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Learning Path

DevOps Roadmap

A rough order for learning DevOps. Click a topic for details.

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12

Learn Programming

Core Skills

  • LanguagesPython, Go, or JavaScript for automation and tooling
  • ScriptingBash scripting for system automation
  • Infrastructure as CodeYAML, JSON configuration
Alex's Advice

"You need to be able to write scripts. Not full applications, just enough to automate things and understand what developers are doing."

Operating Systems

Core Skills

  • Process ManagementUnderstanding processes, threads, and scheduling
  • Memory ManagementVirtual memory, paging, and swapping
  • File SystemsFile permissions, storage, and I/O operations
Alex's Advice

"Know what your system is actually doing when things go wrong. You'll need this for debugging performance issues."

Linux Fundamentals

Core Skills

  • Command LineNavigation, file manipulation, and text processing
  • System Servicessystemd, service management, and logging
  • Package Managementapt, yum, package installation and updates
Alex's Advice

"Most servers run Linux. Get comfortable in the terminal because that's where you'll spend most of your time."

Version Control (Git)

Core Skills

  • Basic Operationsclone, add, commit, push, pull
  • BranchingFeature branches, merge strategies, and workflows
  • CollaborationGitHub/GitLab workflows and pull requests
Alex's Advice

"Everything is in Git. Code, infrastructure, configs. Learn it properly, not just the basics."

Networking

Core Skills

  • ProtocolsTCP/IP, HTTP/HTTPS, DNS, and SSL/TLS
  • Load BalancingDistribution strategies and health checks
  • SecurityFirewalls, VPNs, and network segmentation
Alex's Advice

"Half of DevOps debugging is 'why can't this thing connect to that thing'. Know your protocols."

Cloud Platforms

Core Skills

  • AWS/Azure/GCPCore services like EC2, S3, VPC, and IAM
  • Infrastructure as CodeTerraform, CloudFormation, or ARM templates
  • Managed ServicesDatabases, monitoring, and serverless computing
Alex's Advice

"Pick one cloud provider and learn it well. AWS is the biggest market, but any of the big three works."

Containers

Core Skills

  • Docker BasicsImages, containers, Dockerfile, and registries
  • Multi-stage BuildsOptimizing image size and security
  • Networking & StorageContainer networking and volume management
Alex's Advice

"Containers are how you ship software now. Start with Docker, understand images and layers."

Orchestration

Core Skills

  • Core ConceptsPods, Services, Deployments, and ConfigMaps
  • Scaling & UpdatesHorizontal scaling and rolling updates
  • Monitoring & LoggingHealth checks, metrics, and centralized logging
Alex's Advice

"The industry standard for container orchestration. Complex but necessary for most teams at scale."

CI/CD

Core Skills

  • Pipeline DesignBuild, test, deploy stages. Parallelism and caching.
  • GitHub ActionsWorkflows, reusable actions, matrix builds, OIDC auth
  • Artifact ManagementContainer registries, package publishing, versioning
  • Deployment StrategiesBlue-green, canary, rolling updates, feature flags
Alex's Advice

"If you're deploying by hand, you're doing it wrong. Automate everything from commit to production."

Monitoring and Observability

Core Skills

  • MetricsPrometheus, Grafana dashboards, alerting rules
  • LoggingCentralized logging with Loki, ELK, or CloudWatch
  • TracingDistributed tracing with OpenTelemetry, Tempo, or Jaeger
  • AlertingPagerDuty, OpsGenie, alert fatigue management, runbooks
Alex's Advice

"You need to know when things break before your users do. Set up proper monitoring, alerting, and dashboards."

Security and DevSecOps

Core Skills

  • Secret ManagementVault, AWS Secrets Manager, SOPS. Never hardcode secrets.
  • Vulnerability ScanningSnyk, Trivy, SonarCloud in CI pipelines
  • IAM and AccessLeast privilege, RBAC, OIDC, service accounts
  • ComplianceSOC 2, ISO 27001 basics, audit trails
Alex's Advice

"Security is not someone else's job. Bake it into your pipelines, scan your images, rotate your secrets."

GitOps and Configuration Management

Core Skills

  • GitOpsArgoCD or Flux for declarative deployments from Git
  • HelmKubernetes package management, chart templating
  • Configuration ManagementAnsible for server provisioning and config
  • Policy as CodeOPA, Kyverno for enforcing cluster policies
Alex's Advice

"Stop SSHing into servers to change things. Define everything in code, store it in Git, let the tooling sync it."

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