

Ask HN: Where can I get Dev Ops training? - zackify

My boss is looking to get an experienced Dev Ops person on our team, but I told her why not just let me do it. I generally do most of the developing of our products and wonder how I can become experienced in this area. She&#x27;s even told me she&#x27;s willing to pay to have someone train me. The types of things would be managing AWS stuff, redis, ansible, docker, etc. I have experience with linux and server administration, but not really any dev ops stuff.
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WestCoastJustin
Most of this can be learned for free with a little time investment on your
part. AWS has great training courses, both online, and in person [1]. I have
taken a couple by heading to their Seattle office and it was extremely useful
(like seeing the future). But before you take a course, I would suggest
getting an AWS account, if you don't already have one, and using the free tier
to get a lay of the land. Also, download and play around with redis, ansible,
and docker via Vagrant VMs on your local machine. This is a personal plug, but
I run a screencast site for sysadmins @
[https://sysadmincasts.com/](https://sysadmincasts.com/), so you might find
some useful bits there also.

ps. I am always looking for episode ideas too, so if you have something you
want to learn about, shoot me an email.

[1] [http://aws.amazon.com/training/](http://aws.amazon.com/training/)

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coned88
What does aws have to do with devops?

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WestCoastJustin
Sorry, I am a little late in replying, hopefully you are still around.

> _what does aws have to do with devops?_

I am not really sure what you are asking, but let me rant a little about
devops, and in a round about way hopefully answer your question. Personally, I
hate the word DevOps because no one knows what it means. Devops seems to mean
different things to different people. If I were to define it, I guess I would
say DevOps to _me_ means, you want a hybrid sysadmin who knows how to program
enough to work with configuration management, or you want a developer who
knows enough about sysadmin bits to keep things stable and secure. If you look
at most of the DevOps job postings, you will see they actually want someone
who is 80% sysadmin + 20% developer. DevOps kind of seems like BS to me, since
to be a good sysadmin, I think you should know how to use configuration
management by default, you don't need to be this hybrid position. So, long
story short, AWS allows sysadmins or develops to use APIs to manage
infrastructure through code. So someone who does "devops" should be able to
use AWS. I also think, that if you are _devops_ (whatever the
sysadmin/developer ration), and don't know how to use AWS (or other cloud
providers), your job prospects are going to look pretty grim (non-existent) 10
years out.

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danudey
I hope you're still around as well, since I missed this thread earlier…

> if you are devops (whatever the sysadmin/developer ration), and don't know
> how to use AWS (or other cloud providers), your job prospects are going to
> look pretty grim (non-existent) 10 years out.

I personally think that people who can use AWS are pretty common, and using
AWS is only getting easier. If you know how to work with actual, physical
hardware, on the other hand (which most people even today don't seem to know
how to do), then you're going to be in a much better position, skill-wise,
than someone who only knows AWS (which is many people).

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wallflower
Learning DevOps is a good move.

It depends on your company but your goal should be to get on the on-call
rotation as quickly as possible. Once you are on the on-call rotation, you
will take your responsibility even more seriously - as you will be the point
person for systems issues.

Similarly, your goal should be to identify a pain area in your systems
management and be able to write a script, a Nagios plugin, something to
address that pain point. You can work from there to larger projects involving
infrastructure automation.

Like with anything, it will help to learn to understand the language of
DevOps. The best way to do that is by reading and watching presentations by
practitioners.

Similar to iOS Dev Weekly, you can learn a lot by reading a curated list of
articles in the DevOps world.

[http://www.devopsweekly.com/archive](http://www.devopsweekly.com/archive)

Surge 2014 (one of the better DevOps conferences) has slides and videos.

[http://surge.omniti.com/2014](http://surge.omniti.com/2014)

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willthames
Do you have an Operations function in your organisation? As really DevOps is
development and operations working together to meet business goals.

If you do have an Operations person, you should be working together on things
like how you can improve the deployment process to make it easy for new
software to get into production.

If you don't have an Operations person, then you will have to bridge that gap.
And that means learning what things make software operable - logging,
monitorability, availability, resilience etc.

Web Operations, Continuous Delivery, Release It are three good starting
points.

I gave a talk at Devops Days Brisbane on How to Design and Develop Software
for Operations. I don't claim it to be complete but it comes from years of
experience supporting critical applications

[http://willthames.github.io/2014/08/10/devops-days-
brisbane-...](http://willthames.github.io/2014/08/10/devops-days-brisbane-
talk.html)

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sk2code
I totally agree with what Justin has mentioned. All these things can be
learned for free. I am a big fan of what Justin has been doing and his Videos
are simple and easy to follow. I've been doing Unix/Linux system admin for the
last 10 years and would like to explore Devops myself.

You can checkout [http://linuxacademy.com/](http://linuxacademy.com/) (I am
not affiliated to them in anyway what so ever). During my search for the
DevOps training I found their website. They follow a Team Treehouse kind of a
model (learn at your own pace) and charge around $25 per month. I haven't
tried that myself but their AWS content (All tracks) and DevOps track looks
pretty solid.

If you want to get in touch my email address is in my profile. Good Luck !!

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tacon
Camp DevOps is once a year, and I stumbled across it this year as it was in
Houston. campdevops.com The web site might give you ideas about who is in this
space, or query the speakers for ideas on training.

There are also local meetups on devops, so attend one and ask for advice or
mentoring. If you have a budget, there is probably someone who can help.

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neduma
Check out - 12factor.net, [http://deis.io/](http://deis.io/)

Also check out
[http://devopsbootcamp.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html](http://devopsbootcamp.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html)

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chr15
What area are you in? Learning basic sysadmin tasks will take you a long way.

Plug: I'm in the process of making an online training curriculum if you're
interested. The content isn't ready now, but I may be able to do some remote
training. Contact info in my profile.

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zackify
I'm definitely interested. Central California.

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grover_hartmann
Is DevOps just another word for system administration?

