DevOps is the new phenomenon that is taking over the corporate boardrooms by storm and bringing in new methodologies and principles to streamline the creation and deployment of software in the new age of software is eating the world era.

In this blog post we will delve into the aspects of what it takes to become a DevOps Engineer, what is the career opportunity available and what is the scope of the job of DevOps. There is a general belief that DevOps is more about the automation of processes and deployment of code and releases of software. But it is much more than that. So in order to be a successful DevOps professional you need to have both technical and non-technical skills in equal measure. Since DevOps is not just a set of rules or tools that can be directly implemented, it has to be understood properly in order to get the maxim benefit of it. It is more about community, behavior, trust and culture. The end goal is to get the software out of the doors faster, better, cheaper making it a win-win situation.

So here are some of the skills that a DevOps engineer needs to inherently possess:
1.Be an excellent Sysadmin

A system administrator is supposed to build, manage and troubleshoot the servers on a regular basis. Getting the servers to work right is one of the most important aspects of the job of a DevOps professional. Next comes the process of automating the key processes in server deployment and infrastructure deployment which are also the part of the skillset of a successful DevOps professional.

2.Deploy virtualization

The DevOps professional should be well-versed with the aspect of virtualization since he has to take charge of the entire process of virtualizing the servers and other components. He should be able to work in a private or a public cloud set-up with ease and deploy the necessary infrastructure and virtualization.

3.Hands-on experience in network and storage

Today network and storage are part and parcel of any IT organization and hence the DevOps professional should be able to deploy his knowledge of the IT network and storage concepts. This comes in handy when there is a need to design solutions that can stand up to the test of scalability, performance, and high availability at all times.

4.Knowledge of coding goes a long way

Did you know that coding is one of the few skills that will survive the onslaught of automation that we are seeing all around? So having a basic knowledge of coding in any of the popular coding language can go a long way. It could be having a grasp of Python, Perl, Java, Ruby or any other language. This way the DevOps professional can be a better bridge between the developer teams and operations teams. Everybody knows that today everything is automatized including the server triggering, application installation, configuration and validation processes included. So there has to be a lot of coding that needs to be just right and it is the responsibility of the DevOps professional to ensure all that is working very smoothly.

5.Soft skills are a must-have

This is also primary requirement for the DevOps professional in order to be a bridge between the development and operations team. Since DevOps is more of a cultural shift there is a need to have the right of people skills and soft skills in order to get the whole organization move in a well-oiled smooth fashion. Since for a long time the development and operations teams were at arms-length, the DevOps principles is bringing about a sea change.

6.Understanding the automation tools

There are a lot of automation tools and technologies that are being deployed in the DevOps process and as a DevOps professional you need to be familiar with the various set of tools and be able to deploy in the DevOps setup. Some of the important tools that are being widely deployed include Puppet, Chef, Jenkins, Salt, Ansible, Kubernetes, Docker, Kubernetes, Nagios, Cloud computing and storage platform, Infrastructure as Code.

7.Security aspects of the IT organization

Security is one of the prime focus of a DevOps professional. Due to this the DevOps personnel needs to know about the various security measures that need to be taken in order to ensure the system is safe and sound and running at all times. There are a lot of automation processes that are deployed in the IT organization when the DevOps personnel need to take special care of. DevOps ensures that the security aspect is taken care of due to the process of automation setting in, increased visibility, fast updates, and the agile methodology of getting things done.

8.Knowledge of Testing

Testing is one of the most important aspects of the software development and delivery process. So the DevOps professional needs to understand the working of how testing works in order to make the whole process of testing go in the right direction. There are a lot of automation tools that are deployed for the process of testing and the DevOps professional needs to have hands-on experience of working with the DevOps testing automation tools.DevOps is more about preventing the errors rather than finding the errors. Now that you know the most important skill set of a DevOps Engineer, did you also know that DevOps Engineers are among the highest paid professionals in the technology domain? Getting the right industry-designed training can make all the difference and help you to get ahead in your career!