Getting Started with DevOps: A Practical Approach

When I made the transition from fullstack development to DevOps, I quickly learned that the theoretical knowledge only gets you so far. Here's what I wish I'd known starting out.

The Reality Check

DevOps isn't just about knowing Docker and Kubernetes. It's about understanding systems, automation, and most importantly - how developers actually work. Coming from a development background gave me a huge advantage here.

Essential Skills That Matter

1. Configuration Management

One of the first real challenges I tackled was figuring out how to securely manage environment variables across different environments. This isn't glamorous work, but it's critical.

# Simple but effective approach for PM2 apps
pm2 start ecosystem.config.js --env production

2. CI/CD Pipelines

Start simple. A basic GitLab CI pipeline that runs tests and deploys is infinitely better than manual deployments.

3. Monitoring That Actually Helps

Set up monitoring that tells you about problems before your users do. Zabbix and Sentry have been game-changers for me.

What's Next?

The key is to solve real problems, not just learn tools for the sake of it. Every automation script, every pipeline, every monitoring setup should solve an actual pain point.

More posts coming on specific implementations and lessons learned from the trenches.