DevOps Beginner Prerequisites | Cloud Computing Pre-reqs

Explore virtualization fundamentals, including how a single computer runs multiple operating systems, achieves isolation, and supports clouds, containers, hypervisors, VMs, and snapshots.

Create a Linux virtual machine with Oracle VM VirtualBox, install Ubuntu server, configure bridged networking, and access it via PuTTY using the VM's IP address.

Automate vm setup and lifecycle with vagrant, using vagrant boxes from Vagrant Cloud and a Vagrantfile to provision, configure, and manage virtual machines with simple commands.

Learn to set up virtual machines on Apple Silicon Macs with VMware Fusion and Vagrant, creating Ubuntu and CentOS VMs and managing them with Vagrant up and ssh.

Explore the Linux operating system through commands, files, and servers, and learn open source concepts, kernel basics, distributions, and RPM vs Debian packaging.

Learn by exploring a Linux VM to understand users, home directories, and the root filesystem. Explore absolute vs relative paths, common commands, and navigate the Linux directory structure.

Learn essential Linux file and directory operations using mkdir, touch, cp, mv, and rm. Practice with absolute and relative paths, case sensitivity, recursive copying, and pattern-based file handling.

Learn to edit text with the Vim editor, mastering command, insert, and extended modes; create, save, quit, copy and paste, undo, search, and navigate files in Linux.

Learn linux file types—from normal files and directories to links, including soft links, block and character devices, and hidden dot files—using file, ln -s, and unlink to manage them.

Master Linux text filtering and searching with grep, less, and head or tail; use cut and sed for fields and in-place replacements, including recursive searches and case-insensitive options.

Learn to redirect command line output to files and elsewhere using stdout, errors, and pipes; overwrite or append, and filter with grep and wc.

Explain linux users and groups, including root, regular and service users; create users and homes, assign shells, manage groups, switch users, set passwords, and delete users and groups.

Learn to read and set Linux file permissions for owner, group, and others, with rwx meanings. Use symbolic or numeric modes with chmod, and adjust ownership with chown, recursive changes.

Master how to use sudo to run commands with root privileges. Discover how to add users or groups to the sudoers file, and enable passwordless sudo for streamlined administration.

Explore Linux package management by installing rpm packages and managing dependencies with yum. Learn to install, remove, search, update, and clean packages via repositories and epel-release.

Explore how to manage linux services with systemctl, starting, stopping, and restarting the esther dpd service, checking status, enabling boot at startup, and reloading configurations.

Explore processes and their lifecycle, using top and ps to view cpu and memory, interpret load averages, and manage processes with kill, grep, and xargs.

Learn how to archive and compress log files with tar and gzip, create and extract tarballs, and use zip as an alternative for backup and restoration in a DevOps workflow.

Learn Ubuntu commands for devops prep by provisioning an Ubuntu box, creating users with adduser, configuring sudoers and vim, and managing packages with apt and dpkg.

Configure vagrant virtual machines with static IPs and bridge networking, and adjust RAM and CPU. Learn to create multiple VMs from a single Vagrantfile and manage networking, provisioning, and resources.

Discover how vagrant sync directories link host and vm in real time via default sync folder. Create mappings like dev ops data to /opt/data and apply changes with vagrant reload.

Provisioning bootstraps a VM by running shell commands at boot, using vagrant provision to install packages, download and unzip files, copy to a server directory, and auto-provision a website.

Learn how to set up multiple virtual machines from a single Vagrantfile, configure networks and static IPs, and use Vagrant up and Vagrant destroy with provisioning.

Learn bash scripting basics to automate repetitive Linux tasks by writing and troubleshooting scripts, comparing with provided examples, and building confidence in shell automation.

Set up three vagrant virtual machines running CentOS 7, configure the script box hostname, and prepare to write and run bash scripts as root on the first virtual machine.

Write a bash script in the opt/scripts directory using vim, include a shebang, print uptime and memory and disk utilization, then grant executable permission and add comments.

