Demystifying DevOps

Hi everyone, I’m back with another exciting blog post, this time about DevOps.Yes, you hear people talking about this emerging career all the time, as just more than a buzzword.

In this blog, Join me as we dive into the concept of DevOps, Why devops actually introduced and what happened before it came in, the 4 pillars of DevOps, DevOps lifecycle, its future with a real world example and share some of the best resources that I have come across to get started in this exciting field.

I have been learning DevOps since my freshman year, and this blog is a collection of DevOps concepts from my perspective. This is going to be a theoretical one as it covers the fundamentals of DevOps and you should not miss this if you are just starting out.

So yeah, without any further ado, let’s talk DevOps!

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What is DevOps?

In the first place, let’s see what DevOps actually means!

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What does that mean??

Imagine you walk into a restaurant. You order something, and the waiter brings it to your table after passing your request to the chef. The experience of having a meal served smoothly and efficiently is similar to how software is developed and deployed in the world of DevOps. Let’s break it down and see what it means! Consider this:

• Chefs (Developers👩‍💻) are responsible for preparing dishes, just like developers write and test code.

• Waiters (Operations Team⚙️) ensure that the food is served to customers efficiently, just as operations teams handle deployments and infrastructure.

• Customers (End Users) expect quick and high-quality service, similar to how users want seamless software experiences.

The movie Before DevOps

In a traditional setup without DevOps, the chefs and waiters don’t communicate well as they are placed in separate buildings. The kitchen prepares food without considering the readiness of the waiters. Orders pile up, some dishes get cold, and waiters struggle to deliver meals on time. Customers become frustrated, service is inconsistent, and the restaurant’s reputation suffers. Also, there is so much miscommunication between the management itself. Both the chefs and waiters complained, saying that the chef prepared the food late or waiters didn’t serve the food properly and quickly.

Imagine an organization where it takes 3 to 6 months to develop an application after writing a lot of code, debugging, and testing. Then, they "throw it over the wall" to the operations team, who struggle with deployment issues, configuration mismatches, and unexpected bugs. Releases are slow, and users often face downtime or delays in receiving new features.

They had to buy a server from a third-party company like IBM because there was no cloud (AWS, Azure) back then. After purchasing, they needed to set it up with application services to store and manage application data and configure it for smooth operation. This process included a lot of manual work, which needed to be reduced to manage applications on a larger scale.

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How DevOps Fixes This (A Well-Run Restaurant!)

DevOps transforms the process by fostering collaboration, automation, and continuous feedback. Imagine a restaurant where:

• Chefs and waiters communicate in real time about customer orders.

• Ingredients and cooking processes are standardized and automated (you introduce some machines or tools), reducing delays.

• The restaurant gathers customer feedback quickly and adjusts recipes (software updates) accordingly.

• The kitchen and waitstaff use continuous monitoring, ensuring food is prepared and served at the right time.

This reflects how DevOps enables smooth collaboration between development and operations. By applying DevOps principles like CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and infrastructure as code, software updates are delivered seamlessly, ensuring reliability and efficiency for users.

Customers were happy as products were quickly delivered, the organization was happy that they were able to make it, and yeah, the developers were also happy! DevOps brings in those Happy moments for us all the time🤗!

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The Four Pillars

We mentioned earlier that DevOps helps ensure the smooth and quick delivery of products.

But wait, is it true that DevOps is only about delivery? — Absolutely not! Delivering products on time is important, but other factors also matter.

1. CI/CD - We know that delivery is the main goal of DevOps. But what kind of delivery method does it use? It’s Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (more on that in a separate blog). For now, here’s a quick overview!

• Continuous Integration (CI): Developers regularly merge code changes into a shared repository on GitHub. Automated tests are triggered to catch errors early.

• Continuous Deployment (CD): Once the code passes tests, it is automatically deployed to production without manual steps.

• Continuous Delivery (CD): The software is always ready for deployment. Deployment requires manual approval.

2. Automate - We are naturally lazy and don't want to do all this work manually, right? Isn't there a way to automate all these tasks? DevOps provides that automation power.

3. Quality - Anyone can deliver products quickly and on time. But what if the product doesn't meet expectations? DevOps focuses on delivering quality products in a shorter time. That's a 2-in-1 offer for you!

4. Monitor and Observe - You've handed the application over to the operations team, and the application you deployed is currently handling a minimal number of requests.

   Let's say it's an e-commerce application, and you've announced Black Friday deals, and Christmas is approaching. Millions of requests come in, and the application can't handle them properly, causing the server to crash. You could lose a lot of revenue if this isn't managed well. Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to continuously monitor the application's status and health, notifying us or providing visual dashboards to see what's happening? DevOps also reduces the need for manual monitoring!

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How Netflix adopted DevOps culture?

Netflix is one of the best examples of how DevOps transformed a company from struggling with outages to delivering seamless, high-quality streaming to millions worldwide. Let’s take a journey through their Before & After DevOps transformation.

Before

Before DevOps, Netflix was a DVD rental service struggling with a monolithic architecture, manual deployments, and infrastructure limitations. Their system was a single, massive codebase, meaning if one part failed, everything suffered. Engineers manually pushed updates, causing delays and inconsistencies. Running their own data centers made scaling a nightmare, and any server failure could lead to hours of downtime.

As online streaming demand surged, Netflix realized they needed a scalable, automated, and resilient system, so they entered DevOps.

