Getting Started with DevOps:

Windows Setup using Chocolatey

If you're starting your DevOps journey on Windows, setting up your local environment can feel overwhelming. Thankfully, Chocolatey makes it incredibly easy to install and manage essential tools using a simple command line.

In this post, I’ll walk you through how I used Chocolatey to quickly set up:

✅ Git
✅ AWS CLI
✅ Vagrant
✅ VirtualBox
✅ Docker Desktop
✅ Visual Studio Code
✅ IntelliJ IDEA
✅ Notepad++

🚀 What is Chocolatey?

Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows — like apt for Ubuntu or brew for macOS. It lets you install software with simple commands in PowerShell or CMD.

🛠️ Step 1: Install Chocolatey

First, open PowerShell as Administrator and run the following command:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

🔒 This script downloads and installs Chocolatey securely.

To confirm it's installed:

choco --version

📦 Step 2: Install Essential DevOps Tools

Here are the tools I installed with Chocolatey:

🧑‍💻 Git

choco install git -y

🌩 AWS CLI

choco install awscli -y

🖥 VirtualBox

choco install vagrant -y

🐳 Docker Desktop

choco install docker-desktop -y

🧠 Developer Editors and IDEs

📝 Visual Studio Code

choco install vscode -y

💡 IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition

choco install intellijidea-community -y

✏️ Notepad++

choco install notepadplusplus -y

✅ Optional: Handy Utilities

📁 7zip

choco install 7zip -y

📌 Pro Tips

• Add --force to reinstall any tool.

• Use choco upgrade all -y to upgrade everything in one go.

• Always run as Administrator when using Chocolatey.

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🎯 Wrapping Up

In just a few minutes, you can go from a clean Windows install to a fully set-up DevOps development environment using Chocolatey. Fast, repeatable, and much less clicking.

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🧪 What’s Next?

In the next post, I’ll show how I set up:

• GitHub

• AWS

• DockerHub

• SonarCloud

• Plus how to organize your credentials and SSH keys

💬 Have any favorite tools you use in your setup? Drop them in the comments!

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