the devops engineer day-to-day activities I think it is very crucial to know what are the skills that are possessed by a devops engineer so the first point here is Linux fundamentals and scripting so as a devops professional you might have to provision your infrastructure and therefore in order to automate this you should know at least one scripting language so most of the companies have their environment on Linux and also many configuration management tools like puppet chef and ansible have their Master nodes on Linux so to become a devops engineer you should be aware of the Linux fundamentals and knowledge of one scripting language is mandatory so scripting language can be anything so say for example Ruby python Pearl and so on so the next Point here is knowledge on various devops tools and Technologies so devops involves various phases and there are multiple tools available for these stages so I think we have discussed this point earlier so you should have good knowledge on these development testing and deployment Technologies the next Point here is the containers integration and continuous delivery knowledge on various tools is not enough you should be in a better position always to where to use these tools these tools should be used in order to facilitate continuous integration and continuous delivery even containers deployment in few cases but continuous deployment is not considered as a good practice so the next Point here is infrastructure as a code so IAC or infrastructure as a code is a type of it infrastructure that operations team can automatically manage and provision through code rather than using a manual process IAC is sometimes referred to as programmable infrastructure with Advent of IAC the line between a developer and a cisops guy is Getting Thinner day by day and the next Point here is the devops key Concepts so till now we have discussed only the technical skills but you should also keep in mind that devops is not a technology rather than it is a methodology so this methodology aims at bringing the dev and the Ops part of the organization together to release good quality software in time so if you understand the key concepts of this methodology you will be able to better provide solutions to various business problems and last but not the least I think be it any profession the most critical skill that a person must possess is soft skills so whenever the developers and the operations staff communicate with each other clearly they not only develop and release the software in time with good quality but can help in marketing the application with lower costs and better quality a devops professional also sometimes helps in cultivating positive relationships with the businesses and the customers those interested in the field need to be able to listen attentively negotiate solve problems and build teams so these were the some of the crucial skills that devops engineer must possess so now let us discuss the main part of this session that is devops engineer day-to-day tasks or daily activities so if you think about this question what are the daily activities or day-to-day activities of a devops engineer so this question is as per my opinion it is pretty much weak because it depends what your experience is as a devops engineer and it also depends upon the organization that you're working for if you talk about the organization it really depends on since how long your company has started adopting the devops practices so let me list down a few General points here that a devops engineer no matter what his background is and what his experience is these are some of the points that normally majority of the devops professionals execute or they do it on a daily basis so the first point here is making sure that the pipeline is running smoothly so this is one of the most important tasks of a devops engineer and he needs to make sure that the CI CD pipeline is intact and fixing any issue or failure with it is the topmost priority for such person they often need to spend time on troubleshooting analyzing and providing fixes to issues so the second Point here is interaction with other teams so coordination and collaboration is the key for devops to be successful and hence a daily integration with the devops and the QA team program management I.T and other stakeholders is always required the next Point here is working on automation backlog so automation is the soul of devops and so devops engineer needs to plan it out and he spends a lot of time behind the keyboard working on automating stuff on a daily basis so the next Point here is infrastructure management so devops engineer are also responsible for maintaining and managing the infrastructure required for the CI CD Pipeline and making sure that it is up and being executed optimally so this is also a part of their daily schedule so say for example working on a backup and making sure that the systems are always highly available and a new platform setup and so on so the next Point here is dealing with Legacy stuff so not everyone is lucky to work on the latest and the newest things and devops Engineers are no exception hence they also need to spend time on Legacy that is in terms of supporting it or migrating it to the latest version and the next Point here is the exploration so devops leverage a lot from the various tools which are available and there are many options as open source so the team needs to regularly check on this to make sure that the adoptions are as required and this is something which also requires some effort not on a daily basis but you can say that such activities should be done on a regular basis the next Point here is removing of bottleneck devops primary purpose is to identify the bottlenecks or the manual handshakes and work with everyone involved that is the development QA and other stakeholders to remove them so that the team spends a good amount of time in finding such things and build the automation backlog the next Point here is that of a documentation okay so though agile and devops stresses Less on the documentation it is still an important part of his job on which a devops engineer works on a daily basis beat server information daily week charted or scrum or kanban board or simple steps to configure or modify the infrastructure so you need to spend a good amount of time in coming up with these artifacts so the next Point here is training and self development so self learning and training is very useful in getting better understanding and many organizations encourage their employees to take the time out and do some of these and same modes too for devops folks as well so it is very important to learn something new every day and last but not the least continuous Improvement as a practice so it is up to the devops folks to build the awareness on the potential of CI CD and devops practices and building a culture of leveraging it for doing things better that is reducing the rework and increasing the productivity and also optimizing the use of existing resources so you must go and talk to people to build devops and continuous Improvement culture so these were some of the activities you can say that a devops Engineers does very frequently or on a daily basis so again now I'll give you a real-time scenario here previously we discussed some general scenarios and now I'm going to talk about some real scenarios of the day-to-day