Who is a DevOps engineer?
It is impossible to tell about DevOps-engineers in two words: someone says that such a specialist does not exist, and someone is convinced that it is the same sysadmin, but from a different angle. Not a profession, but a mystery. For the sake of greater clarity, we have interviewed experts who unfolded their answers to common questions about this profession.
What is DevOps?
Development Operations is a development methodology that aims at effective interaction between developers and other IT specialists. For example, programmers and testers are responsible for Development and administrators for Operations. And when a specialist is involved not only in direct development, but also in the process of deploying and operating the system – it is DevOps. DevOps is not a set of tools and platforms, but rather a concept, a set of practices and rules that bridge the gap between service developers and employees responsible for the maintenance and operation of the application.
Why is it necessary?
Team members work together and gain a holistic view of the entire system. This facilitates effective interaction and, as a result, improves product quality.
It’s worth mentioning at once that when we talk about DevOps, we’re not talking about a position. It’s not a separate profession, but methodology and following a set of certain practices and strategies aimed at ensuring that the result (implemented in the code and performing functions in a productive environment) eventually meets a number of business requirements. Business needs high speed of development, stability in the process of operation, when making changes and scaling, minimization of costs, the possibility to avoid hiring additional specialists.
Who is a DevOps-engineer?
Devops-engineer as a person with a dedicated role is an administrator, whose area of activity is a little aside from product development. He is in charge of setting up tools and systems that allow him to deliver the features of developed products to customers more often and with better quality. Devops-engineers are road builders on which trucks loaded with products run, created by other engineers. In most cases, a Devops-engineer is a role that any team member can take on. In large companies, where a dedicated role can save money, Devops-engineers design and maintain change delivery systems for many teams, standardizing these processes.
This specialty appeared on the IT market relatively recently and almost immediately became one of the most popular and in demand. But it should be noted that many employers, exposing such a vacancy, confuse DevOps-specialists with representatives of other professions or just looking for 2 in 1.
What problems does it solve?
The “magic” of DevOps comes to the aid when a project has problems with stability, scaling, work under load, or with production upload, as well as, for example, if the process of product release takes too long. You can use devops service providers to get support for your company.
What is the difference between a DevOps engineer and a system administrator?
The main difference between sysadmin and DevOps-engineer, of course, is not in tools or knowledge.This is the difference in the approach to work. Sysadmin has a specific, unchangeable list of tasks that it performs every day. Perhaps there is also a plan for the development or automation of infrastructure. The DevOps engineer, as part of a team, has no such limitations.The list of tasks can be very diversified: yesterday he wrote code, today he tests the application, tomorrow he will do what is relevant at that time for the team, e.g. develop a new feature, troubleshoot a network problem in a test environment or configure the CI/CD process.