
How should approach learning DevOps (AWS)? - amoitnga
TL;DR . What path should Rails dev(6years) should take to learn AWS DevOps.<p>I have a lot of free time and decided to use it to expand my skill in DevOps. I&#x27;m a web developer using Ruby on Rails (6years) &amp; React(2years) primarily in my day to day job. We are small shop and have 3rd party consultants doing some work for us. Generally my company hasn&#x27;t been happy with their work and will be looking to switch soon. This is appropriate time for me to get hands dirty, since it can be useful pretty much immediately.  I decided to get a better grip on managing our rails app in cloud, AWS particularly since this is what we use. 
For context our app is Rails, MySql, ElasticSearch, Redis.<p>We are in process of switching to docker from deploying to EC2 using capistrano gem.<p>I tried to get AWS certified before but it was extremely boring and not really helpful. It seems like they want me to know everything about every service they offer, how pricing works and little details that are really difficult to remember if you don&#x27;t actively use them.<p>So I&#x27;ve decided to ask you guys for some advice on how someone with my skill set and experience should approach this? 
I assume I need docker. I took a course on Udemy about a year ago, going to work through it again. 
What AWS certifications, if any, would you suggest? 
Can you recommend some online classes? 
Can you help me develop list of &#x27;must know&#x27; apps&#x2F;tech&#x2F;things?
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bradknowles
There are multiple different sites you can go to for training on AWS, and
training towards getting the various AWS certifications. AWS has their own
training, but outside of that probably best known is acloud.guru, and there
are many others.

In your case, I would start with the AWS Certified Developer path (see
[https://aws.amazon.com/training/path-
developing/](https://aws.amazon.com/training/path-developing/)), and then look
at the Operations path (see [https://aws.amazon.com/training/path-
operations/](https://aws.amazon.com/training/path-operations/)). But the
training and the certifications are only part of the picture. Speaking only
for myself, I don’t really learn something until I have to do it for real, and
especially if I then have to teach it to others. So, I would encourage you to
try to find ways to actually use these tools in real-world scenarios.

In my experience, AWS doesn’t do a whole lot with Kubernetes. Sure, you can
use it on AWS, but the more native AWS solutions are Lambda functions, and if
you want to go with more classic containers, then you’d be looking at Fargate
if you don’t want to manage your own container management system, or ECS if
you do want to manage your own container management system. EKS is the AWS
flavor of Kubernetes, but is not as common.

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bradknowles
Note that I have recently taken and passed the AWS Certified Cloud
Practitioner exam, and am currently studying for the AWS Certified Solutions
Architect exam. We’re doing study groups at work, based around the material
from acloud.guru, which is available to us for free thanks to our employer.
I’m leading the AWS CCP study group, and a co-worker of mine is leading the
AWS CSA-A study group, which I’m also in.

Yes, it’s a lot of random stuff to remember, much of which doesn’t seem to
have a great deal of bearing on the AWS technology that we use on a daily
basis in our real work, which I’ve been doing for years. But I am still
learning a lot, and I’m convinced that there are important gaps that are being
filled in my education, thanks to the classes we’re taking and certifications
we’re getting.

I do find that I can listen to the video class material at 1.5x normal speed,
and still follow along. It helps things pass along quicker. But for the CCP
exam, my first time around I got about halfway through before I gave up and
just took the exam cold, because I kept falling asleep during the videos. This
second time around, I have to pay more attention, because I’m leading the
study group, and I have to help teach this material to others. I did pass the
exam the first time, but I plan on taking it again, because I want a higher
score.

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bprager
Docker is good. Jenkins is a must. Start with AWS Certified Developer and then
take the AWS DevOps Engineering. Next I would take on Kubernetes. I would also
learn Ansible and Terraform. When you finish with the ELK stack, you have some
basics.

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Minor49er
Check out qwiklabs.com. A former employer gave us credits for it to refine our
AWS knowledge and we enjoyed it. Their lessons and exercises walk you through
real AWS interactions and give you some relatively meaningful tasks to
accomplish. They have a wide variety of lessons too, so I'm sure you could
find a lot to gear yourself up for DevOps work.

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bradknowles
With regards to CI/CD on AWS, the tools are CodePipeline, CodeDeploy, etc....
Sure, you can run a Jenkins server on AWS, but that’s not the AWS-native way
to go.

