My Journey into DevOps
My own personal journey into “DevOps” story is a bit different compared to others as I come from a non-IT background. I was working in retail for over 10 years prior to venturing out to the world of IT.
From a young age, I have always been interested in technology and have come into contact with programming languages, namely “pascal” as my uncle at the time was studying a Computer Science degree. I recall helping him typing in some code on an old IBM computer with a monochrome monitor.
It wasn’t until 2017 that I decided it was the right time for me to pursue a career in IT and finally take the leap in doing something I had an interest in. Since I didn’t have any IT qualifications or experience, I felt it would be very difficult for me to just apply for a IT role, so I thought about applying for apprenticeships to get the necessary fundamental training and experience to build a solid foundation.
That’s when I came across an IT Infrastructure apprenticeship via the City of London website which offered a work placement to learn hands-on, as well as to obtain qualifications — CompTIA/BCS.
I applied for the position, which involved quite a few rounds of interviews and tests. After the last interview stage, I wasn’t confident I would get the position as there was a large number of applicants but I was actually chosen - I was over the moon! At first, I was a bit concerned that I may have difficulties juggling hands-on learning with the course structure they had laid out for the qualifications, including the coursework that needed to be completed. However, overall it was pretty intense but I managed it well, even surprising myself as it took me around 3–4 months from going on the course learning lectures and taking all the exams needed. I then moved on to completing 3 documented projects in order to be ready for an endpoint assessment with a virtual task which took 2 days to complete, then an interview with the assessor.
My line manager at the time saw potential in me, who was doing side projects contracting as a Cloud Architect. It was at this stage that I got introduced to the concept of “Cloud Computing”. I started reading up on it and got drawn into it. You could say he became my mentor at that moment, giving me some material and working on AWS for learning and training. I picked this up when I completed all the coursework for the apprenticeship.
The completed online courses via AWS that I did was as follows:
· AWS Business Professional
· AWS Technical Professional
· AWS TCO and Cloud Economics
I then started studying for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam. I signed up for a Cloud Academy account and set aside time each evening to go through the online course. This gave me a good foundation and starting point to how the “cloud” works. It was also useful as they provided practicals you can actually follow and do yourself to get a better understanding of the concepts. There was also a mini-exam to test your knowledge after every module that was also very helpful towards the preparation for the AWS exam.
The other materials I used were the main AWS whitepapers and exam guides which can be found via this link:
https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-solutions-architect-associate/
I would say it will help if you have hands on experience designing systems on AWS, but I completed this exam with no prior related hands-on experience (only what was learned in labs and experimenting myself in my AWS account). Make sure you read and understand the exam “Content Outlines”, I actually printed out the needed whitepapers and highlighted the sections for reference to study. Also, try the free practice questions they have on AWS to get a feel for the questions they may ask in the real test. I actually paid $20 USD for the AWS practice exam to test my readiness for the real exam, which was timed and around 20 questions if I remember correctly.
After passing my first AWS exam, my mentor suggested I should look into learning “Terraform” as that’s when the world of “DevOps” was opened up for me. The whole concept of automation, agile ways of working, cultural philosophies, combing software development and IT operations shortening the development cycle providing continuous delivery intrigued me. I wanted to learn more about the tools used to achieve this and the working culture behind it. So I set my next goal, which was to look for a Junior DevOps role once I had completed my IT Infrastructure apprenticeship.
It wasn’t smooth sailing after I finished my apprenticeship, it took me around 5 months to eventually land my first DevOps job. With countless job applications, refused due to not having any real work-related hands-on experience with the cloud proved to be difficult. But I didn’t give up, I tried to make the most of the free time I had by studying and learning more about:
· Terraform (I used material on the Hashicorp website including how to guides and documentation https://learn.hashicorp.com/terraform )
· CI/CD (Jenkins at the time building a simple pipeline to pull code from my GitHub account and update a webpage)
· Linux (purchased a MacBook Pro to practice/get comfortable using a terminal interface and commands — a windows 10 machine can also be used since they introduced WSL)
· GIT (learning the fundamentals, some free courses on https://www.udemy.com/ )
· Python ( learned the basic data structures via a book that was recommended https://www.amazon.co.uk/Python-Crash-Course-Hands-Project-Based/dp/1593276036 )
· Ansible ( Config management — practiced writing playbooks https://www.ansible.com/ )
I eventually landed my first DevOps role in April 2020. It has been a steep learning curve and I still continue to strive to learn more about all the different technologies.
By sharing my own journey so far, I hope this blog will help others who are interested in starting a career in DevOps.
Anything is possible if you put your mind to it, keep a positive attitude, never give up, willingness to learn, make mistakes, take on new challenges is what helped get me this far.
I am very grateful and thankful to the people who believed in me and gave me the opportunities to pursue something I wanted to do.
For me, this is just the beginning…
I will continue my path on becoming a versatile DevOps engineer who knows about all the different technologies; utilising them to build, automate, monitor, secure, and deploy infrastructure to the cloud at scale.