Learn to automate website deployment by scripting the setup: download, unzip, copy to /var/www/html, and manage httpd with systemctl; add comments, redirect output, and test the result.

Declare and use bash variables to store temporary data, retrieve with the dollar sign, and interpolate in commands, applying these concepts to a web setup script managing artifacts and services.

Learn how command line arguments pass values into scripts using positional parameters like $1 and $2, and the script name $0, with deployment examples.

Explore shell system variables such as $0, $1-$9, $#, $@, and $?, and learn how they capture the script name, arguments, argument count, and the last command’s exit status.

Explore how double and single quotes in Bash affect variable expansion, literal text, and special characters. Learn to print dollars and variables correctly using escaping and quoting rules.

Use command substitution to capture command output into variables with backticks or dollar parentheses. Show system health by printing uptime, logged-in users, and RAM and root partition usage.

Export variables to widen their scope beyond the current shell, using bashrc for a user and etc/profile for all users; verify by logging out and in.

Learn how to capture user input in scripts using the read command and a variable, with prompts and silent input for passwords.

Learn how to add decision making to scripts using if, else, and elseif conditions, including input handling and conditional execution based on comparisons.

Master conditional logic with if, else, and elif to handle multiple conditions in scripts, counting active network interfaces with ip address show and grep.

Master bash scripting to monitor and restart processes using exit codes and file checks, schedule with cron, and log httpd status for reliable cloud computing prerequisites.

Explore loop constructs in scripting, including for and while loops, to automate repetitive tasks over sequences or lists, with examples like iterating users or servers and pacing execution with sleep.

Discover how while loops run while a condition is true, increment a counter, and terminate at a false condition, avoiding infinite loops and controlling execution with sleep.

Learn to perform remote command execution across web01, web02, and web03 from a script box, configuring host mappings, sudoers for a DevOps user, and ssh key login.

Learn how to set up key-based login with ssh by generating public and private keys, distributing the public key with ssh-copy-id, and achieving passwordless authentication.

Build a multi-host bash deployment framework that runs scripts on web01–web03 via a hosts file and for loop, then adapt to yum or apt and install apache2 depending on OS.

Push a setup script to remote linux hosts via scp and ssh, execute with key-based authentication, handle sudo or root privileges, then clean up, illustrating bash scripting for automation.

Develop a solid foundation in computer networking with the OSI seven-layer model, covering physical to application layers, IP addressing, DNS and DHCP, and prepare to troubleshoot and automate cloud environments.

Explore how local and wide area networks connect devices using switches and routers, and learn IPv4 addressing, public vs private IPs, and subnetting.

Learn how protocols define communication rules, contrast TCP and UDP, and how port numbers map services to IP addresses for firewall setup.

Master essential Linux and Windows networking commands to troubleshoot connectivity and inspect services across virtual machines using ping, traceroute, netstat, nmap, dig, nslookup, and telnet.

Explore the shift from virtualization to cloud computing, including private and public clouds, on-demand resources, pay-as-you-go pricing, and the three service models: IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

Learn to create a free AWS account, enable multifactor authentication, create an IAM user with full access, and set up a CloudWatch billing alarm for cost monitoring.

Explore AWS global infrastructure, regions, availability zones, and edge locations, then set up a free tier account and IAM user to begin hands-on DevOps with EC2, CloudWatch, and CodePipeline.

Explore elastic compute cloud to provision, manage, and scale virtual machines using Amazon machine images, instance types, and EBS storage, while configuring security groups and key pairs for secure access.

Learn to launch and configure an EC2 instance in the north virginia region, create a security group and key pair, and connect via ssh to deploy a web app.

Explore elastic block store volumes, partition, format, mount, and use snapshots; compare general purpose storage with provisioned IOPS, throughput-optimized HD, and magnetic options for zone-based deployments.

Create and attach a general purpose EBS volume, partition and format it as ext4, mount to /opt/images, and configure fstab for permanent storage.

