A Beginner’s Guide to Learning DevOps (With Real-Time Project Example)

DevOps is a culture and practice that combines development (Dev) and operations (Ops) to enhance collaboration, automate processes, and deliver software faster and more reliably. Whether you’re a developer, operations engineer, or just getting started, this blog will guide you through the key topics in DevOps by building a real-time project: a “Movie Review Application.”

Real-Time Project Overview: Movie Review Application

We’ll build a Movie Review Application that allows users to review and rate movies. The application will use React for the frontend, Node.js/Express for the backend, and MongoDB as the database. We’ll integrate DevOps practices throughout the project.

1. Version Control Systems

What is it?

Version control systems (VCS) like Git help teams track changes in code, collaborate, and manage different versions of a project.

Example in the Project:

• Setting up Git:

  1. Initialize a Git repository:

   git init
  

1. Commit initial files:

    git add .
    git commit -m "Initial commit with boilerplate code"
   

2. Push to a remote repository:

    git remote add origin https://github.com/user/movie-review-app.git
    git push -u origin main
   

• Use GitHub or GitLab to host the repository and collaborate with your team.

2. Continuous Integration (CI)

What is it?

CI ensures that code changes are automatically tested and integrated into the main branch, reducing integration issues.

Example in the Project:

• Setting up CI with Jenkins:

  1. Install Jenkins and create a new pipeline.
  2. Configure the pipeline to pull changes from the GitHub repository.
  3. Add a build script to test the Node.js backend:

   pipeline {
       agent any
       stages {
           stage('Build') {
               steps {
                   sh 'npm install'
               }
           }
           stage('Test') {
               steps {
                   sh 'npm test'
               }
           }
       }
   }
  

1. Trigger the pipeline on every push to the repository.

3. Continuous Delivery (CD)

What is it?

CD automates the deployment process so that code changes can be released to production or staging environments with minimal manual effort.

Example in the Project:

• Deploying to AWS EC2 using AWS CodePipeline:
  1. Set up an EC2 instance to host the application.
  2. Use AWS CodePipeline to automate deployment:
     • Source: Connect the pipeline to the GitHub repository.
     • Build: Use AWS CodeBuild to package the application.
     • Deploy: Deploy the application to the EC2 instance using CodeDeploy.
  3. Test the application by accessing the EC2 public IP.

4. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

What is it?

IaC uses code to provision and manage infrastructure, enabling consistency and scalability.

Example in the Project:

• Provisioning Infrastructure with Terraform:

  1. Write a main.tf file to provision an EC2 instance:

   provider "aws" {
       region = "us-east-1"
   }
  
   resource "aws_instance" "app_server" {
       ami           = "ami-0c55b159cbfafe1f0"
       instance_type = "t2.micro"
       tags = {
           Name = "MovieReviewApp-Server"
       }
   }
  

1. Apply the changes:

    terraform init
    terraform apply
   

5. Configuration Management

What is it?

Configuration management ensures systems are configured consistently across environments.

Example in the Project:

1. Write a playbook to install Node.js:

    - hosts: webservers
      tasks:
        - name: Install Node.js
          apt:
            name: nodejs
            state: present
   

2. Run the playbook:

    ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini playbook.yml
   

6. Containerization

What is it?

Containerization packages applications and their dependencies into lightweight containers to run consistently across environments.

Example in the Project:

• Containerizing the Application with Docker:

  1. Write a Dockerfile for the Node.js backend:

   FROM node:14
   WORKDIR /app
   COPY . .
   RUN npm install
   CMD ["npm", "start"]
  

1. Build and run the container:

    docker build -t movie-review-backend .
    docker run -p 3000:3000 movie-review-backend
   

7. Orchestration

What is it?

Orchestration manages multiple containers, ensuring they work together seamlessly.

Example in the Project:

• Using Kubernetes to Orchestrate Containers:

  1. Create a deployment.yaml file:

   apiVersion: apps/v1
   kind: Deployment
   metadata:
     name: movie-review-app
   spec:
     replicas: 3
     selector:
       matchLabels:
         app: movie-review
     template:
       metadata:
         labels:
           app: movie-review
       spec:
         containers:
         - name: movie-review-backend
           image: movie-review-backend:latest
  

1. Deploy to Kubernetes:

    kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml
   

8. Monitoring and Logging

What is it?

Monitoring ensures systems are running smoothly, while logging helps troubleshoot issues by tracking events and errors.

Example in the Project:

• Monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana:
  1. Install Prometheus to collect application metrics.
  2. Visualize these metrics in Grafana by setting up dashboards.
  3. Example metrics to track: API response times, error rates, and request volumes.

9. Security in DevOps (DevSecOps)

What is it?

Integrating security into DevOps practices ensures vulnerabilities are identified and fixed early.

Example in the Project:

1. Review the vulnerabilities in the generated report and address them.

10. Cloud Providers

What is it?

Cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud provide scalable infrastructure and tools for hosting applications and services.

Example in the Project:

• Hosting the Application on AWS S3:
  1. Upload the React frontend to an S3 bucket.
  2. Enable static website hosting and configure the bucket policy for public access.
  3. Access the hosted application using the S3 endpoint.

Summary

By applying DevOps practices to build the Movie Review Application, we’ve covered all major topics from version control to deployment, monitoring, and security. Learning DevOps is a journey, but hands-on experience with projects like this will accelerate your growth. Happy learning!