activities of a devops engineer so the first and foremost task that you do when you go to the office or when you reach your workplace is the daily stand-up meeting so what happens in this meeting is normally your team that are involved in the devops like the development QA and the operations all of those teams they you know they meet together to have a discussion on what needs to be done and how it needs to be done so say for example if you are a part of the team and you have a team lead so your team lead will assign you any specific task for that particular day and he will also take the feedback of your work at the end of the day so this is the first and foremost thing that you must do as a first thing in the morning when you go to your workplace next you check your mails and the jigara tickets so again jeera tickets are nothing but they tell you through tickets what are your tasks for the day or for the week entire week so this is how you use jira tickets and your emails for knowing what needs to be done after that you check the notifications from monitoring systems so as discussed earlier there's one tool called nagios used for continuous monitoring purpose so what happens is after you have deployed your application on the production servers you make use of tools such as nagios for continuously monitoring its health and security so if there are any notifications related to that so it is your responsibility of it as a devops engineer to check those notifications and fix if there are any issues so you have to fix it and provide solution to that issue next you have to ensure that there is no critical alert unattended so this point is pretty much an extension to the previous point so if there are any critical notifications or messages related to your devops theme or you know related to your application so it is your responsibility to make sure that it is not unattended maybe you should attend it or you should try and fix that issue or if you cannot do that then you should ask the required person who has the proper skill set for fixing that problem so you must at least talk to him and get the issue solved as early as possible next as a devops engineer you must provide help and support to the developers so developers are responsible for developing the code so developers develop the code as per the requirements of the application so the devops engineer it is your responsibility to talk to them to make sure that they are able to write the code elegantly and efficiently and after that it is your responsibility to make sure that the develop code is moved to the further stages that is testing integration deployment and so on next you have to provide support for the production servers so once the application is deployed on the production servers it is your responsibility to track the running of the application so whether it is running smoothly or not if there are any errors you have to make sure that the application is running smoothly so normally what happens is before deploying on the production servers so the application is developed in the continuous development phase okay it might be possible that the environment in which the application was developed in the development was different than the environment that we have on the production so because of this mismatch in the environment on production and development so the application might not run smoothly so it is your responsibility to check this that the environment is correct there are all the dependency issues are sold as far as the application is concerned the next Point here is automation of the admin repetitive tasks so as a devops engineer you might come across many activities that are repetitive and you have to execute them almost daily since you know one scripting language so it is your responsibility to automate those tasks by writing scripts for that particular task so if you write scripts for that task so those tasks will get executed efficiently and you as a devops engineer will always be relaxed just because you have automated those things and they are getting executed successfully so automation as discussed earlier is a key component of devops next you have to create Jenkins job for deployment so as discussed earlier Jenkins is a tool that is used in The Continuous integration phase of devops the basic unit of execution in Jenkins is a job so as a devops engineer you have to execute jobs you have to integrate the code and then you prepare a CI CD pipeline so basically the CI CD pipeline is the heart of devops so it is one of the most important Concepts so as a devops engineer you have to make sure that you create jobs and build a CI CD pipeline using Jenkins next you have to support existing infrastructure and create new servers so as discussed earlier you are responsible for maintaining the infrastructure okay so it is your responsibility to check the overall infrastructure of your devops to figure out whether it is sufficient or not if it is not sufficient talk to the required members or the authorities to make sure that you add additional infrastructure or you expand it and if need arises you also can add new servers to your infrastructure and so on next you have to check whether the code has been successfully deployed on the production servers so I think we have discussed much about this point earlier and finally you have to check for the proper approvals before the code releases so say you have to develop an application with 20 features I'm just giving you an example here just for your understanding so what will happen is you will not directly develop an application with 20 features so first you will develop an application so say for example with five features and you will release that application and then based on the performance of that application with five features you gather the feedback of that application so whether that application is running well whether users are liking it or not how the features are so you gather this feedback and if there are any major changes you try to incorporate those changes in the application and then you again release the application with few more features so if for example in the first version there were five features now you have 10 features plus the feedback of the first five features as well so this is the second iteration or the second version of the application so normally this is how your application is launched or it is deployed on the Production Service version by version or you can see even the iterations so then you again really gather the feedback of the application based on 10 features and then you try to incorporate those changes in the application and you release it again for the next time with say for example 15 features I hope you guys are understanding what I am trying to say here multiple versions with different features and the feedback so this is one of the most important thing that increases the quality of the software in devops so these were some of the points or you can say the activities that a devops engineer does on a daily basis so with this we have come to the end of this session here on devops engineer day to day activities I hope you guys have enjoyed this session if you have any queries related to this session then you can write your queries in the comment box below and my team is here to help you with all your doubts so thank you guys for being with us and all the best