Learn how elastic load balancers provide a single endpoint for a server cluster, distributing traffic to targets across availability zones within a region, with application, network, classic, and gateway options.

Launch and manage a multi-instance web app using ELB, creating an AMI, deploying in multiple zones, and configuring an application load balancer with port 80 health checks.

CloudWatch monitors resources and collects metrics, events, and logs; configure a CPU utilization alarm on an instance; receive email notifications via SNS.

Explore cloudwatch monitoring of an EC2 instance, view CPU utilization graphs, enable detailed monitoring, and set a 70% CPU alarm that sends email notifications when breached.

Learn how Amazon RDS automates patching, backups, monitoring, and performance tuning for relational databases, while enabling multi-AZ high availability and read replicas in private networks.

Create a private cloud database via a platform as a service, selecting MySQL 5.7, storage, backups, and security groups, then access the endpoint from an EC2 instance.

Discover Amazon S3, the simple object storage service, learn buckets, objects, storage classes, versioning, permissions, and lifecycle rules, and explore static website hosting and replication.

Explore version control with Git, including centralized and distributed models, local and remote repositories, and GitHub, to track changes, roll back, and collaborate in DevOps workflows.

Install and configure git across Windows, macOS, and Linux. Initialize repositories, stage and commit changes, and push to remote on GitHub.

Learn to manage parallel development with git branches: create sprint branches from the master, switch and merge changes back to the master, and push to origin using basic commands.

Learn how to roll back changes at multiple levels in Git, from checkout and diff to restore, reset, and reversing commits, with staging area and committed state considerations.

Learn to log in to remote git repositories via SSH keys, generate and upload your public key to GitHub, and clone private repos with key-based authentication.

Master the Maven build tool for Java and the Java build lifecycle—from source code through validate, compile, test, package, install, and deploy—automating artifact creation and deployment.

Set up a Linux dev environment by installing OpenJDK 8, Maven, and Git, clone a repository, and run mvn validate and mvn install to build with dependencies.

Explore Python scripting basics and automation concepts, from programming fundamentals to using Ansible for configuration management. Install Python 3, use Jupyter notebooks and Anaconda for practice.

Learn to write and run Python on Linux, compare Python 2 and Python 3, and master indentation and basic syntax with scripting in CentOS and Ubuntu.

Explore Python quotes and comments, learning single-line and multi-line comments, string literals with single, double, and triple quotes, and how print statements handle variables.

Define and manipulate variables in Python, using strings, integers, floats, lists, tuples, and dictionaries; apply single and multiple assignments, printing, and type checks for JSON and YAML workflows.

Learn multiple Python printing techniques, from basic print statements to format, f-strings, and concatenation, using variables like name and disease (SARS-CoV-2) and noting version requirements.

Master slicing in Python data structures by extracting substrings, sublists, and dictionary values through indexing, negative indexing, and range-based slices.

Explore Python operators from arithmetic, including modulus and exponent, to logical, including assignment, comparison, membership, identity, and bitwise, through hands-on notebook demonstrations with variables X and Y.

Master Python conditional logic with if, elif, and else, practice indentation, and test membership in lists and dictionaries using interactive input to build skill-check scripts for DevOps contexts.

Explore how Python loops drive repetitive tasks with for and while constructs, iterating over strings and lists, including nested loops and common pitfalls like infinite loops.

Learn break and continue in Python loops, discovering how break ends a loop and continue moves to the next iteration, with practical examples using for loops and conditions.

Explore Python built-in functions and methods for strings, lists, and dictionaries, including typical operations like capitalize, find, join, append, insert, and keys and values, with practical examples.

Learn to write Python functions with def, pass arguments, return values, and use default and keyword arguments to control call order and maximize reusability.

Learn to handle variable numbers of function arguments, including positional args and keyword arguments, through examples like order_food and time_activity that process, loop, and randomize minutes.

Explore modules in Python, a script or package with functions you can import and use, and learn to create and call your own modules with various import styles.