After

With DevOps, Netflix transformed into a streaming powerhouse, scaling to over 230 million users effortlessly. They broke their monolithic system into hundreds of microservices, ensuring that if one fails, the rest keep running smoothly. By leveraging AWS, they eliminated data center struggles and could auto-scale to handle traffic spikes, like when a new season drops.

Netflix implemented CI/CD pipelines, allowing them to roll out updates daily without disrupting your binge-watching. They even embraced Chaos Engineering with Chaos Monkey, intentionally crashing services to ensure ultimate reliability. With real-time monitoring tools like Grafana and Prometheus, Netflix tweaks performance before you even notice a glitch.

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DevOps Lifecycle: From Code to Production

DevOps is all about speed, automation, and continuous improvement. Here’s how an application moves through the DevOps lifecycle step by step:

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Plan (Jira, Confluence)

In this phase, teams get together to chat about features, bug fixes, and goals for the upcoming sprint. DevOps engineers work closely with developers to make sure the infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines are set up to meet the needs.

✅ Set clear objectives
✅ Split tasks into smaller, manageable stories
✅ Make sure the infrastructure is ready

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Code (Git, GitLab)

Developers dive into writing, reviewing, and managing code in version control systems like Git. Here’s where DevOps steps in to define branch strategies and coding standards, making sure everything runs smoothly.

✅ Code is crafted, reviewed, and committed
✅ Version control keeps collaboration safe and sound
✅ Developers push changes for seamless integration

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Build (Maven, Docker)

Code is compiled, containerized, or packaged into deployable artifacts. This is where the magic of automation happens through CI/CD pipelines.

✅ Compile or transpile code
✅ Create Docker images
✅ Catch early errors through automated builds

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Test (JUnit,SonarQube)

Automated tests are our trusty guardians, making sure our code is top-notch and rock-solid before it goes live. We run both functional and security tests to spot any sneaky issues.

✅ Conduct unit, integration, and security testing
✅ Stop regression bugs in their tracks
✅ Guarantee that new code plays nicely with existing features

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Release (Helm)

Alright, let's see what happens in the software release! Once our software has passed all the tests, it's time to package it up and store it safely in a registry, just waiting for deployment.

✅ Store those artifacts in repositories like Docker Hub or Nexus
✅ Have those rollback strategies ready—just in case
✅ Get those manual or automatic approvals lined up before deployment

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Deploy (Kubernetes)

Automation is our best friend here, making sure everything rolls out smoothly with no downtime. We use cool strategies like Blue-Green, Canary, or Rolling updates to keep things running seamlessly.

✅ Deploy to production using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools
✅ Enjoy zero-downtime deployments
✅ Be ready to roll back if anything goes wrong

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Operate (AWS, Kubernetes)

Once deployed, the application is maintained, optimized, and scaled automatically.

✅ Autoscaling and load balancing
✅ Incident response handling
✅ Security and compliance enforcement

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Monitor (Prometheus, Grafana)

Real-time monitoring and logs are like our early warning system, helping us catch issues before users even notice.

✅ Keep an eye on CPU, memory, disk usage, and response times
✅ Dive into logs for debugging
✅ Set up automated alerts to catch failures quickly

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Continuous Feedback & Improvement

The cycle keeps going, always enhancing the speed, reliability, and security of software releases.

🔹 CI/CD Pipeline in Action:
✅ Continuous Integration (CI) = Plan > Code > Build > Test > Release
✅ Continuous Delivery (CD) = CI + Deploy (manual trigger)
✅ Continuous Deployment (CD) = CI + Deploy (fully automated)

DevOps makes software delivery fast, automated, and reliable—ensuring a smooth experience for both developers and users!

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Future of DevOps

According to Global Market Insights research, the DevOps market is projected to grow from more than $7 billion in 2021 to at least $30 billion in 2028 as demand increases for automated testing and development tools. Sounds crazy, right?

DevOps isn't just a buzzword anymore—it's the future of software development, and all the big tech companies are jumping on board. AI-driven DevOps (AIOps) is taking care of spotting issues automatically, Kubernetes and GitOps are changing how we do cloud-native deployments, and DevSecOps is making security a part of the process from the start, not an afterthought.

Google is all about platform engineering, Microsoft thinks AI will make CI/CD even better, and AWS says DevOps teams are deploying stuff 208 times faster than the old-school way! Gene Kim says DevOps is more about culture than just automation, and Kelsey Hightower, the cloud advocate lead at Google, views it as a way to simplify things.

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Resources

​When I started my DevOps journey, I found the following resources incredibly helpful. You should definitely check them out if you're just beginning!

• 90 Days of DevOps by Michael Cade: A comprehensive, structured learning path covering DevOps principles, processes, and tools over 90 days. ​[GitHub]

• DevOps Roadmap by roadmap.sh: A step-by-step guide designed to help individuals become proficient DevOps engineers or Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) [roadmap.sh]

• The Phoenix Project: A book novel that provides insightful perspectives on IT and DevOps practices. ​

Conclusion

In a world where speed, reliability, and innovation define success, DevOps is no longer optional—it’s a necessity. Companies that embrace DevOps principles are shipping faster, reducing downtime, and staying ahead of the competition. From automation and cloud-native technologies to AI-driven optimizations, the future of DevOps is evolving rapidly.

As professionals, staying updated, mastering key tools, and fostering a culture of collaboration will set us apart. DevOps is not just a methodology—it’s a mindset, and those who adapt will lead the next wave of technological transformation.

Thanks for reading💙!

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